Video Doesn't Forget

I watched in stunned silence.

Last night, the President announced he was going to begin to withdraw troops from Iraq to pre-surge levels. The "talking heads" on one of the cable news networks summed up the move by saying that George Bush was "kicking the problem down the road" - to the next President, in an effort to shape his legacy.

Are you kidding me?

Perhaps this might have worked 35 years ago. Not in the digital age.

The problem with trying to shape one's legacy in the digital age.... Video doesn't forget. Digital content doesn't "forget". The internet has seen to that.

Bush 43 has been the most digitally documented President in history. The blogosphere exploded on his watch. The government is run on email. More citizens are weighing in (pro and con) on the internet than ever before.

Individual blog content links to online news articles, which links to MSM (main stream media) digital news content which links to online video sources. All the news shows are being archived in digital form.

Now leaders' legacies will be shaped by email, blogs, DailyKos, VoteVets.org, YouTube, all the major networks, the cable networks MSNBC, CNN, FOX, The Tonight Show, The Daily Show and on and on..... all just a click away...

For this President, these impressions and images can't be muddied with time.

The Iraq War may be a "comma" in America's history. But it will be a well documented one.

Bush's strategy to leave office with head held high, ensconced in the belief that the war is just and "winnable" and that history "will treat him kindly", is completely out of his hands.

Certainly there have already been a large number of books written on his Presidency (pro and con) and there will be more to come, but the digital archives will remain universally available. His legacy, perhaps for the first time, will be left to future observers of massive digital archives, rather than be shaped by kind autobiographers, failing recollections and time.

Like never before, all of our descendants, will have first hand access to mountains of digital forensics with which to interpret a President's legacy.

And all future Presidents would be well served understanding that.