Stoid my dear, I have already gone far.
Now as to your claim, I direct you to this:
Bush has handled the Taliban/al Qaeda crisis well, but let’s face facts, anyone could have handled that situation. Someone attacks the United States; you fight back - this is probably covered on the first day of Statesmanship 101. Does anyone honestly believe that Al Gore or Bill Clinton wouldn’t have led an equivalent military response in the wake of the September 11 attacks?
On other foreign policy situations where the answers haven’t been as clear, Bush hasn’t been a star. He pointlessly annoyed America’s allies with his missile defense plans, his response to the Isreali-Palestinian crisis has been muddled, and he hasn’t been able to organize an effective response to Saddam Hussein.
I’m also not happy with Bush’s domestic policies. Enron and Global Crossing are the inevitable products of a too friendly governmental policy to big business. The Bush administration has to remember that it’s serving the American people not corporate donors.
And don’t get me started on Ashcroft and the whole “homeland security” thing.
So, in my opinion, Bush had better get cracking if he wants to get a ‘thumbs up’ from 22nd century historians.
Don’t get discouraged. Some day they may let you come back. 
My own post? That sez just what I said, and what I said it said? And?
In order to answer this question, one needs to know what kind of country the U.S. is going to be in, say, a hundred years. The U.S. of 1902 was a very different place than the U.S. of 2002, and 1802 was different than 1902.
2102’s history books may well be written by Swiss-Chinese historians sitting on the moon looking down a ravaged Earth. I doubt in 1802 Thomas Jefferson anticipated the Cold War.
Actually I don’t know if Gore would have handled it as well. Perhaps a more, in depth bombing campaign than as has been the strategy of the Clinton adminstration.
Fact is, historians like Presidents that rise up during crises, even if ‘anyone would have done the same’. Just look at Kennedy and the Cuban Missle Crisis.
It’s just way too early to tell. Frankly, I’ve gotta say that this is a president who swings for the fences. He could either go down as a great, or crash and burn spectacularly. A number of elements that have not played out yet will have to come into play. He may be the first president to preside over a nuclear attack on America or some other widescale terrorist act, and he’ll be judged largely by how he responds to that one single item. Or world events could pass him by, and the administration could wind up floundering.
It’s funny. When he was president, Clinton was disparaged for being too eager to send American troops off to foreign lands. Now when invasion is a popular idea, it’s being argued that Clinton wouldn’t do a thing like that.
Well, yes. Obviously, GWB is not a drooling mental incompetent. However, he is supported by a major political party (and supported by that party in no small part because of lineage and not personal accomplishment), so it’s not as if he went alone up to the point of election and brilliantly picked excellent advisors by himself.
Of course, you could say this for any president. I simply don’t believe that responding adequately to a major national emergency that involved the efforts of so many should be credited to the President.
“Masterfully, indeed almost brilliantly handled” and so forth? Gee, I’m glad Osama was captured so quickly and is even now awaiting trial in the Hague, and that the campaign to end the causes of terrorism globally has succeeded so brilliantly. Plainly Bush is in the pantheon of the heroes of history. “We’ll get him - dead or alive” is truly going to be one of the great quotes in Americana.
Nope, the positive side of his record so far is that he hasn’t screwed up a crisis as badly as he could have. Yet. On the negative side, he so far can be assessed as having followed a narrow, partisanly counterprogressive agenda, both domestically and internationally, without any of the “uniting” and consultation he promised in his campaign, along with a disturbing frequency of hints of corruption that may yet blow up into full scandals.
A lot more can happen, certainly, but I have a very strong suspicion that his and his party’s merry discarding of the basic principles of democracy in their zeal to capture power will be the primary defining moment of this administration for future historians.
The closest comparison: Rutherford B. Hayes.
God, I just completed a full year of advanced placement American history, and I can’t think of a single thing that Hayes did in his presidency. (I’ll be looking that up right after I post.) I do remember, however, that his election was contested and resulted in the Compromise of 1877. Maybe thats the way we should have done it in the 2000 election.
He was disparaged for being too eager to send American troops off to foreign lands as Peacekeepers. I really remember no invasion that American troops were sent to do under Clinton (Somalia wasn’t an invasion). The Clinton doctrine was basically bomb the shit out of somewhere until they quit. It showed that he had no people familiar with the miltary in his cabinet.
If we’re lucky we’ll remember him by his pre-9/11 image. you know the one. the “Can’t be trusted to go to the bathroom without adult supervision” image.
I imagine that the historical record will start right off with a quick summary of the 2000 election; how he got less votes than the other guy, but it was kind of a toss-up in the state his brother ran (more specifically, in the metropolitan region that was his brother’s political base), how the Democrats wanted to count the votes but the Republicans did not because they knew that they had lost, etc., then the Supreme Court voting 5-4 along basically partisan lines that the will of the people, in this one particular case and no other, was not an issue.
As far as the “war” etc., we still have many years to go before the whole picture can be seen. Will Haliburton Corp. get to build that pipeline across Afghanistan after all - the Taliban having been rather uncooperative in that endeavor? Will we suddenly happen to find ourselves in a major ground war right around, oh you know, September or October 2004? Where’s Osama?
What will be the ultimate fallout of Enron - will people finally get it, or will the GOP’s propaganda machine win through? What about Cheney’s iffy health? What about Ashcroft’s relentless referral to his personal religious values to circumvent the expressed will of the people? What if Powell finally says “fuck it” and resigns - who’s the next face of US diplomacy?
How big will the deficit be, when W is finally tossed out of office? How far will he be allowed to stuff the courts with Christian Conservatives in the meantime? How many more perks will the big corporations be enjoying? How much larger will the gap be between the super-rich and the cozy middle class? How much larger will the number of poor people be? What happens if & when the Democrats kick ass this fall, as the GOP did to Clinton in 1994?
As you can see, there are many variables. Up to this point, though, it’s basically been a quick sprint to the radical right to pacify his base - so much so that one brave Senator switched affiliations, and thus the affiliation of the Senate, in order to stop the frightful hemorraging - , a big fat “war” which pushed the creeping Enron scandal off the front pages, then a failed bid to drill for oil in the pristine Alaskan wilderness.
Rutherford B. Hayes? Maybe; I’m thinking more Ulysses S. Grant. Raging alcoholics, basically aimless and unsuccessful in life, good at one thing (Grant = being a general who killed lots of people, Bush = using his family name and connections to get incredibly wealthy), administrations marked by extreme cronyism and massive spending and ultimately, perhaps, remembered only for their rampant corruption.
If he gets a second term, he’ll unfortunately be remembered as a great. Not because he got a second term, but because he will have stuck around long enough to allow his 9/11 “leadership” to be seen as greater than his bumbling incompetency.
Otherwise, he’ll just be Bush Snr, but worse. Bush Snr without a brain. Managed a conflict, but couldn’t be trusted to run a country.
Then again, anything could happen, I guess. He could broker an amazing peace deal in the middle east, and be remembered as the world’s greatest diplomat. Or he could just refuse to sign some environmental treaties, piss off his allies in Europe, arm America to the teeth with nukes and pointless defence systems, make a mockery of the democratic system by cheating his way into office and screw free trade and the steel industry with ludicrous tarriffs.
It’s really too early to tell.
In fact, he’s in the process of disarming America’s nukes. From Todays’ New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/13/international/13CND-RUSS.html
In fact, he’s in the process of disarming America’s nukes. From Todays’ New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/13/international/13CND-RUSS.html
I believe you just described Dubya’s handling of the Afghanistan conflict.
And IMO, if Clinton or Gore was President when 9/11 occurred, I’m sure they would have pushed for a strong military response as well. The only difference is that the Republicans in Congress would have been resisting them every step of the way (probably by complaining about how the president had overstepped his authority by sending off troops to fight an undeclared war).