Dear Mr. Bush,

As our elected President, you were a reflection of ourselves.

Some say that you weren't duly elected, that the Presidency was stolen, that "he isn't MY President." Not true. If we had cared enough, if we had wanted to enough, we would have stolen it back. We would have stopped it. An apathetic populace begot an apathetic President.

The things that anger us so much about you - obedience to Big Corporate, willful ignorance, ineptitude, mediocrity, a blind disregard for observable reality, lazy passivity to corrupt rotting religious dogma, a willingness to be used by those with an evil agenda - are all things that we see in ourselves and hate.

For whatever reason, instead of finding a leader to inspire us, we looked for a buddy we'd like to have a beer with - and found you. So why were we so surprised how we ended up?

For the last four years, since the last election, I've felt awful about my country, about my government, and about myself. With every new piece of information that came out about your administration - the torture, the cover-ups, the corruption, the hypocrisy, the unnecessary war, the needless suffering, the lies, the death - my depression was deeper.

We shouldn't be surprised about what happened, but you could have surprised everyone. You could have made a decision at some point to step up, to put your cabinet in their place, to tell the truth, to be honorable. But you wouldn't, or couldn't. Maybe you didn't have it in you. Maybe you didn't care enough.

In any case, goodbye.