Good Riddance to Bush's "Ideological Certainties," Says David Sanger
Reporter David Sanger's post-Inauguration front-page "news analysis," "Rejecting Bush Era, Reclaiming Older Values," was of a piece with his previous chiding of Bush's closed-minded foreign policy views, except now he hasPresident Obama joining his critical chorus of Bush's "ideological certainties." 
Barack Obama's Inaugural Address on Tuesday was a stark repudiation of the era of George W. Bush and the ideological certainties that surrounded it, wrapped in his pledge to drive the United States into "a new age" by reclaiming the values of an older one.
Sanger, whojust published a book lamenting the "distraction" of Bush's war in Iraq,interpreting Obama's speech in the lightof his own liberalcriticisms of President Bush.
Mr. Obama's recitation of how much had gone wrong was particularly striking to anyone who had followed Mr. Bush around the country, especially during the re-election campaign of 2004, when he said it was his job "to confront problems, not to pass them on to future presidents and future generations."
Yet Mr. Obama blamed America's economic peril on an era "of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some," and talked of how "the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet." It was an explicit critique of an administration that went to war in the Middle East but rejected the shared sacrifice of conservation, and reluctantly embraced the scientific evidence around global warming.
