Tuesday’s presidential election promises a bright new day for America after eight long years of the Bush Administration, although the New York Times had an ominous editorial this week about the civil liberties infringements and environmental damage it fears in the next 100 days before Barack Obama actually takes office.

Many political commentators thought that much of the popular vote for Obama was, in fact, a vote against President Bush. I suspect that’s true — Bush has done enormous damage to this country. I was intrigued to see an analysis by The Times of London ranking U.S. presidents. Bush came in 38th or 39th in a dead heat with Richard Milhouse Nixon, just behind Herbert Hoover whose administration was sandbagged by the great depression. Last on the list was James Buchanan, under whose lack of leadership the nation plunged into the Civil War. Leading the list was the man who inherited that mess, Abraham Lincoln.

So following a failure, Obama also has a good chance to succeed. I hope he can find a dignified way to quickly back out of the Iraqi-Afghan conflict, which has nearly bankrupted this nation, and bring our troops safely home. In addition to saving lives, that will cut a lot of our excess spending — a billion dollars a day, do I remember reading? But Obama’s hands will still be tied because Bush has run the national debt up to $10 trillion — one dollar of four that the government spends on discretionary budget items now goes to pay interest on all the money we’ve borrowed. By taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government may have taken on another $6 trillion in bad debt. And the Treasury Department is just beginning to take on another massive amount of debt to pay for the bailout of the nation’s financial institutions. (How can they call the Bushes and Ronald Reagan conservatives? They didn’t conserve a damn thing.)

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) has written to Obama to congratulate him on his victory, but also to ask him to convene an urgent presidential summit of leading veterans, to advance-fund VA health care, to implement GI Bill transferability, and to issue a national call for mental health professionals to help care for vets coming back from combat with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries.

Right on! Our new president should consider health care for veterans as part of the national debt. We owe that to them for what we’ve asked them to go through, and we can no more default on that debt than we can on any other.