I was smitten with Bev from the first moment we met. Her beauty – inside and out – attracted me immediately. She was gorgeous and spiritual and awesome. It didn’t take me long to realize that I wanted to know her better.

We met after a Sunday evening church service. She’d just finalized her decision to follow Christ after quite a spiritual journey. I was seventeen years old and about to start my senior year in high school.

That first night I discovered that we conveniently lived in the same small town. Cool! Within a few weeks we became good friends. She shared where she worked and lived.

Since I wanted to see her and talk to her as often as possible, I figured out which route she probably took to get home (she worked only a few blocks from her house), and I knew when she clocked out.

One afternoon, I rode my bike slowly and repeatedly along that pathway waiting for her to pass by so I could “accidentally” run into her. What do you know, she drove past, I flagged her down and we talked for a long time. In fact, it was so long all the gas drained out of her carburetor, the car stalled, and when she couldn’t get it restarted, we had to push it to her house!

That was also the first time I got to meet her parents. Her Mom is very perceptive and told me later that she could tell that day that something was up between us.

This has always been a favorite memory for me. It seemed so romantic that I’d want so badly to get her attention that I’d pull a stunt like this.

Not long ago as we drove this same road, I told the story to some of our kids. After all, they should know about the love story of their parents, right? It’s important that they understand how I’d seek her and woo her to eventually marry me.

One child’s response? “Wow, Dad, you were pretty much a stalker!“

Sigh.

So what do you think the moral of this story is? 

Love is blind, so they say, and I’d add that partisanship is too.

Partisanship makes normally smart people accept stupid things and endorse actions they’d otherwise condemn. It’s why your home team can do no wrong, and why no one can criticize your family except you.

Republicans loved George W. Bush for a lot of reasons, but the biggest may have been that he wasn’t Al Gore or John Kerry and he sure wasn’t Bill Clinton!

There are a few things I really appreciate about President #43. He was likable - I would have cut off my ears if we had to listen to four years of Al Gore speeches! His steadying presence in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks helped our country through some of its most trying days and earns him a special place in my heart.

He did something that no other president, Republican nor Democrat, ever did – he went after the terrorists! It’s hard to hit a moving target, which is why no one else ever launched a “War on Terror”. How do you attack an enemy with no borders and no known home base? Bill Clinton occasionally launched a few air strikes and said he was “sending a message”, but that was laughably ineffective. No one else had any better ideas.

But when the Towers fell on September 11th, George Bush said that the remaining theme of his presidency was going after the people who committed the atrocities – and he did! By invading Afghanistan he was able to topple the Taliban, and as they say, the rest is history. The war’s not over, but he was the only one with the courage to start it!

But since I’m tired of being a Republican homer, I’m going to point out three areas of the Bush presidency that I believe will haunt us for generations.

#1 – I Care Because I Spend

Before GWB, most Republicans stood for fiscal restraint and discipline. At least they usually tried (or pretended to). Democrats on the other hand, believed that they cared more about social issues like education and the poor, and they believed they proved that by spending money – loads of money, boatloads of money – on the problems. Republicans would counter that they cared, but it was foolish to spend what you didn’t have, you can’t just throw money at problems – yada yada yada. We all know the arguments, so let’s not digress.

Bush turned that on its head. I remember listening to his budget presentations where he would propose massive spending increases, throwing money around like the best Democrats (no offense intended, seriously), based on his understanding of “Compassionate Conservatism”.

What he really did was cede a major philosophical point – you don’t prove you care just because you spend more!

Why is that important? Once spending becomes the benchmark for caring, it becomes a race to see who can spend more. “Hey, vote for me! I care more about [insert cause] than him! Look at how much I want to spend to fix/improve/prevent/overcome it!”

Unless conservatives reverse this philosophy, there won’t be a sliver of difference between Republicans and Democrats.

#2 – The War in Iraq

Without a doubt, Saddam Hussein needed to be removed because of his humanitarian abuses. He was a monster of the highest caliber. But there are other monsters, and I am irritated when any politician picks and chooses which monsters to remove based on some arbitrary sliding scale.

If we’re going after human rights abusers, what about China’s child labor or their “one child per family” policy which results in forced sterilizations and forced abortions? What about confronting Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world about their unbelievably horrible treatment of women (“female genital mutilation”, anyone?)?

And this isn’t just hindsight being 20/20. As we stood in our kitchen listening to GWB explain to the nation why we were about to invade Iraq, I told Bev that if we don’t find weapons of mass destruction, this was going to be a huge mess (I don’t remember my exact words. I guess I should have written them down, knowing I was going to be quoted for generations.)  While the connection between 9/11 and Afghanistan was evident, the Iraq connection was, it seemed, circumstantial.

On the home front, how both Congress and the White House handled paying for the two wars is also wrong. Jesus said that when you go to battle, you count the cost – preferably ahead of time. You can’t just neglect to put the cost of the wars into the budget as if the money to pay the bills will magically appear. There should also be some arrangement for Iraq to pay us back for the cost to free them from Saddam’s tyranny and rebuild the country. Free oil?

Please don’t misunderstand me – I’m not completely against the Iraq war, and I don’t mean to demean what our soldiers in Iraq are doing. They are heroes. But our leadership, especially Bush, dropped the ball.

#3 – The Patriot Act

The great and wise Benjamin Franklin said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” I believe the Patriot Act makes this poor trade. We all remember reading George Orwell’s 1984 in high school. Do we want to allow our government to become Big Brother?

Because governments are run by corrupt humans, they need oversight and accountability. Government shouldn’t be allowed to spy on its people, or detain citizens without due process, or violate their privacy in a plethora of other ways.

This isn’t a simple subject. You can’t naively expect that terrorists will play by the rules, so governments need the tools to find and stop them. But without accountability, what’s to stop those same tools from being turned against you or me if we step over the line?

In conclusion, these three issues weren’t simple mistakes during Bush’s eight years in office. I believe these three areas will cause problems for years unless they are deliberately reversed.

Which of these issues do you believe is the most damaging? Or am I completely off base? Was George Bush a good president, or did his administration cause lasting harm to America?

Btw, do me a favor and recommend this if you think it’s worthwhile. Thanks!