Bill Clinton

The average person on the street could not see that Clinton had done any great damage to the economy while he was in office. His surprisingly high approval ratings were not nearly the result of anything he had done; but rather, they were a reflection of the office he occupied.

Americans love the institution of the presidency. We love and pray for them in times of war. We weep for them when they are assassinated. We often rally behind them when they are maligned. What has changed is the fact that we once again have a president who shares our love and respect for the office.

If you saw the recent NBC program, "The Real West Wing," then you learned that the Bush administration treats the presidency with the dignity that it rightfully deserves. In contrast to the previous administration, President Bush insists that his meetings and appearances start ON time. He realizes that he is only a custodian of the White House and that it belongs to the American people. He also reserves that sense of honor for the Oval Office.

Ronald Reagan

When President Reagan (shown, left) was Commander-in-Chief, he would not even enter the Oval Office without wearing his coat. President Bush has restored that sense of dignity. The president and his closest advisors, clad in sweat pants and T-shirts, no longer lounge around the Oval Office, stuffing themselves with pizza. Moreover, we do not have a president engaging in "miss-conduct" with interns just off the Oval Office.

President Bush

All presidents have weaknesses, but not all of them suffer from extreme moral failings or serious deficiencies in character. Everybody knows by now that President Bush (right, in Daytona Beach Wednesday) will occasionally butcher the English language. However, these occasional foibles from an essentially good and decent man have also endeared him to us. They certainly do not reveal a lack of intellect or an inability to lead. We know the man is not perfect, but we are also left with the sense that he is not satisfied with the mediocre.

In his speeches and in his manner of conduct, we realize that this man was also outraged by the attacks of September 11th. We believe he "feels our pain" but he has no need to constantly bring it to our attention. We believe that our president shares our sense of patriotism, our love of country, and a deep and abiding faith in the greatness of the American people.

Americans want to trust, like, and respect their presidents. Despite the circumstance by which he came to office, this president is winning because the public trusts him. They like George W. Bush. They believe him. Moreover, they have come to respect his leadership.

George Herbert Walker Bush

Bush’s father (photo, left) also ran a war and had high approval ratings for its successes. But a stumbling economy was his eventual undoing. However, that is where the similarities end. During the Gulf War, Americans didn’t see thousands of flag draped coffins coming home. They could not sense that the war cost us anything. The terrorists changed the way we looked at our president.

Unlike his father, President Bush will get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the economy. America knows he stood by all of us when the country was under attack. They knew that he too was targeted by the terrorists. And they know that, in his pursuit of justice, he is trying to do the things that we would do.

We don’t expect that our presidents be perfect; but we like them to try. We want them to be human, but we don’t want them to behave like the family uncle that nobody cares to discuss. We want them to be ordinary; but when circumstances warrant it, we expect them to rise to the occasion and to inspire us to do the same. In a sense, President Bush has become like all of us, only better!