By Paul Zanetti, as featured in The Guardian, 17 January 2009.
Analysis: The Bush Years
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roads of stone 
That’s absolutely brilliant. Love it.
Like all presidents, his investments are held in a blind trust during his term in office, so he won’t find out till Wednesday what his portfolio looks like. And I hope he discovers, like so many of us, that it is one-fourth of what it was in August.
As Texans (and other rednecks) say to those they’re not sorry to see go, Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya.
Thanks, Ella. I think the cartoon works on many more levels as well. The economy is one thing, but the standing of the US on the world stage in international affairs and its reputation for civil liberties are huge casualties of these past 8 years.
It’s tragic and yet perhaps it’s not surprising that the last few days of this Wartime Presidency should have been used for the cynical propagation of war and pointless massacre in the Middle East, the area where foreign policy so consistently backfired for Dubya.
The unilateral approach simply didn’t work, and the knee-jerk support of Israel can’t justifiably continue when its government is implicated in atrocities and war crimes in Gaza on a ruthless and inhuman scale.
Once the crowds have left Washington on this historic Inauguration Day, there’s an enormous amount of repair work to be done. Let’s hope that your man and his team can live up to all our dreams and expectations.
Let’s hope, indeed, and let’s further hope when another Republican president comes along, the neocons will not be able to sink their talons into him or her and again dictate an arrogant and bellicose agenda disastrous for the world.
Perhaps most shameful of the past 8 years for me as an American is the fact that for the first time in our history we unilaterally invaded another sovereign nation. I pray it’s the only time.
I just heard Clinton’s former Labor Secy, Robert Reich, say on the teevee what so many high-ranking people have been saying privately: that the recession is heading for a depression and might in fact already be there. At times like this, I feel as if hope is all that’s left.
Yes, challenging times indeed. With the banks in meltdown and bankruptcy even of the entire UK (along the Icelandic model) openly discussed for the first time on BBC Radio 4, it feels as if the world as we know it is balanced on a knife edge.
And yet, it’s exactly within such problems that the greatest opportunities must surely hide. And building on your words we might end up with echoes of another Inauguration Day, that of FDR:
The only thing to hope for now is hope itself.
I could grow to like that line, and indeed one day, it might catch on. Because hope may look small sometimes, and indeed it’s just one word. But for today at least — it’s enough.
Happy Inauguration Day.