Jordan Hayes wrote:
>
> If only we had recognized experts, informed opinion and well
> articulated criticism like this for the Other Major Challenge that this
> administration has been presented with.
I have a hard time understanding this kind of critique (which in kind is fairly representative of most critiques of the Bush Administration) -- they implicitly (and I presume unintentionally) assume that the critic and the Bush Administration shared goals, but that Bush&Co simply screwed up in their methodsd. If only they had had better (smarter, more expert) advisers they would have done differently; in fact would have done whatever it is that the critic would have wanted them to do. And it is _only_ on this premise that one can go on to say that Bush was a bad president, perhaps the worst in u.s. history, and tha his administration failed.
But of course the Bush Administration has been as successful, perhaps more so, than any administration in my memory, except perhaps for the first Truman Administration, which established the parameters for world affairs for the next 50 years.
It has engineered one of the great wealth transfers of history -- as was its goal. Success! Right experts chosen to guide it. It is now in the process of confirming that ransfer by the Paulson Bailout -- which in some form, with lots of DP window-dressing, will eventally pass. Again, right experts chosen to gujide it. That bailout will also (following the logic of the first Clinton Administration) provide an excuse for subsequent liberal administrations to cut back on rather than expand social spending, for the national debt will be (allegedly) too high to allow such profligzcy.
In foreign affairs it has achieved the Holy Grail of U.S. Foreign policy of over half a century: the permanent basing of u.s. military in the Mideast. It has gone one better: it has established military bases in Afghanistan, which will remain even after the U.S. officially withdraws.
What more could any administration have achieved.
It has even disarmed its opponents by deflecting them form the fundamental issues facing the world to endless symbolic triumphs over those stupid Republicans, who are content to laugh at Palin while the world burns.
Carrol