By Michael D’Innocenzo

New beginnings are filled with promise – and, often, with excitement. Who would not relish the opportunity to start anew? Those of us in college – students and faculty alike – are especially fortunate because each new semester offers the chance for a fresh start.

George W. Bush shares some of these prospects with us as he launches his second term. As American citizens we have the responsibility of helping President Bush to do as good a job as he can, and this entails making sure that neither he nor we are prisoners of any transient present – that we learn as much as possible from the perspectives of past experiences.

Surely, Mr. Bush will welcome this active engagement of citizens because he and his new secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, are stressing their commitment to freedom and democracy. Dr. Rice speaks of a need to oppose “centers of tyranny” (is this meant to be a shift from a focus on “terror”?), and she says that the litmus test of freedom is the ability to speak one’s mind freely in the village square.

These are truly worthy objectives. Intelligent, ethical people will surely have honest, legitimate debates about public policy proposals by the Bush/Rice team (as they would about a Democratic administration). Our civic responsibility is to bear witness to practices initiated in our name by our government. This is particularly important now because the United States is regularly described as a “power more than super.” Indeed, prior to the Nov. 2 election, the French paper, Le Monde editorialized that all the people of the world should be able to vote in the American presidential election because all of their lives would be profoundly affected by the results.

As a matter of personal disclosure, I did not vote for George W. Bush in 2004 (I did not vote for Gore in 2000). I offer here a very few of my concerns about Mr. Bush’s past conduct (others can give their own items). I do this because I fear for our nation and for the world if President Bush continues his audacious, but arrogant, conduct. Unlike several people I know, who believe that Bush is incapable of changing, it is my view that all politicians – even the most partisan ideologues – will respond to sustained, informed public judgment.

One of our major problems is that the public has often been misinformed and ill-informed. Too many Americans suffer from ADDD (Attention Data Deficit Disorder). It’s not all their fault because politicians often spin and distort reality (see the book, “All the President’s Spin”) and the media frequently fails to provide reliable knowledge. How else are we to account for the official apologies from the New York Times and the Washington Post for failing to investigate adequately the Bush administration reasons for going to war with Iraq, for essentially serving as “stenographers” for the war hawks in the administration (people like Douglas Feith, who recently resigned). James Fallows’ “Breaking the News: How The Media Undermines Democracy” gives a larger perspective of how “buckrakers” are now trumping “Muckrakers.”

A few perspectives on my concerns for Bush new beginnings:

1.) Why was Mr. Bush so wrong about Iraq posing an urgent threat to us with weapons of mass destruction when nearly all the rest of the world believed (as Bush’s own Duelfer commission eventually concluded) that Saddam (tyrant, that he was) was “a declining, not a mounting danger?”

2.) Were other leaders wiser than Bush in urging that there were alternative ways of keeping Saddam “in a box” and fostering regime change (instead of promoting a war that so far has taken more than 1,400 American lives, thousands more brutally wounded, and uncounted Iraqi civilian deaths)?

3.) Why did the many Bush supporters believe that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks and in aiding Al Qaeda when the 9/11 Commission, whose establishment Bush opposed and whose work he obstructed, found no such evidence?

4.) Why did Vice-President Cheney say that Saddam was already reconstituting nuclear weapons? Sy Hersh is writing about Bush plans to use military force against Iran’s nuclear danger (will Yogi Berra see this as “déjà vu, all over again?”) What about Cheney and Wolfowitz’s comments that Iraqis would welcome Americans as liberators and that the war would not cost Americans anything because it would be covered by Iraqi oil sales, when it turns out that the total cost of the initial combat and this “war after the war” – since Bush proclaimed the “end of major combat” – now approaches the entire cost of the Vietnam War (in 2005 dollars)? Even more grievously, why have American deaths increased ten-fold since the president declared victory?

5.) If Bush and Cheney and Rice have been wrong on so many things, on what basis can we continue to have confidence in their leadership for a new beginning? Evan Bayh, about as conservative a Democrat as one can find, voted against Rice’s confirmation as Secretary of State because he said that “mistakes in judgment do not warrant a promotion.”

The challenges President Bush faces are enormous. Journalist Thomas Friedman, who has just returned from a few weeks in Europe, wrote: “Mr. Bush is more widely and deeply disliked in Europe than any U.S. President in history.” Tony Blair has been calling on Mr. Bush to reach out constructively to other nations, and Richard Haas, who has worked in Republican administrations, speaks optimistically of his forthcoming book, “The Opportunity” (to change the world). However, he emphasizes that Bush will need to change in fundamental ways if we are to seize new chances to advance democracy and liberty. A vigilant and active citizenry can help to insure that our nation’s best values are fostered at home and abroad.

* Michael D’Innocenzo is a professor of American history in the history department.