As the Bush regime winds down, I am prone to serious mood swings. One minute I’m euphoric just thinking about Barack Obama putting his hand on Lincoln’s Bible, and the next I’m petrified of the minefields that have been laid in his path. One minute I’m listening with utter incredulity to George W. Bush list his “disappointments” about his time in office (no weapons of mass destruction after all) and the next I’m wondering if the karma created in the last eight years is going to sock it to us and our new leader.

Follow up:

Maybe I should have planned to go to the Inauguration. Then I’d be worrying about transportation logistics and having enough warm clothes and a ball gown and if I’d get to see the new President and First Lady for a fleeting second instead of watching Bush Photoshop history at my leisure.

“Feckless to the end” is how the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg described Bush’s interview with Charles Gibson in which he GWB shrugged off the economic crisis as having been set in motion on Wall Street before his presidency. Monday, in that self-pitying, sarcastic tone of his, he made a mock apology for having abandoned his free market principles when warned the country was about to plunge into a depression as great as that of the nineteen thirties. It’s not the principles that were wrong, you know, it was that bad, nameless former President (Bill Clinton, of course, but not named since everyone in the Old Presidents’ Club is putting on a good face these days.)

And GWB brushed aside the prison atrocities of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib as mere offenses to the delicate sensibilities of Europeans. After all, the terrorists have not attacked “the homeland” again and if they do, no one is going to remember the treatment of a few prisoners, he blithely noted. Is this his idea of being redeemed by history? That’s the kind of fear-mongering that led to the abuse of power in the first place.

Then the president bragged about not signing on to the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Accords.

Desperate as he is to save face, Bush neglected to mention what I think we may come to regard as the pinnacle of his judgment. Just a few days ago, on January 10, David Sanger reported in the New York Times that when Israel asked the U.S. to fund a bunch of bunker bombs it wanted to drop in Iran to destroy that nation’s nuclear weapon program, the Bush Administration said no. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/washington/11iran.html?scp=1&sq=bush%20iran%20bomb&st=cse

It’s odd how these potentialities bubble from the news into the subconscious. For weeks, I feared waking to hear that Israel or the U.S. had bombed Iran. It was much in the air, but it didn’t happen. And now we know why: the U.S. was undertaking covert actions —Bush assured the Israelis—to subvert Iran’s nuclear plans.

As Sanger notes, “Early in his presidency, Mr. Obama must decide whether the covert actions begun by Mr. Bush are worth the risks of disrupting what he has pledged will be a more active diplomatic effort to engage with Iran.”

The larger minefield, of course, is Israel and how to broker a solution that will put an end to the festering turmoil inside and around it. Israel clearly timed its attacks on the Gaza to start while Bush is still in office, but Obama’s first reaction—that he’d fight back if someone was lobbing missiles at his young daughters—hardly signaled that he disapproved. This morning, January 14, brings news that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have signed off on an agreement with Egypt to cut off weapons to Hamas whose rockets prompted Israel to attack the Gaza. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/world/middleeast/17mideast.html?_r=1&hp It also appears likely that the Israeli cabinet will agreed to a temporary ceasefire in the three-week conflict. It is too late to cut and paste Bush and Rice into some historical attempts at dealing with the situation, but it is promising that they informed Obama and and secretary of state-designate Hillary Clinton of these measures and they approve, since it will be their job to make sure temporary measure lead to something more permanent.

At her hearing last week before the Senate foreign relations committee, which is set to confirm her, Senator Clinton stressed that “all options are on the table” when it comes to preventing Iran’s becoming a nuclear power. Like the president-elect, she emphasized the much neglected power of diplomacy. The Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim claims that Clinton signaled a new attitude toward Israel when she spoke of the high cost of Palestinian and Israeli suffering. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/13/clinton-sympathizes-with_n_157487.html

At least, she stopped short of following her fellow New Yorkers Senator Chuck Schumer, Governor David Paterson, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg in calling the attacks totally justified.

Obama and Clinton surely know that the hands-off policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian situation that the Bush Administration practiced until recently is not going to cut it if we want the violence—both military and economic—to end. And I’m wondering if one reason that Clinton took the job at State was the opportunity to do something about it. If she and Obama can broker some sort of peace and stability, she could be looking at a consolation prize like the one Al Gore took home.

At Clinton’s hearing, there was no mention of Osama bin Laden’s latest recorded message urging jihad against Israel for its attacks on the Gaza, but it reminds us of his persistent menace. I have no doubt that Hillary’s husband wishes he had a do-over of his opportunity to kill bin Laden, but Bush offered no hint of remorse that he has somehow let bin Laden live. Indeed, the world’s “evil doers” have served Bush well, providing a rationale for his swelling the power of the executive and at the same time diminishing our civil rights.

Next week we turn a page in foreign affairs, and its challenge for Obama— as with the economy and the environment—is fraught with peril and opportunity. Will he follow through on his campaign promise to pursue the terrorists into Afghanistan? What will he do about the covert operations underway against Iran? About Israel and the all too overt ones in the Gaza? About the U.S. in Iraq?

George W. Bush may walk away from his disasters like Mr. Magoo, but if we’re to survive those disasters, Obama will have to be more than simply not-Bush. Let's celebrate that he has the audacity to try.