Should Obama Thank W?

Disclaimer: I voted for Obama yesterday as did nearly everyone in DC, MD and VA.
I think W should be tried and convicted of treason for too many reasons to list here.

BUT...there are at least two important favors that Bush did for Barack. The first, and more readily apparent, is to run this country into the ground, big time.

Four years ago, a "black" (and I won't say African-American here because it is an imprecise term for a man who had an African father and white mother) president was commonly believed to have no shot, even as Al Sharpton and Alan Keyes ran. People assumed a black candidate was an "issues" candidate, and a nice story, but not a credible choice for his party's nominee. Now I'll grant you, Barack Obama is several cuts above Sharpton experience-wise and Alan Keyes is just a self-hating nut job. But in the intervening years Bush really went into high gear destroying America.

Now in 2008, 9 trillion in debt, the Bill of Rights burned to a crisp, and the blood of 4,000 dead American soldiers and 700,000+ dead Iraqis on our hands, people are pissed off. 70%+ of Americans look at Bush's smirking mug and get sick. Americans want a president that is as different as possible. Obama isn't in the pocket of lobbyists and special interests. He's a straight shooter with a consistent anti-war position.

And he's not a white guy. An American who's been trampled on by the rich, white, old boy network represented by the Bush family is ready for someone who isn't a white guy. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, we'll, "roll the dice" with a black guy with a weird last name because we know the white people are going to screw everyone.

The second favor Bush did for Obama was by placing black folks in unprecidented positions of power. How can the Repubs effectively imply that black people aren't ready for "scary terrorism" when the two people in charge of stopping "scary terrorism" for the past eight years were both black? That's right, Powell and Rice have been W's Secretaries of State, his point people for the "war on terror." Bush has spent a lot of time, money and political capital to get Americans to associate black faces and national security. And whether people want to give W credit or not, some of the previously held racist assumptions about a black candidate Bush did his best to dispel.

So does that mean Obama should write W a card for Valentine's Day? Hell no. But that whole strange bedfellows thing is sometimes even stranger than you think.