At the link is a post via the HillBuzz of George Bush holding a young lady who lost her mother in 9/11.  I realized in his expression in that photo the reason why Americans did not yet have a Tea Party movement during Dubya’s tenure.  Yes, we had red flags, and protests, and people worried about waterboarding, and ‘what the hell were we doing behaving with such arrogance’ under his administration.  But GW wasn’t slapping America across its face.  He wasn’t walking over to yuk it up with a crowd of supporters at a 9/11 ceremony in Pennsylvania to pump a few handshakes after a ceremony meant to honor those who died horribly.  America didn’t need a full-blown tea party to protest a man who believed in holding America close and feeling its pain.  A man who did not honor a nation’s dead by proclaiming, via some ill held creepy ‘decree’, that 9/11 was now ‘Grandparents Day’, instead of 9/11 as a day ‘that will live in infamy’ for most of America.

And yes, Dubya did things that we disagree with:  adding to the debt, last minute bailouts, the Patriot Act, the cowboy diplomacy.  But when he was holding a megaphone on a pile of rubble and bodies, he acted like a real president, filling presidential shoes.  He showed us in his face that he too felt America’s pain.  By reaching out to us with a hug and an expression that said ‘ I understand this is a great tragedy.’  The difference between the shoes that GW filled and what we have parading around now, is that GW is able to give a speech about someone other than himself–able to speak to the country through Lincoln’s Gettysburg address on a wind swept field in Shanksville, PA, where once again ordinary Americans made very real sacrifices for other Americans.

http://hillbuzz.org/2011/09/11/how-i-will-always-remember-george-w-bush/