I guess that would work. I think it’s going to be hard to get the Democrats to go way out on a limb with their accusation so that they look stupid if it’s shown wrong.
What Wring says is true as well. It may have been legal, or even ethical at the time, but times change, and Bush’s actions may have been fully correct by the standards of 1990, but look pretty crappy by today’s standards.
hansel:
In your hypothetical of course the democrats lose by playing fair. But, it’ just a hypothetical. I once played a tennis match in a tournament with an inferior opponent. When he started to lose he started to cheat and call my balls out any time they got close to a line. That didn’t mean that it would have been right for me to call his balls out, and I didn’t, and I lost.
Doing this with politics is worse. You’re not punishing the people who abused the Whitewater situation. Your punishing somebody that had nothing to do with it. If the Democrats play it this way, it makes them wretched. Whitewater didn’t start off as a political witchunt. It didn’t start off as a character asassination or a revenge play. If they go after Bush on political grounds its an attempt at revenge by proxy, IMO.
Its isn’t so much doubt that is being cast on his character, but light. None of the scandals are news. The aimless and privileged doofus he was in the Harken years is much the same man who raised his hand for the oath of office. What credibility he has is primarily a result of the constant pampering of spin doctors.
As to his leadership, IM_O, it runs the gamut from the foolhardy to the perilous. He is the wholly owned creature of the men who installed him in his position and serve him his opinions like you might serve a dull child his oatmeal. He is the single most towering mediocrity to be installed in the Oval Office since Warren G. Harding.
A credibility that is based on unearned reputation is not something that deserves any deference. Jr. already has far more credibility than he can sustain. As far as any loss in credibility represents a limitation on his power, I can only applaud.
With this one proviso: a fair look, a transparent process, and none of this “drug airfields in the Ozarks” craporama!
Stop beating around the Bush elucidator and tell us what you really think!
Is there some kind of requirement that you do that every ten posts or so, or do you want to just rceclarify your Bush stance once per page so nobody mistakes you for a Republican?
But according to Ann Coulter 8 out 10 of the richest Senators are Democrats, as are the boys from Worldcom as well as Martha Stewart and her Imclone buddies.
No he can’t write it in republican. There’s no way to express the idea of a foolish or unworthy right winger in that language.
Is this irony? Are you not yet aware that everything Coulter says has to be fact-check before it can be trusted?
There’s quite a little cottage industry springing up to fact-check Coulter, and they are finding her to be even freer with the the truth than Rush.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/ so far they’ve checked into the first two pages, the last page, and the Couriec story from Slander and found large factual errors in the footnotes on each page. A common theme is that Coulter will footnote something, and when they check the footnote they find that she has lied outright about the content (or sometime even the existence!) of the referenced work…
What do people think when they read:
“Deadbeat Dad Accused of Molesting Daughter”?
Oh yeah. That can’t be true. I’ll reserve judgement for now. I’ll wait for the evidence.
If in fact, the public waits for the facts to be revealed, or works to determine them, they may arrive at a genuine conclusion. However, public opinion (and that of the media) rarely works that way, and it takes an overwhelming body of evidence to dispell the inital impression cast by the accusation. Your implication is that it’s a level playing field. The accused’s denial carries weight equal to that of the accuser.
Bullshit. The most outrageous accusation holds water until the accused provides irrefutible proof that it is not true.
Not to put words into Scylla’s mouth, but this is one of the tenets of his argument. The accusation bears more weight than the denial, and this is what GWB is facing. Rather than the substance of the accusation, he must challenge the accusation itself.
This is the strategy used by Clinton. Don’t answer the accusation. Question the accuser, question the question (What do you mean by “it”?), question the motivation and anything else but the question.
In GWB’s case he’s answered the question, but not the rest of the bullshit, and this is the crux of the criticism.
nutmagnet, where the hell do you get the idea that Dubya “has answered the question”? Or the idea that you know what the question is? In the case of the Clinton-haters, there was in fact nothing there, as the endless investigations proved. That’s enough to prove his character and his accusers’ lack of same.
As for Bush, the question is most certainly not, as you and Scylla seem to be insistent on maintaining, “Was the Aloha stock deal technically legal?” Rather, it’s more along the lines of “Mr. Bush, how can you reassure the public that you are serious about enforcing responsible behavior among corporate management? Can we get some discussion from you as to what you have learned from your own experiences, and how that qualifies and motivates you to do what you tell us to want to do?” His failure to forthrightly answer any such question about his past, on any other topic, is the sort of prior evidence of low character I was referring to.
If you think he’s answered that by saying “The SEC report put out by my father’s lawyer didn’t recommend prosecution”, you’re engaging more in hope than in reason.
Now our hostess has some lovely parting gifts for you, and thanks for playing.
