For the massive television audience on January 20th, 2009, Inauguration Day was a parade of odd and stirring images: from the quivering mass of a million and a half people packed into the mall, to Dick Cheney’s menacing emergence in a wheelchair, to the far-away look in Barack Obama’s eyes as he arrived on the stage. The collage of impressions and associations was weighted, too, with the constantly repeated adage that History was being made, right there, on the TV, where we could see it with our own two eyes, in real time: past and present collapsed into one, transformed into images and televised around the world. The best images from the day were also the most symbolic, and perhaps none more so than George W. Bush’s aerial departure from the scene of celebration.

After Obama had been inaugurated and prayed for, the new president and his wife Michelle escorted the former president and his wife Laura toward a helicopter waiting near the site of the inauguration. Obama, smiling and relaxed, shared a laugh with W. and put his hand on the man’s back, guiding him like a kindly nurse toward his departure and retirement. George and Laura then boarded the helicopter as the new first couple was joined by Joe and Jill Biden. The choppers began turning and soon the machine lifted off of the ground. As it did, the Bidens and the Obamas waved goodbye in unison, like wistful relatives watching their extended family drive away once Thanksgiving is over. The helicopter rose above the Capitol, flew over the crowd and was gone.

So… that’s it? He just flies away and he’s gone, it’s over? This is the same man who once seemed like a permanent and malicious force in American politics; whose presidency felt as though it may never end; whose capacity for destruction reached all throughout the world, reverberating through catastrophes from Gaza to the global financial crisis. And then he simply boards a helicopter and flies away, like the Wizard of Oz in his hot air balloon. Goodbye good people of Oz, goodbye!

Bush’s effects on the world cannot exit the scene as easily as the man himself. But in Obama’s first week in office he has signaled some of the tonal, rhetorical and substantial differences from Bush that most Americans have been craving. And much of the public seems to have internalized the dramatic shift from Bush to Obama. Haven’t you noticed a subtle change in the way your friends and neighbors talk about “America” and “Washington”? Haven’t you observed the emergence of a style of patriotism that is less arrogant, less exclusive, less jingoistic than the “patriotism” of the Patriot Act? Haven’t you sensed that the insidious aura of cynicism and impotent despair inspired by the Bush administration is becoming a little passé? (This very editorial column has repeatedly manifested the spirit of despair by adopting a tone of bitter sarcasm. But, now, such a tone strikes this editor as being rather outdated and behind the times.)

One significant rhetorical shift in the past week has come with Obama’s – and his attorney general nominee Eric Holder’s – unabashed use of the word “torture” to describe such Bush-approved techniques as waterboarding. This change in vocabulary has substantial ramifications: by labeling as “torture” what the former administration called “harsh interrogation techniques” Obama has indicated his personal rejection of such practices, as well as indicating that the Bush administration could very well be held accountable for its violations of human rights (see Under the Radar, page 8).

Obama’s immediate action to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay also exhibits a mixture of symbolic and substantial departures from Bush era practices. Gitmo, far from being an asset in Bush’s “War on Terror,” was in fact a source of shame to America and its allies and was used by Islamist extremists as a prime example of the evil of their enemy and an impetus for jihad. By committing to close the prison, Obama has made a sizeable contribution to human rights and American foreign policy, even if that contribution is partially a matter of image-control, rebranding and symbolism.

In his inaugural address, Obama said that “we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” Bush – who consistently justified his violations of the rule of law and of international agreements by claiming that such violations were necessary to ensure the safety of American citizens – sat only a few feet behind Obama as the new president spoke these words. Bush looked sour and uptight and he couldn’t have helped but notice that his presidency was in the process of being thoroughly maligned and rejected by the new president and the people who elected him.

Perhaps as he flew over Washington he looked down at the peaceful assembly and considered the source of their elation. And perhaps he considered, too, his starring role in the formation of the geo-political and economic conditions we find ourselves with today.

Or perhaps he did not. Does it even matter now? The helicopter took him away. We waved goodbye. He’s gone.