Bush’s Final Convention Speech Could Have Been A Triumph For Texas…But, Alas…

The final address of an incumbent president to his party’s national convention is supposed to be a moment of triumph–for the president and, indeed, for his home state.

For President George W. Bush and the state of Texas, however, his final GOP convention speech as a candidate or President was more of an anti-climax than a triumph–and that’s not just because it was televised from the White House instead of delivered in person as a result of the weather crisis on the Gulf Coast.

Even if Bush had given a full-blown speech touting his record while in office, it would have been an anti-climax. And, for Texas, it would have simply shown the spotlight on the fact that we actually elected Bush twice as our state’s chief executive.

What, pray tell, could he have cited as an accomplishment that made America better? “No Child Left Behind?” Appointing neo-cons to the U.S. Supreme Court? The economy? Even mentioning the “War on Terror” isn’t much of an accomplishment given the fact that Osama bin Laden is still out there–somewhere, we presume–and we’re mired in a quagmire in Iraq.

But, it could have been different. A lot different.

Regardless of the president’s party affiliation, when the president is from your state, you should be able to have at least some level of pride in the job he’s done while in office. On the night when he gives his final convention speech, you should be thinking about his place in the storied political history of your state. That is, of course, if the president from your state does at least a moderately decent job of not sending the nation to hell in a proverbial handbasket.

In this case, Texans can exhibit no such pride.

And, I suppose, we should be a little pissed because of that. We should be pissed at George W. Bush because he pissed away an eight-year presidency catering to America’s shrinking right wing and pissed at ourselves because we enabled him to climb the political ladder to the presidency. After all, we elected him not once but twice over more qualified candidates to be governor of Texas.

We should be pissed at Bush because the terrible, awful, no-good job he did as President didn’t put Texas in the spotlight in a good way. It made people across the country wonder exactly what kind backward-ass morons Texas voters were to put a man like Bush in charge of our state. In short, people really do wonder: Is a village in Texas missing its idiot?

Sure, Bush really vamped up the economy in Crawford with his robust brush-clearing vacations that helped sell tee-shirts and shot glasses. But how much of America looks at Texas voters, in retrospect, and wonders how dumb we really are?

Tonight should have been a good night for Texas politicos of all parties. We should have been proud that our political system produced a president that, at minimum, didn’t ruin the country. We don’t even have that. We don’t have to worry about the place Bush will take in the history of Texas politicos, because we know: somewhere between James Webb Throckmorton and James “Pa” Ferguson.

Anyone who follows Texas politics–even as a partisan–and takes some small amount of pride in the storied political history of Texas and the men and women who, over more than 150 years, have cast larger-than-life shadows over the American political landscape can, sadly, take no pride in Bush’s presidency.