Thomas Friedman: "George Bush's Third Term"
Charles Dickens
"If President Bush doesn't rise to this challenge, our children and
grandchildren will look at the burden he has placed on their shoulders
and see THIS MOMENT as the hinge between the American Century and the
Chinese Century. George W. Bush may well be seen as the president who,
by refusing to address these urgent questions when they needed to be
addressed, invited America's decline."
http://select.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/opinion/23friedman.html?pagewanted=print
George Bush's Third Term
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
President George W. Bush has just entered his third term. That's right.
He's a three-term president. His first term was from 2001 to 2004, and
it was dominated by 9/11, which Mr. Bush skillfully used to take a
hard-right Republican agenda on taxes and war with Iraq, which was
going nowhere on 9/10, and drive it into a 9/12 world.
His second term was very brief. It lasted from his re-election in
November 2004 until Election Day 2005. This was an utterly wasted term.
It was dominated by an attempt to privatize Social Security, which the
country rejected, political scandals involving I. Lewis Libby Jr., Tom
DeLay and Bill Frist, a ham-fisted response to Katrina and a
mishandling of the Iraq war to such a degree that many Democrats and
Republicans have begun to vote "no confidence" in the Bush-Cheney war
performance. If ours were a parliamentary system, Mr. Bush would have
had to resign by now.
So now begins Mr. Bush's third term. What will he do with it? The last
time Mr. Bush hit rock bottom - then from too much drinking - he found
God and turned his life around. Now that he has hit rock bottom again -
this time from drinking in too much Karl Rove - the question is whether
he can find America and turn his presidency around.
When I watch Mr. Bush these days, though, he looks to me like a man who
wishes that we had a 28th amendment to the Constitution - called "Can I
Go Now?" He looks like someone who would prefer to pack up and go back
to his Texas ranch. It's not just that he doesn't seem to be having any
fun. It's that he seems to be totally out of ideas relevant to the
nation's future.
Since there is no such clause, Mr. Bush has two choices. One is to
continue governing as though he's still running against John McCain in
South Carolina. That means pushing a hard-right strategy based on
dividing the country to get the 50.1 percent he needs to push through
more tax cuts, while ignoring our real problems: the deficit, health
care, energy, climate change and Iraq. More slash-and-burn politics
like that will be a disaster.
Indeed, at a time when a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible and
we are at the most important political moment in Baghdad - the first
national election based on an Iraqi-written constitution - it was
appalling to watch Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney using their bully pulpits
to act like two Rove attack dogs, accusing Democrats of being less than
patriotic on Iraq.
For two men who have fought this war without deploying enough troops,
always putting politics before policy, without any plans for the
morning after and never punishing any member of their team for rank
incompetence to then accuse others of lacking seriousness on Iraq is
disgusting. Yes, we need to stay the course for now in Iraq, but we
can't stay the course alone or divided. That's the point.
We are about to produce the most legitimate government ever in the Arab
world, and the Bush-Cheney team - instead of acknowledging its errors
on W.M.D., seeking forgiveness and urging the country to unite behind
the important effort to defeat the jihadist madness in Iraq - does
what? It starts slinging mud at Democrats on Iraq. Sure, some Democrats
goaded them with reckless remarks - but they are not in power. Where
are the adults? We can't afford this nonsense, while also ignoring our
energy crisis, the deficit, health care, climate change and Social
Security.
"We are entering the era of hard choices for the United States - an era
in which we can't always count on three Asian countries writing us
checks to compensate for our failure to prepare for a hurricane or
properly conduct a war," said David Rothkopf, author of "Running the
World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the
Architects of American Power."
"If President Bush doesn't rise to this challenge, our children and
grandchildren will look at the burden he has placed on their shoulders
and see this moment as the hinge between the American Century and the
Chinese Century. George W. Bush may well be seen as the president who,
by refusing to address these urgent questions when they needed to be
addressed, invited America's decline."
Truly, I hope Mr. Bush rises to the challenge. We do not have three
years to waste. To do that, though, Mr. Bush would need to become a
very different third-term president, with a much more centrist agenda
and style. If he does, he still has time to be a bridge to the future.
If he doesn't, the resources he will have squandered and the size of
the problems he will have ignored will put him in the running for one
of our worst presidents ever.
Shemp
will likely go down in history as one of the worst presidents ever. But
the American electorate knew what he was like in 2004 when they put him
back in the White House. Expecting Bush to change now is not realistic
-- he can't change. American electors had the opportunity to change the
individual who sits in his chair in the oval office, and they didn't.
Surely the blame for the damage Bush does must lie with the voters.
Mani Deli
> Expecting Bush to change now is not realistic
>-- he can't change. American electors had the opportunity to change the
>individual who sits in his chair in the oval office, and they didn't.
>Surely the blame for the damage Bush does must lie with the voters.
>
If you kept up with the facts you would see that Bush was appointed in
a crooked election in 2000 and squeeked through in 04 with crooked
voting machines and assorted monkey business.
Charles Dickens
Shame on all of us for allowing this to happen.