W: Crusader for Democracy and Liberty?

So, I didn't listen to the inauguration speech. It was already a weird day...overcast, looked like snow...prediction for big snow storm...and couldn't shake the feeling that I'd slipped into an alternative dimension, one in which slightly more than half of the American electorate had gone mad...

So I didn't listen.

Then I started hearing clips from the speech. At first I was enraged, taking it all for BS. After in essence stealing the election of 2000, how could this man have the audacity to stand up and proclaim a committment to spreading democracy around the world? Why was Carter vilified by the right for talking that talk, while W was--yet again--deified? (Conservatives have had a tendency, over the last 20 years, to deify their point man at the drop of a hat.)

Boy, was I ever pissed.

Then I started thinking: maybe I was wrong about this guy. Maybe he really did mean it. Maybe he'd seen the error of his ways. Sure, the war in Iraq was not undertaken for humanitarian reasons. Sure he started talking like an idealist in order to distract us after the WMD justification was exposed as a dud. Sure he seems like a rat fink...but shouldn't I be supporting any president who has the goal of actively promoting democracy around the world?

No, I decided, this guy and his cronies (a) don't have the right sentiments and (b) can't be trusted and (c) are incompetent anyway, so they tend to (d) cause more harm than good.

But still...a president committed--whatever the reason--to promoting democracy and fighting tyranny... God, it's almost impossible for me to resist... Was I just locked into a partisan anti-Bush mindset?

I tormented myself about these questions all weekend.

Turns out I needn't have bothered.