Proud home of President George W. Bush

"Welcome to Texas, proud home of President George W. Bush." I saw this on a sign crossing the Texas-New Mexico border this afternoon. Given Bush's current approval ratings, I don't know how proud we Texans are of the fact that Bush calls our state home. But for better or for worse, Bush did get his political start here.

I vaguely remember the heated election for governor between Bush and incumbent Ann Richards in 1994. I was only 12 at the time, but I remember thinking it was unfair that this guy could just come out of nowhere and just because he's a Bush get a chance to run for governor. And yet people liked him. He had charm, and his common-sense conservative (some would say simplistic) ideas for reforming government had their appeal. He ran on a platform of uniting Democrats and Republicans in the state legislature and on the idea of compassionate conservatism. Somehow he managed to defeat Richards.

I had a grudging respect for Bush as governor even though I was definitely not a conservative in my teen years (or now). He was a popular governor who got high marks from the media for his bipartisan approach to leadership. He visited El Paso several times during his term, and since El Paso has a history of being ignored by the leadership in Austin, it was a big deal that the governor and first lady made it a point to visit. Bush was re-elected in a landslide in 1998. To give you an idea of how popular he was, Bush nearly won El Paso County, almost unthinkable in this traditionally Democratic county.

In 1999, my dad took me and my sister to see Bush give a commencement speech at UTEP. There was a lot of speculation that he would run for president, so my dad saw this as an opportunity to hear our possible future president. The speech was in a bowl stadium so it was pretty distant view, but you could make out his smallish head, which looked even smaller in contrast to the baggy black gown he was wearing. Unfortunately, I don't remember much of the speech. The parts I do remember were funny and light, with a couple of good-natured references to the Cardiac Hill that UTEP students sometimes have to climb to get to class. It wasn't exactly a life-changing speech, but I went away from the speech with a positive impression of Gov. Bush.

And then, Bush won the presidency, and it's amazing how my view of him changed. Obviously, there's a world of difference between being governor and being president. But to me it was like Bush morphed into a whole different person. In 1999, Bush was a charming, conservative nice-guy governor that I had some respect for. In 2006, he's an inept, dim-witted politician that I have very little respect for. Where did my negative impression come from? Well, I'm a liberal and Bush is a conservative, so there are obvious political disagreements, and I can't even comprehend the mishandlings of war in Iraq or the response to Hurricane Katrina. And, of course, I've been exposed to the stream of constant criticism of the President in the media (most of it merited, I would say)- movies like Fahrenheit 9/11, the caricatures on late night TV, the articles about Bush being the worst president ever. I think all of that has shaped my impression of the President into something very negative, and apparently I'm not the only one who sees things that way.

But even aside from all the political disagreements, I have to wonder, where's the charisma that got him elected in the first place? It's strange how someone who was so popular as governor, even among a lot of Democrats in El Paso, now has some of the worst popularity ratings of any president. Where's the man with enough charisma to unite Democrats and Republicans to get things done? Where's the guy with straightforward, common-sense ideas that people can support? In short, what happened to the charm factor? Even that is missing with this President right now, which is sad. We've lost confidence in our leadership, and that's a bad place to be.

So those are my recollections of President Bush, coming from Texas, the proud home of the President. Frankly, I think Bush made a much better governor than president. If only he had stayed on as governor instead of running for president, maybe things would be different today.