* Justin Webb
* 26 Sep 08, 04:41 AM GMT This is now a political as well as an economic crisis. President Bush has lost authority to an extent that must be unprecedented in modern times. Even lame duck presidents normally retain a modicum of respect in their own homes. His party - in particular House Republicans - are treating him with a contempt that boggles the mind. To think we lazily refer to the US president as the most powerful man in the world. He is as powerful as the mayor of Wasilla right now. Credit to the House Republicans: they fight for what they believe in. But John McCain - what does he stand for? Does he back the party rebels or the president - he won't say. As things stand, he stands for not debating. I stand to be corrected (as usual) but I cannot believe the American people are sitting back and saying, "Good show, John." Wojtek
--------------------------------------------------------------- "When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost. [...] All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men." - HL Mencken ----------------------------------------------------------------