Dear Mr. President:

My purpose for writing to you today is not to discuss ideology, or to comment on your presidency, but rather to apologize for my actions during your time in office. I must admit that I’m a liberal who spent a lot of time working against the policies of your administration. While I don’t apologize for my stances on the issues and still feel your tenure in office to be a relative failure, I’m now able to see the manner in which I worked against you was absolutely wrong.  

Mr. President, my opposition to you was so passionate that I would often describe you with such unflattering terms as “”fascist”” and “”evil.”” I joined every online community dedicated to your demise and fraternized with like-minded people who did nothing but profess their hatred of you. I truly believed you only had the interests of big business and wealthy individuals at heart and actively worked to advance their wishes at the expense of the mainstream. Sir, as I’ve grown and learned more about the system, I couldn’t be more ashamed of these views. While your policies were truly pro-business and mainly benefited the wealthy, this was not due to a disdain for the working man, but rather a fundamentally different view on how to stimulate the economy. I actively professed my hatred of you and was completely unfair to your administration.  

The main reason I feel compelled to write this letter to you today is due to the current political climate. I can’t accurately express the anger I feel when I hear our current president described as fascist, communist or socialist; labels that not only contradict each other, but are quite inaccurate. I find your tax cuts, decision to invade Iraq, deregulation of the financial sector (Clinton’s too) and overall philosophy regarding foreign policy to have damaged our country and I would never vote for you in the future if given the chance. Nonetheless, you made these decisions truly believing they were the best for our great nation. I don’t apologize for working for the Democratic Party in opposition to your administration, but the fact that I attached such labels is truly embarrassing.  

Now that you’re out of the Washington fray and living a hopefully quiet and peaceful life, it would be nice to see you speak out against the increasingly bitter anti-Obama movement. I’m not stupid; I’m sure you abhor the policies of the Obama administration as much as they do, but after experiencing the intense opposition that you did, I’m sure you can relate. Why can’t we return to civility? Quite frankly, you aren’t looked upon very favorably by almost everybody, yet a statement condemning the vicious, baseless diatribes of people such as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity would send a powerful message. As president, you relied on these people to rally your base, but now that you’re out of office I hope you see them as counterproductive to the advancement of our society.

Having a political debate is very healthy to the system, but not when it only involves name-calling. Mr. President, I whole-heartedly apologize for demonizing you over the past eight years and wish I could have been more civil. Please do one thing for the American people: speak out against the damaging and offensive rhetoric toward President Obama. Thank you for your time and I hope the rest of your days are peaceful and full of rest.

— Andrew Shepherd is a political science senior. He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.