The University of Vermont's Independent Voice Since 1883

The Vermont Cynic

The University of Vermont's Independent Voice Since 1883

The Vermont Cynic

The University of Vermont's Independent Voice Since 1883

The Vermont Cynic

Bush’s hard lesson in reality

Have you seen the video? On March 30, President George W. Bush threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Washington Nationals’ home opener. Instead of being showering of applause, the president was met with loud, angry booing.In some ways it was painful. Very few of us really enjoy seeing another person humiliated – even when it might be deserved.There may be a sense of justice we find in a villain getting his or her day, but it is an event that few people, even if they gawk at the spectacle, truly find pleasure in witnessing.There is no doubt that he deserves this treatment, worse even, but the pained expression on his face revealed something we often forget about our president – despite all of his evils, he remains a human being. And this was probably a revelation for Bush as well.For a man whose speeches take place by-and-large before carefully selected audiences, who admittedly don’t read newspapers, and who rarely even acknowledges the realities of the world, this is a hard and sudden break from the environment he has created for himself.This digression comes no harder than in the face of tens of thousands of angry baseball fans.Baseball is America’s past-time right? Shouldn’t a game, in Washington, D.C. no less, be the place where the candidate whom we would “most want to have a beer with” should be welcomed?But this was the moment where that dismal approval rating became something more than a number or an abstract idea.It became a voice that articulated the feeling of this nation towards its leader better than any yet, and it did so in a single word.And that word was “boo!”

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Bush’s hard lesson in reality