ANTI-BUSH PROTESTERS MISSED BOAT.

Byline: Steve Young

I did not vote for George Bush ... any of them. I am a Democrat. Worse. I'm a liberal. Card-carrying variety. I actually think the ACLU does some good.

Still, I don't think Bush stole the election. Karl Rove won it fair and square. Politics is fair and square - you know, like the news is fair and balanced.

The rules of political engagement, such as they are, are constructed to be partisan. Inherent in any conventional campaign is injustice. Misleads leading to victory. Deception offered sincerely. Welcome to the jabberwocky world of our grand constitutional selection process.

But that doesn't mean George W. Bush is a bad guy. Certainly not evil. I just think he demonstrates the worst presidential judgment since William Henry Harrison chose not to wear an overcoat. And that thing where Bush brought us into a war that's resulted in over 100,000 dead, including more than 1,400 of our young men and women (and counting) was ... um ... not good. Even a poll this week revealed that only 39 percent of the electorate who less than a few months ago overwhelmingly decided Bush should get another shot now thinks this war is worth it.

With all that, he was still elected by a majority of voters, though I realize his margin was a scant 3 million plus. Done. Finito. Can't go back and change it. Even if I ever get that time machine I'm working on completed, having to work with the proficiency of the Kerry-Edwards campaign machine, we could lose by even more.

Obviously I was not a happy boy on Nov. 3, but when I heard there were going to be protests on Inauguration Day, locally at Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles, I thought, in the words of George Soros' disciples, Move On ... Please! The ``please'' I added myself.

OK, a bumper sticker saying ``It's not my fault, I live in California'' is fine. Involving oneself in intelligent debate about how to go forward can be constructive. Even unintelligent debate can be cathartic - if you have a radio. But spending time to protest an election of the guy who will be the leader or your country for the next four years makes no sense.

Crying over spilled milk never made Jack a good boy, and it certainly never reversed an election. Not in a republic with a banana.

I know, I've tried it. On November 3rd I planned to traipse up and down Chatsworth's Valley Circle Road, the Lake Manor portion, carrying a sign reading, ``We Wuz Robbed!'' I didn't think we were really robbed; I just could only fit three words on the sign. My wife said if I walked out the door with that sign I would not be allowed back in the house. Being disheartened by my country's choice of a president I did not fancy as that important, but my wife permitting me to continue living with her and the kids at least for the next four years is just plain practical.

For the almost four years, a campaign was run for and against presidential candidates. Everything was said. If you didn't get a chance to say what you had to say during those years prior to this past election day, shame on you. That in itself would be near criminal disregard for your candidate. If you still need to vent, do it to your therapist. Do it with your mate (not mine, yours). But wasting time and clogging thoroughfares to blather on about something that should have been blathered months ago is a waste of time. Time that could be spent doing and blathering about what can be done now and in the future. Not the past.

In my book, ``Great Failures of the Extremely Successful,'' I offered a myriad of stories on how so many discovered so much from their failures and mistakes. They didn't and couldn't change what they had failed at. That is in stone. They didn't choose to dwell on the past but to learn from it. But what they did was use the information and experience of their failures to make a different and favorable future. A different and more favorable outcome.

If I haven't made it clear, let it be known now that I believe the protest of the inauguration of a legally elected president does nothing.

Besides, he's got God on his side.

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Photo:

In Berkeley, a group of demonstrators takes a stand against President Bush on the second-termer's Inauguration Day.

Nick Lammers/The Oakland Tribune