Exorcising Bush's Ghost

Dan Froomkin
WashPost

Simply by being there, President Obama and Vice President Biden created powerful imagery of change at last night's joint session of Congress. There was no Dick Cheney skulking over the president's right shoulder. Gone was the tongue-tied Texan staring blankly into the TelePrompter, replaced by a commanding and self-possessed African-American Democrat. And up there in the first lady's box? A radiant black woman.

But sometimes bygones won't be bygones.

Indeed, absolutely central to Obama's argument last night for his massive economic recovery package and his hugely ambitious plans in the areas of energy, health and education was his conclusion that the previous administration so utterly failed to rise to the challenges facing the nation that we are now facing "a day of reckoning."

(More here.)