Three Numbers Define the Presidency of George W. Bush

"Bush Issues Order Preventing Strike by Airline Union"

"Bush, in Reversal, Won't Seek Cut In Emissions of Carbon Dioxide"

"Bush and Health Care Companies Promise Medicare Drug Discounts"

Don’t these headlines bring back memories? I mean, I can remember exactly where I was when President George W. Bush and then Russian President Vladimir Putin held that famous and eye-riveting news conference in Genoa, Italy for the G-8 Summit, standing side-by-side talking about the Kyoto Protocol and finding “common ground”

Yes, I remember those moments as if they were yesterday….

SAY WHAT! EXCUSE ME? …In the words of former college coach and television football analyst Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend!”

WHY DON’T WE REMEMBER? Are you kidding? WHY?

You know why. Everyone age 7 and older that day knows why. It’s the same reason an earlier generation has and always will remember DECEMBER 7, 1941 …for the rest of their lives. We know why.

Remember when the numbers 9/11 only stood for an emergency phone number; when “ground zero” only meant the exact locations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki where the two atomic bombs detonated; when only those in the Pentagon knew what “homeland security” meant; when folks could say goodbye to someone taking a airline flight AT THE GATE WINDOW?

September 11, 2001 changed everything, everyone, and everywhere. The world changed and so did America, along with a United States President in just his ninth month in office. That fateful day just after 9 am, the Presidency of George Bush missed the exit going to “the usual” and go on the expressway to “Oh my God!” One morning President Bush is reading a children’s book to second-graders in a Florida classroom and by the evening the President is addressing a stunned nation …in morning, fear, anger, and disbelief.

Like Lincoln with Fort Sumter, Wilson’s second term with the Zimmermann Telegram, FDR with Pearl Harbor, and LBJ to a certain degree with the Gulf of Tonkin, September 11th rerouted “the best laid plans” of President George Bush. Like presidents before him, America will never know how Bush’s presidency would have gone without 9/11. Hypothetically, if we could put any US President in history (Washington, Jefferson, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton) in Bush’s place that day, how would their presidency have gone in the following years?

The following January at a press conference in Ontario, California, President Bush referred those 12 hours of history as “an interesting day.” It certainly was…and a bag of chips.