The final indignity of the Bush Administration occurred last night. Whether it was intentional, accidental, or pre-ordained by the whims of the calendar, Bush gave his farewell speech to the nation on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Most people are focused on the fact that Obama will be inaugurated the day after the MLK Day holiday, but his actual birthdate was January 15th (yesterday), and that was when Bush dropped his final steaming pile upon the American populace.

The jarring juxtaposition of Bush's self-congratulatory puffery and the realities of the civil rights movement was revealed when our local PBA station broadcast a one hour retrospective narrated by my Representative in the U.S. House: John Lewis. He described the growth of the civil rights movement from his personal viewpoint as a young leader, his steady calm voice floating beneath the disturbing images and video from the past.

Amongst all the blather in Bush's speech was this particularly infuriating gem:

One would hope that we as the electorate of this country would assume that a person seeking the highest office in the land would be "willing to make the tough decisions". One would assume that the person seeking the highest office would know in advance that they would have to make tough decisions - it's part of the job description. Are we to voice our appreciation for his meeting a base requirement?

When I think of tough decisions, I think of the decisions of those young black men and women in the 60's who chose non-violent civil disobedience in an effort to gain equality. They sat at lunch counters and got in line to vote knowing they would be arrested or berated or beaten (or all of the above). They marched and protested knowing the KKK was armed and ready to put them back in "their place".

The video that most struck me was the use of dogs and firehoses against children who were protesting. It occurred to me that the use of dogs which is generally understood to be a violation of the Geneva Conventions was accepted by the (white) people of Alabama. It's also interesting that the Pentagon had to ban their use on prisoners in 2005. What are we to make of a presidential administration that uses the same banned techniques on prisoners of war that were used against black citizens in the 60's? Was this a tough decision Bush made?... or was this a decision that someone else had to make?

Two generations have passed since the heyday of the civil rights era. The healing is slow but steady, and with each subsequent generation, the poison seems to become ever more diluted. In those 40-some years, we have gone from "whites only" to a mixed-race president poised to move into the White House, fairly elected by a majority of Americans.

Despite his best efforts and his careful reading of his last best hope for anything reflectively positive, Bush will fade into the annals of history as a pathetic failure of a president, appointed to an office for which he wasn't prepared, and not even meeting the lowest of expectations. His final insult to the Americans who endured the inhumane treatment (later repeated on POWs under Bush's watch) was his speech on the birthday of one of America's greatest human rights leaders.

We can only hope that it is representative of the final dying gasp of a mindset that MLK strove to eliminate all those years ago, and which Barack Obama has shown to be fading. In a few days, a man will be sworn into office who HAS been judged by the content of his character, as another man whose character has proven to be non-existent leaves for good.

One more door closed.