Bush's Legacy
Steve Clemons of The Washington Note writes a long article about Bush's desire for a legacy and the false analogy that Bush uses to compare Iraq to Japan after World War II:
We are past the era when issues can be massaged with public relations gestures from the Bush White House.
George W. Bush turns out to be a bold president, willing to take huge risks and make tough judgment calls -- but by most accounts, he is not an intelligent man and made decisions on gut more than serious analysis. This makes him the worst kind of president -- a kind of anti-FDR.I've been browsing the main blogs today and there seems to be a sense that 2006 will be a critical year and not just because of the midterm elections. There seems to be a shifting ground, though I couldn't even begin to predict where things will lead. But one thing clearly needs to happen: if our government is to make any sense as a functioning, rational institution, if it is to deal effectively with major issues at some minimal level, and there are a growing number of issues that need to be dealt with, it is time to hold Bush accountable on a broad range of issues. Part of that accountability is pressuring Bush to get rid of the cronies and ideological deadweights that are incapable of dealing realistically with these times.
As former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson recently stated, the framers of the National Security Act after World War II feared a future strong, dumb president -- and felt that much needed to be done to protect the country from someone like a George W. Bush.
We are past the era when issues can be massaged with public relations gestures from the Bush White House.
posted by Craig at 1:08 AM
1 Comments:
What's going to be interesting is the extent to which Bush's handlers continue to reposition him. He can't move too far from his brand image: strong, contemptuous of weakness, unwilling to compromise or rethink previous decision. I would think, based on past experience, that leading up to the mid-term elections we'll have a revival of the usual wedge issues leading up to the mid-term elections: gay marriage, abortion, etc., to distract swing voters and fire up the party's true believers.
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