Finally, we have someone to put on the food stamp!!!!!!!
Give credit where credit due, that was a pretty good one TOS! And how ironic would it be for a republican president to hold that distinction. But then why should it be a surprise to begin with. Since the FDR/Truman days which many point to for beginning the welfare years which ended in 1952' we've had about 56 years pass in time and of that, 36 years have been under republican Presidents and so often democrats get the
ALL blame for the welfare state. As they like to say on MythBusters, "I guess we can call that myth busted!"
But the subject at hand is Bush so here we go!
Bush's legacy IMO will take years, many decades even to truly merit out in any real measure what it's true success is. Over the last couple of years, tapes of LBJ have come forth and we've learned for example not only from these tapes put they concur McNamara's admission that the Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened. Or what merits out in truth is that the premise for justifying the Vietnam war esculation was a lie. What will Iraq prove over time? The success seen now IMO deosn't mean success over the longhaul and if one looks at the history of this people and of Mesopotamia in general. The history even in the short term spans of time in which we are thinking just doesn't give well to the odds so I'm a contraian to many of the Red State polly anna's we have here. Hey, that region is as capable as any of re-writting history as they say but for now I'll stick to the known track record!
As Presidents and their legacy go, for years, we've believed JFK almost of immortal, godlike status and for the most part did no wrong and more than once have I wondered back to what would be different had JFK had never been shot. Would there have been no Vietnam as some suggest or no further Cold War as others say? But turns out he also taped a lot of his office conversations and they are now coming to light and giving us a better view of the real JFK.
A recent 3 hour "JFK Revealed" on the History Channel more than explodes the myth of the perfect JFK and you see him as not only rather inept but played the office of the President as if he were some Hollywood Star and literally created a make believe world around it to boot. He was also more involved in the coup in Vietnam than it was first understood and how ironic that President Diem is assassinated and then 20 days later so is JFK. I guess a good lesson in positive karma is in this footnote of history. I also found it interesting that the JFK Revealed program posed the question of JFK living and his 2nd term looking back was probably pretty sure. However, the program also believed the sex scandals would have surfaced in the 2nd term and unlike Clinton, JFK would have been removed form office. Also his ill health may also have taken his life before his 2nd term was done as the program exposed the charade created by his handliers to portray him in a way 180 degrees from true reality.
What will we learn decades from now when private office conversations of the Bush years start making it into the mainstream. Being Bush and I share in common the nearly same generational years, I don't know if I will be around to see and hear it (hope I am) but what will we learn then? The track record so far with previous Presidents doesn't build up a warm and fuzzy feeling, I'll tell you that.
As I look back over the last 40 plus years if not longer, Woodrow Wilson was a huge influence on American Presidents and both domestic and foreign policy. Right, Wrong or somewhere in the middle, Bush had the events of 9/11 that made/gave or whatever the need/reason to act and I'll give him credit where credit is due, he made a choice and stuck to it no matter what. The vast majority of politicians these days would make a choice with one hand while holding a finger in the wind from the other and the moment the winds changed, they'd pop the umbrella faster than Mary Poppins and shift policy completely. I think this more than anything else pissed the political establishment off because they do like their umbrellas and Bush said we collectively made a political choice via the political process and now we will see it through. The political establishment made the choice of regime change with the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998' and before the first of the first responders hit the smoldering piles of what were the twin towers, Iraq was already front and center. Here was an opportunity to allow gov't to complete a piece of legislation they had passed some 3 years before. This was a paradigm shift from the umbrella business as usual crowd. Even though I disagree on so many levels with Bush on his policies, (democrats to for that matter)I tip my hat as the man had balls to stick to his decisions, right or wrong and see them through and in many ways make the gov't live with the very beast they themselves had in their own hasty and political mischief created.
Have you Red Staters dared ask some of our Blue State friends here why we've heard not a peep about amending of abolishing the infamous Patriot Act? Or what about FISA? Where's the just indignation and from the very crowd who railed on it for years now that they hold the keys to power? Those democrats voted these kinds of draconian policies in and when the winds changed, out came the umbrellas and the howls if indignation with it even though many voted for it. But now that we have a new weatherman and they can control where the winds come from.....
listen....hear it.......yeah it's a mouse fart!
But as I mention Wilson, I do think the present day in many respects should be judged using the eyeglasses of the past and I'm speaking of the Wilson years and specifically around WW1 or The Great War. This war in itself laid seedbed to Nazism, communism, WW2, the Cold War, the conflicts in Indo-China and of course the Middle East as we know it today. But also I think more than that, it also laid the seedbed of much of domestic policy and gov't action we also see today. It's in this thinking that I refer those who choose to consider another POV concerning the Wilson era as well as considering longterm questions post Bush with this piece linked below that discusses that very thing.
Enjoy!
http://mises.org/story/3292
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