Pay Attention

I Voted For Bush

My Personal Timeline of the Bush Presidency

• Summer 2000

I didn’t care about politics. My smart guy persona demanded that I feign a passionate interest if the topic came up, but my leftover high school Ayn Rand libertarianism made it easy to deflect any serious conversation (“What do I think about the crisis in health care? Taxation is slavery. Don’t be stupid). My thoughts were mostly concerned with some overdue post-collegiate partying and finding a place to live so I could move back out of my parents’ house (and party harder).

So I don’t remember much about George W Bush’s rise to national prominence, except that I thought the idea of a sequel Bush presidency would be a nice “screw you” to the Clintons. I cared about this because Libertarians were supposed to hate Clinton (not without cause, though I couldn’t have told you why).

• October 2000

Kick-ass Halloween party at my new place.

• November 7, 2000 - Election Day

Decision time. I’d read my voting guide, so I had some notion of the candidates’ positions. Republican or Libertarian? Despite my ideological bent, I hated to waste my vote. Besides, I liked Bush’s slogan of “compassionate conservatism,” and a Republican president meant lower taxes and a stronger economy. I also liked what I’d read about his immigration policy. I disagreed with him on social stuff like gay rights, but those things were moving along fine on their own.

I voted for George W. Bush.

• November 5, 2000

What? Still no new president? But Gore conceded before I went to bed.

• December 31, 2000

Kick-ass New Year’s Eve Party at my place.

• January 20, 2001 - President Bush’s first inauguration

In his first inaugural speech President Bush says these words:

Some seem to believe that our politics can afford to be petty because, in a time of peace, the stakes of our debates appear small.

But the stakes for America are never small. If our country does not lead the cause of freedom, it will not be led. If we do not turn the hearts of children toward knowledge and character, we will lose their gifts and undermine their idealism. If we permit our economy to drift and decline, the vulnerable will suffer most.

I have no memory of that day, but if I watched the speech, I doubt I heard those lines. To me, the stakes were small. The United States had never been more prosperous and more peaceful, and I remember wondering if presidency might be irrelevant in the modern era.

• Summer 2001

I made a movie with some friends that worked with me in a coffee shop. The movie was about, among other things, some friends that work together in a coffee shop. I co-wrote the screenplay, and I somehow believed that we were the only people that saw Clerks.

I also spent the summer corresponding with a girl I’d met. She lived in New York, but would be moving across the street from me soon. I liked her, and I thought that maybe she liked me too.

• September 11, 2001 - Terrorists attack the Pentagon and the World Trade Center

I didn’t work at the coffee shop anymore. In the mornings I worked at at a school supply company, re-filing invoices for returned merchandise. In the evenings, I waited tables at an Italian restaurant. I sucked at waiting tables, and I was always late to the office because the tires on my Chevy Corsica leaked, and I had to air them up every morning. The girl from New York moved in across the street a few weeks before, but she got back together with her old boyfriend. I said some nasty things to her when I found out.

That morning I rushed into the office through the back door so no one would see me coming in after nine. I sat down at my computer and turned on the radio. One of the DJs was talking about CNN. He said some idiot in a private plane collided with one of the World Trade Center Towers. The other DJ asked him how he knows the plane is private.

“A commercial flight wouldn’t be flying so close to the buildings.”

The second plane hit.

The restaurant was busy that night. I was a terrible waiter, but nobody seemed to care for once. People wanted to talk about what happened, but nobody knew how. My boss, a small-time conspiracy theorist, said we’d going to go to war.

“With who?” I ask.

“With whoever.”

Was this what people did on Pearl Harbor Day?

When I got off from work I stop by the girl from New York’s house. I asked her if she was okay. I asked her if she’d heard from everyone she knew. I told her I was sorry for the things I said. None of that mattered anymore.

• September 20, 2001 - President Bush speaks before Congress

Although he’d spoken multiple times in the days since the attack, this would be the big speech. I watched him take the podium with anticipation. For the most part I knew what happened on 9/11, but I still didn’t know what it meant. I needed the President to tell me, and to define the new world for me.

I was afraid too, not of more terrorist attacks, but of what would happen in America. I wasn’t wholly ignorant of the past. I knew there were internment camps for Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor, and I didn’t want that to happen again. I was relieved to hear the president say these words:

I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world: We respect your faith. It is practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.

• October 2001 - American attacks on Afghanistan begin

I knew about the Taliban from the endless petitions that got passed around in coffee shops in the 90s. I never understood who they were petitioning, but I knew the Taliban were monsters, so I was happy we finally had excuse to end them.

• March 2003 - War in Iraq

The President stood strong against Saddam Hussein. Like a sheriff in a western movie, he told the villain to get out of town. I ate it up, but a lot of people I respected were against the war. With a limited knowledge of foreign policy (mostly gleaned from West Wing reruns*), I didn’t see a downside. Saddam was bad. Freedom would transform the region. Democracy would flourish. Problem solved.

Did President Bush lie about a connection between Iraq and 9/11? If he did, I didn’t hear it, and I didn’t care. The Middle East was one big Gordian knot to me, and who cared where you made the first cut?

• February 2004 - President Bush calls for a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage.

I’m seriously disappointed in the President for the first time. Yes, of course he opposes gay marriage. He’s a Republican, but calling for an amendment to the Constitution in order to deny a right to someone offends my libertarian heart.

• Summer 2004

Now I lived in California, and the histrionics that resulted from any mention of President Bush made me more determined to like him. I remember walking down the street in Santa Cruz and stopping to watch a group of college kids protest the war, and laughing when a few of them broke off from the protest to get coffee.

I felt uneasy, though. The war wasn’t going well, and there was this thing with the PATRIOT Act. I read a lot of Christopher Hitchens to shore up my opinions, but I kept my mouth shut too, and avoided discussing politics at all.

• Fall 2004 - Campaign Season

I agonized over this one. I watch the debates. I read as much as I can find online, but I still don’t know that invading Iraq was wrong, only that it’s going badly. A change in leadership now might send the wrong message. It might make it harder to win this thing. Besides, Kerry voted to authorize the very war he’s running against. It seems awfully convenient that he’s against it now.

• November 2, 2004

I abstain by voting Libertarian, but I’m a little sad the day after the election.

• August 2005 - Hurricane Katrina destroys much of the Gulf Coast

I watched helplessly from 2000 miles away as Hurrican Katrina slams my hometown and my family in Alabama. Although the town is very nearly destroyed and my family is without power for weeks, it’s nothing compared to what happens in New Orleans. Watching the ham-handed response afterward, I realized that I lived in a country where a major city can disappear and the government is powerless to stop it. Something had gone wrong in America.

The failures of Katrina were the end result of decades of poor choices at every level of government, but the cronyism, the ideological blindness, and sheer stupidity that were exposed in the days after the storm made it all worse. During my next visit home, I resolved that it would be a long time before I voted for another Republican.

• Today

The Bush years are almost over. In many ways they have been the best years of my life, but I feel a lot of responsibility for the things that went wrong. I’ve spent the last three years dilligently reading about history and politics and government. I seek out new and different opinions. I question what I read in newspapers. I don’t watch TV news.

I believe that the Bush administration has committed crimes against the Constitution, against the people of the United States, and against humanity. Whatever his intentions, he is responsible for his actions.

So am I. I know I’m only one man, and that my vote didn’t change the outcome of any election, but I did vote for him. I voted for him because I didn’t think it mattered who won, and I didn’t care enough to learn the facts and make a wise choice. I wasn’t paying attention.

I take responsibility for the the things my country does to other countries, to future generations, and to its own citizens. That’s why I gave this journal its title, to remind me and everyone else to pay attention.

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*Re-watch The West Wing some time. Jed Bartlett and Leo McGarry were quite the neocons.