George W Bush, FDR, and History: Franklin Roosevelt's biographer assesses our consequential president
BLACK, CONRAD
GEORGE W. BUSH, FDR, AND HISTORY Franklin Roosevelt's biographer
our consequential president. tHE AMERICAN, AND TO AN extent the international media, many rubbing their eyes with...
...The United States had to overcome the political legacy of Vietnam, the Beirut bombing, and Mogadishu: that it had no staying power and could not endure the sight of body bags, no matter what the cause...
...to evolve from a source of instability in the world to a justified recovery of the pride of an ancient people with a once-distinguished history, will, if he is successful, make him an outstanding foreign policy president...
...A legitimate modernization of calculation methods would deal with this...
...These are all significant, and TR and Wilson and Jackson were all important presidents, but George W. Bush is well placed to surpass them in the significance of his legislation...
...He has indisputable aptitudes for leadership, unquestionable courage and integrity, and a chance to be one of America's great leaders...
...The partisan antago TR and Wilson and Jackson were all important presidents, but George W Bush is well placed to surpass them in the significance of his legislation...
...Bush and his advisers have mastered the technique of concentrating adequate political force at strategic legislative points...
...Roosevelt did say in the 1940 election campaign that "we are going to build a country in which no one is left out," but there is no evidence that President Bush thought he was paraphrasing him when he took up the same theme...
...the enemy is not being fed by overt foreign intervention on the lines of the North Vietnamese, nor by great power suppliers, as the Soviets and Chinese stoked up the enemy in Lt3J's term swiftly became mired in \rietnam...
...Where Ho Chi Minh was a widely respected figure, almost no one disputes that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqi election is an unanswerable legitimization of the efforts to promote power-sharing and reasonable wealth-distribution in the Middle East...
...The President has the initiative over the dazed and listless Democrats...
...And tlw bulb will burn for up to 711[X1 hours- lltis lamp mill turn any nxi n in ),our htielse into a slunnx)In...
...There is no truth in this, unless he succumbs to second term dementia and tries to abolish the FDIC guarantee of bank deposits, and to restore Prohibition...
...The tepid responses of the Clinton administration to the Kobar Towers, USS Cole, and Nairobi and Dar es Salaam embassy bombings invited the escalation that climaxed on September 11, 2001...
...Franklin D. Roosevelt, behind the facade of the United Nations, sought and achieved an imbalance of power in favor of the United States...
...le Fu have' ,ix•r1t III, nl•.tiu1...
...Bush's Treasury secretaries have not had the weight of such recent holders of that office as John Connolly, George Shultz, William Simon, James Baker, Lloyd Bentsen, and Robert Rubin...
...There are now signs that this onslaught of what at times approached corporate McCarthyism is subsiding...
...The imbalance of power in America's favor that Roosevelt sought now exists and cannot be disguised...
...There was an informal attempt to divide the anti-terrorist world between the wronged country which had the power to resolve the problem by imposition of its military might, and the more "moderate" allies, who substituted moral shilly-shallying and even spitefulness for the strength they did not possess (because of their own lassitude and not a lack of resources...
...Large numbers of them have been attracted to Iraq and eliminated there, and their methods have been thoroughly discredited...
...There was also, behind the genuine sadness of all civilized people at the murder of thousands of innocent civilians, and the general respect for the bravery of New York's firemen and for the spirit of that city generally, an unspoken consolability at the novel thought of America as a victim...
...But instead of reviling President Bush, they shall either have to accommodate to America's position, as Tony Blair does, or develop the strength and coherence to earn a greater voice in the world, as the Chinese seem to be trying to do...
...The President and his advisers recognized that much of the professed solidarity with America after the 9/11 attacks was an attempt by fundamentally irresolute governments to gain leverage on the American official response to the attacks...
...It would rank with Richard Nixon's normalization of relations with China and pursuit of nuclear arms limitations with the Soviet Union...
...Theodore Roosevelt's domestic claim to greatness consists of a bout of trust-busting, and heightened railway regulation, meat-packing, and food and drug labeling legislation, and hortatory encouragements to conservation...
...i~, It's time to bring more than twice as much natural light into your home in a design that's under $ 100...
...President Johnson did have an ambitious program and a friendly Congress, and great legislative aptitudes, but most of his Great Society program, apart from his immense contribution to civil rights, has been a debatable legacy...
...At a strictly tactical level, when the United States' most visible foreign enemy is a group of fanatical Muslim terrorists and terrorist-sponsors, it is helpful to make the point that America is not only a center of commercialization, glitz, permissiveness, and self-indulgence...
...Nothing less than President Bush's immediate and continu ing response was necessary t'()] - the retention of the strength of American deterrence...
...For fastest service, call toll-free 24 hours a day 800-721-0386 See more innovative prn(laci's at www.nexdten.com C O N R A D B L A C K promoting federal government assistance to public works and suppressing secessionism, as well as decentralizing banking (causing a severe recession that swamped his hand-chosen successor...
...The Bush administration should have been better prepared than it was for the assault...
...THE PRESIDENT'S DETRACTORS are fond of claim ing that he doesn't understand all these issues...
...Yet, with a completely different style and timetable, George W. Bush could come closer to replicating FDR's importance as both a foreign and domestic policy president than all Roosevelt's other successors in that office...
...At the same time, thousands of terrorists and of their more promising recruits have been killed or captured...
...Bernard that will do the work and take the risks, while foreigners, especially Europeans, hold the leash and give the orders...
...111.11 ).)(,it IC it I d la•c flit III Fg' -11td ak'sigrl...
...The President is only the sixteenth of 42 holders of that office to win two terms, the fifteenth to win two consecutive terms, the thirteenth to win two consecutive contested terms, and, if he serves out this term in good health, he will be only the sixth president since the emergence of the modern party and electoral system (in the Jackson era) to do so...
...The President made it clear on the evening of the attacks that the United States would not remain a victim for long...
...And now he is right to mend his fences with those countries, having made his point that America will not compromise where its own security is at stake...
...IYy it in your hoale...
...Finished in hriss...
...But as president, he settled relations with Britain, especially the northern border, won the Mexican war, adding Texas, California, and New Mexico to the country, reduced tariffs, and restored an independent treasury system...
...Some fine-tuning should be possible and sin32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR April 2005 GEORGE W. BUSH, FDR, AND HISTORY cere Christians should be able to accept the sort of research advocated by Ronald Reagan Jr...
...Reagan's and Clinton's partisans did not control both houses of Congress when they were re-elected...
...Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (Public Affairs, 2003...
...Though these positions could have been more subtly implemented at times, especially with traditional allies, they were the right policy...
...10x1 would expect to pat' 520x1 to 530X1 for a kullp this advanced...
...you n1:I% have read About a revolution in inckxor lighting- :1 ne%% phcisplioric tcchnology allows you to replicate the Naturtl daylight I spectronl in pair home...
...These comparisons with FDR are overdone...
...nutlliple hinges lhal allow you to Point the light where it is needed most...
...If Iraq develops some plausible institutions of power-sharing and popular consultation and wealth distribution, even stopping well short of the highest standards of electoral and social democracy in the West, it will give the Arab masses a model for government that they will eventually judge to be preferable to the tyrannies in the major Arab powers that oppress their peoples, steal and squander their money, and distract them with what should be the red herring of Israel...
...Everything is to scale...
...All who wish America and its enduring values well, should wish him well, including millions of people in the United States and throughout the world who now profess to dislike, disparage, or fear him...
...The congratulations on the Iraqi election from the president of Egypt and the head of the Arab League...
...In his first Inaugural Address he said: "Our problems, thank God, concern only material things...
...rr HE AMERICAN, AND TO AN extent the international media, many rubbing their eyes with disbelief, are starting to contemplate the possibility that George W. Bush may be a president of great historical significance...
...President Bush was obliged to focus on foreign crises in his first term, and is moving to domestic reform in his second...
...111is txulsrarxling light out puI is similar to a super hrighl 2 io watt inenck-.scent Ixllh Ixul the: ,urilkl re SS is pt3wc•r^d by a sole r efficient 55 watts so it shines brightly while using Al out -S",- lens electricity...
...e worked with one of tire Iwst selling furniture air ~sigrwrs to develop the Sumvhile 57• 'I his gorgc'txls hriss-finish Iamb emits over 31XX1 lumens Making it nxm than twice as bright as the 2--watt plas[ir ]amps tin the market...
...and with Ronald Reagan's ultimate bloodless victory in the Cold War...
...If successful, this will be as great a strategic achievement as any American president's except for Lincoln's victory in the Civil War, Franklin Roosevelt's contribution to victory in World War II and his engagement of the United States durably in Europe and the Far East, and Harry Truman's championship of NATO and the Marshall Plan, and his resistance to communism in Korea and Greece and Turkey...
...u e t ifer you a (0-clay me me1' Ixic'k guar.mtvt...
...nism in the Congress is severe...
...r iLice .;l.m...
...The Soviet Union managed a serious military and subversive (and even in some misguided circles, intellectual) threat for 45 years before collapsing under the weight of the competition...
...Modern American foreign and security policy was established by President Roosevelt in 1941 in two speeches to the Congress...
...If he is largely successful in achieving his domestic goals, Bush would be, next to FDR, the most important domestic policy president in the country's history (excluding Lincoln's conduct of the Civil War, which does not meet normal criteria for domestic policy...
...Neither did the Republicans when Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon won landslide reelection victories...
...The Louisiana Purchase was also an epochal event, but 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR April 2005 C O N R A D B L A C K the United States would eventually have seized that territory if Napoleon had not sold it to Jefferson...
...unwhite 55-watt daylight Spectrum Lamp Sgg.9s +S& K P moatlenal Code SSL130-w Malaise ment.on On when you call Toll-free zq hours a day 1-800-721-0386 To order by mail...
...I doubt that even Karl Rove, brilliant political operator though he undoubtedly is, would claim that President Bush has the prepossessing personal stature of Lincoln, Washington, or Jefferson...
...President Bush cannot be denied the credit and responsibility for his ambitious plan to reorient the Arab world...
...President Truman had limited success and not a great deal of originality in domestic affairs...
...THE GROUP OF SO-CALLED VALUE ISSUES repre sents core beliefs certainly, but they are also rallying points to the President's natural supporters on specific issues, as with the same-sex marriage question...
...He has already had an immense success in discouraging terrorism...
...More importantly, he has discovered and proclaimed the only method of reversing 13 centuries of retreat by the Arab world...
...There have been no further attacks on the United States...
...It's rime for even- rcxxn in %-our house lo 1110VC up to the nattirll daylight %Ix-etntnl...
...Some Democrats and media skeptics have tried to claim that the same fate awaits President Bush, but this is nonsense...
...In fact many _'' watt plamic Willis are still priced over S 1311...
...And in addition to taking credit in his State of the Union message for prosecuting corporate criminals, the President should also discourage the arraignment of the entire corporate executive class of the country as embezzlers by his enemies in the media and overzealous prosecutors...
...Nor will he likely have to face any such prospect as a Nazi takeover of Europe...
...This is a special direct otTer in conjunction with Sun White I.IItorttorics and is not it.iiLIhlc• in any more...
...Despite the impositions on the National Guard, this is still essentially a volunteer military...
...arc• designed III all uil:utrictive plastic, litat wasn't gcxxl enoulgh...
...the SunWliite 55 is elegant technology that will Fu into the decor of Your home...
...A $650 billion current account deficit is obviously intolerable...
...President Bush could not seriously imagine that he will get a constitutional amendment about the nature of marriage, any more than Ronald Reagan thought he would get one about abortion or school prayer...
...Roosevelt dealt with the economic emergency in his first year, structural reforms such as Social Security in his second year, cranked up his workfare programs as required for the next three years, eliminated remaining unemployment with defense production and conscription in the two years before Pearl Harbor, and concluded the New Deal with the GI Bill of Rights in 1944...
...Incredulous media commentators endlessly repeat that George W. Bush's poll ratings are ten points below those of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton when they started their second terms...
...At the mid-point in his administration, George W. Bush has been a successful president...
...Woodrow Wilson's rests on the Federal Reserve Act, the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, and the establishment of the Federal Trade Commission...
...In the last fern scars...
...8:55 am RIn } 1.111...
...Bush is adequately, though not overwhelmingly, popular, but he is overwhelmingly tactically agile...
...The other presidents of living memory, even so elegant a leader as John F. Kennedy, so revered a president as Dwight D. Eisenhower, the obviously very able Bill Clinton, and this president's own father, were, in domestic policy terms, more or less capable caretakers...
...Congress has fully authorized the action in Iraq, which it did not in Vietnam, the forces April 20os THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 27 GEORGE W. BUSH, F D R, AND HISTORY committed are scarcely a quarter of those at their highest point in Vietnam, and the American casualty rates are at less than 5 percent of the Vietnam level through most of that war...
...Assisting the Arab world to slough its tendency to corruption, despotism, and political failure...
...But these are overshadowed by the potential benefit of a reformed Iraq...
...These are much more complicated times, the United States is an unprecedentedly formidable world power, and George W., unlike Polk (who did not seek re-election), is a twoterm president...
...But though the Republicans have only slender majorities in both houses and their party discipline is not infallible, the President is stirring public desire for action on these issues...
...The substantial achievement of his foreign and domestic objectives would install George W. Bush as the most important president since FDR, and, except for FDR, possibly the most important president since Lincoln...
...In January of that year, he warned that the country "must always be wary of those who with `sounding brass and tinkling cymbal' would preach the `ism' of appeasement...
...N DOMESTIC POLICY, the President has defeated what had threatened to become a severe reces sion, introduced tax cuts as important as those of Coolidge, Kennedy-Johnson, or Reagan and launched the most comprehensive educational reform in decades...
...I+.linguish colors Ilxlre t Air rueiv :Ine...
...The stemcell research controversy is a harder sell...
...at last year's Democratic convention...
...This would still be a defensible performance that would bear comparison with most of his predecessors...
...The great achievements of the Clinton administration-apart from good fiscal order, which didn't require tax increases on the scale of those that he inflicted-such as welfare reform and the Crime Bill, were largely the work of the Republican leaders in the Congress...
...Waiting for the development of an electric automobile is not an adequate response to the trade deficit...
...llte 1W year old c'ortslnklion of an ordinary incanck-scrnt lxtlli s light is concenlrited on the orange-r'd Ixtrt of the slwttnnll eraling a dim yellowish light...
...All his major speeches had some reference to God in them and his address on D-Day, one of the greatest of his career, was ostensibly a prayer...
...President Reagan's domestic achievements consisted mainly of his tax cuts and simplifications, the economic boom, and his genius for inspiriting the nation after Vietnam, Watergate, and the dreariness of the Carter interregnum...
...the virtual Thatcherization of the Egyptian economy and Hosni Mubarak's promise of "freer" elections, the cross-community reconciliations in Lebanon in defiance of the Syrians despite the recent assassination of the leading advocate of conciliation, the self-redemption of Qaddafi, and the emergence among the Palestinians of an authentically elected leadership that is apparently prepared to discourage terrorism and seek a two-state permanent agreement with Israel, are all, at least in part, early manifestations of the impact of the Bush policy...
...He is unlikely to have to lead the nation to victory in the greatest war in history, and he doesn't have to conduct his office from a wheelchair, while disguising from the public the extent of his infirmity...
...All presidents bandy God about...
...Though most Arabs would not spontaneously put it this way, Arab power and influence have been in retreat since the defeat of the Moors at the Battle of Tours (or Poitiers) in 732...
...Reveal sharper contrast and truer colors more accurately for reading, art, knitting and needlepoint...
...There were also costly mistakes in the early occupation phase...
...To be a traditionalist is not to be a toady to a faction...
...But since then, despite the belligerent videos of bin Laden and others, the terrorists managed only a few incidents, serious though the attacks in Madrid and Bali, in particular, were...
...Call now to take advantage of our special direct offer...
...There is little evidence that the President is pandering more than rhetorically to the religious right, in judicial appointments or otherwise...
...But most of those :-Imps nun at only 18-2 ,Ills •Ills are...
...Now Is the time for Pure white light...
...President Bush has neither the regal bearing, nor the oratorical powers, nor the protean qualities of FDR...
...Hence the frequent current comparisons with FDR...
...This too can be combated, as some Democrats are already demanding...
...Unlike Roosevelt, George W. Bush did not enter office with unemployment at 33 percent, a collapsed banking system and farm prices, nearly half the homes in the country threatened by foreclosure and eviction...
...D"" W Dept 5t1L I )o-01 Butts . Mrweou SS137 Research has shown that daylight spectrum lighting can: • Make reading easier...
...No other country remotely possesses such deterrent capacity, and no ally, no matter how genuine, could be relied upon to advocate what was necessary to uphold this cornerstone of American national security...
...He has pledged to overhaul, partially privatize, and preemptively rescue Social Security from actuarial problems, and make medical care more accessible and efficient, partly through tort reform...
...Another third is excessive oil prices and imports...
...The effort of the French and Germans and Russians to stand on each others' shoulders and obstruct the United States' Iraq policy, in the name of misplaced self-righteousness, was contemptible, and Bush was right to respond to it accordingly...
...President Nixon had more success than his legions of frenzied enemies concede, but his record was obscured and durably diminished by the Watergate debacle, even allowing for the subsidence of cant and emotionalism he attracted over much of his career...
...Polk is generally reckoned by historians to be one of the country's ten best presidents...
...The cumulative effects of the international terror campaign have not amounted to 15 percent of the human devastation of 9/11/01...
...Even if he does not, his historical claims will rest on his foreign policy record, his tax reductions, and his education reforms...
...Ilul [he SunW'hite 57 is priced a1 under 511x1...
...Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to God so often that Molotov asked Averell Harriman how an intelligent man could be so preoccupied with religion...
...He has none of the panache or urbanity of the Roosevelts, the intellect or articulation of Woodrow Wilson...
...G FORGE W. BUSH does not have the heroic qualities of Andrew Jackson, drummer-boy in the Revolutionary war, victorious general, champion of the frontier and of the Common Man...
...Of his five predecessors in this category, only U. S. Grant and Franklin D. Roosevelt led parties that controlled both houses of Congress in their second terms...
...Ever since, the United States has not been an appeasement power and it has possessed and deployed sufficient deterrent strength to assure that no other state overtly attacked it...
...What he and his advisers recognize, even if most of the media do not, is that he can be a great president by concentrating his great tactical political ability on specific ambitious goals...
...Not available in stores...
...He will have to make some concessions, but it is a reasonable supposition that he will achieve a large part of what he seeks...
...Every American death in Iraq is a great sadness (that much of the media mawkishly amplifies), but each is also a sacrifice in a noble cause and a reaffirmation of American moral strength...
...Some Republican traditionalists and liberal alarmists have invoked Roosevelt by predicting that Bush will now try to undo what is left of the New Deal...
...In the 2004 election they brought out conservative voters by putting referenda on the emotive issue of same-sex marriage on ballots in eleven states, eliciting the margin of victory in a number of those states...
...There were certainly some serious intelligence shortcomings before September 11, 2001, and before the invasion of Iraq...
...He never should have signed Sarbanes-Oxley, which mires all public companies in an almost impenetrable thicket of compliance rules (see Robert L. Bartley, "No Profit: The Craze to Reform Corporate Accounting Gets Things Exactly Backward," TAS, December 2003-January 2004...
...This doesn't affect a president's performance or historical standing and has been the lot of many other presidents, including Truman, Eisenhower, and Nixon...
...Illis helps too see hatter...
...The world should know that it is also a brave country that acts on belief, including a variety of widely and strongly held religious beliefs, and that the bin Laden theory that it is soft, decadent, and cowardly is a dangerous misperception...
...GEORGE W. BUSH, FDR, AND HISTORY Franklin Roosevelt's biographer assesses our consequential president...
...This is the rationale for the nation-building effort in Iraq, and the only possible method of eliminating the danger of endless Muslim, and especiallyArab Muslim, disaffection on a scale that could be a menace to the whole world...
...Many governments and intelligent people in the world are uncomfortable with American preeminence...
...The existence of Israel has been a hairshirt for the Arabs for nearly 60 years, the ultimate, constant demonstration of their enfeeblement...
...I n %rxcr tine• 11o111e furnishing, 1I ilt cc.rnl t r Fur Limps to lx as A.-ant as your horse...
...The moral issues this leads to are serious and troubling, but the scientific possibilities for longer and healthier lives may not be met by his present position...
...Ease eyestrain...
...In December, in calling for a declaration of war after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he promised that the nation would "make very certain that this form of treachery never again endangers us...
...VISA NEXT N I 14101 SwFhcrot...
...His fiscal policy remains fuzzy and his pledge of spending and deficit reductions is not entirely plausible...
...It is not quite as grim as it appears, because about a third of it is foreign operations of American companies selling back into the United States to the ultimate profit of American shareholders...
...Nothing less than President Bush's immediate and continuing response was necessary for the retention of the strength of American deterrence, which administrations of both parties have maintained for 60 years...
...The debate over weapons of mass destruction, like the arguments that the United States should first have tracked down Osama bin Laden or secured a permanent resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute before removing Saddam, was a side-show (and pretexts for doing nothing...
...Prior to World War II, there wasn't much American foreign policy...
...The Arab armies were driven out of France and slowly expelled from Europe, and almost all the Arabs were eventually colonized...
...1. !It hl lxJrit incs is releasing for the first little ever...
...Vietnam...
...Isle *,u3)\\7lnc• difk•rcntil c- n n•ftin c! he the slur I)avlight ,]x...
...The tastefulness of doing so is open to legitimate discussion, but the incumbent should not be unfairly singled out...
...pkax call for details...
...George W Bush prevented the United Nations, against the wishes of its own secretary general and most of the corrupt despotisms that compose much of its membership, from becoming a toothless talking society like the League of Nations, as he promised in 2003 to the General Assembly that he would (after Saddam had ignored 17 Security Council resolutions...
...If this had been George W. Bush's only major foreign policy accomplishment, it would have been an entitlement to a serious position among foreign policy presidents...
...That he wishes a distinction between marriage and a homosexual union of equivalent legal standing is reasonable...
...hv leas old in(anek- nt light technology failiml...
...Disparaged by opponents as an accidental president, or even the beneficiary of a stolen election, and regarded even by many of his supporters as a man of insufficient intellect for his office, the ambitions he has revealed for his second term have prompted comparisons (in the Financial Times and elsewhere) with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, the President says, "fascinates" him...
...I hrakthnxigl in lighting Icti'ltnti]t31ndesigned by one of [tit: UP furniture designers in the United States...
...The general perception of him may continue to lag his objective accomplishments, for a time...
...Andrew Jackson is remembered for 30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR April 2005 breakthrough Sun Worshippers Rejoice...
...Dwight Eisenhower, unlike Roosevelt, was not a particularly religious man, but he began his first Inaugural Address with a prayer...
...ompk•x Flihic•s and snl:tll tyre' becomes easier to six nal colt ii r1LIrchin, : much rill, I - c•\.i 1. -a l it I n-_ noLk of rlic, llc x it latnp has • More light output than a standard too watt • Bulb has 5,ooo hour life...
...Most of the rest of the current account deficit is effectively dumping, especially by the Chinese...
...LBJ's term swiftly became mired in Vietnam...
...This would put the current President in far more distinguished company than his detractors could imagine with any equanimity...
...Anything less would have yielded to the collegiality sought by the rest of the world: that the United States is like a great St...
...To conventional modern Arab opinion, their final humiliation was the establishment of the State of Israel in what Arabs claim to be Arab land, as an apparent consolation by the Great Powers for the crimes the Jews had suffered in Europe in the 1930s and'40s...
...Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are the first successive presidents of opposing parties to win two consecutive terms in American history, and the first consecutive two-term presidents since Madison and Monroe (1809-1825...
...On September 11, 2001, elements that thought they had found a way around American deterrence directly attacked the American civil population for the first time in history (other than, in hindsight, the April 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 29 GEORGE W. BUSH, F D R , AND HISTORY first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993...
...The President made it clear on the evening of the attacks that the United States would not remain a victim for long, that it would make no distinction between terrorists and countries that harbored or assisted terrorists, and that other governments would be judged by their conduct, as for or against the United States...
...But he has sketched out his motives much more clearly than Franklin D. Roosevelt described his plans, even to intimates, for assuring the defeat of the Berlin-Tokyo Axis in the world and the isolationists at home, and the renaissance of France, Germany, Italy, and Japan as democratic allies of the Americans and British...
...April 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 33...
...Where Bill Clinton confused the Republicans by stealing certain natural Republican issues, as in adding 100,000 policemen, George W. Bush presses the seven values buttons to produce irresistible support for measures only slightly related to the values invoked...
...If he has a precedent, it could be James Knox Polk, who was rather colorless and somewhat overshadowed by such contemporaries as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun...
...BY CONRAD BLACK 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR April 2005 LECTORAL FACTS INVITE A reassessment by those who did not take the president serious ly before...
...Ronald Reagan wasn't a great publicly observant religious communicant either, but he began his acceptance speech of his first presidential nomination with a minute of silence in prayer for the country...
...No one expects that President Bush will easily enact his imaginative proposals for Social Security, Medicare, tort reform, durable tax reduction and simplification, and education...
...ic•hnx)nd Va...
...They are also 20 percent below Roosevelt's when he began his third term...
...11w light (rant traditional Iluorc-ecnt bulbs is concentfllLd on tlw yellow grrn portion of the spectrum giving your nxxn a sickly greenish color A design you can live with...
...No government in the world would now openly promote or assist terrorism in the way Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Iran, and some other countries had been routinely doing prior to the President's response to the World Trade Center and Pentagon outrages...
...If v(xl're not satislicdt, just return the lamp for the full pur'lasc pricew no questions asked- (:all now tt ) lake advantage of our special otkr...
...He does not possess the hypnotic oratorical powers or (as far as we know) the human qualities of Ronald Reagan that enabled him, with a bullet in his chest and a collapsed lung, to stroll into the hospital operating room and say that he hoped the assembled doctors and nurses were all Republicans...
...Roosevelt has justly received the credit for that inspired policy...
...Grant, though he rendered immense service to the country, was a largely ineffectual president...
...This isn't really relevant...
...twin I Ighring lisces .III t If the visible hors in sun hr...
...Some Democrats and media skeptics have tried to claim the same fate awaits President Bush...
...But it will require subtlety and perseverance to do it without provoking serious economic and strategic friction, so addicted have China and some other countries become to their ability to export on a massive and exploitive scale to the United States...
...Complaints about Bush's excessive religiosity are hard to take seriously...
...There is more of a comparison with Lyndon Johnson when he won a crushing victory in 1964 to a full term after succeeding the assassinated John F. Kennedy...
...This could at least be moderated by pursuing exploration and alternate energy sources more aggressively and by selling infrastructure to more consensually governed oil-exporting countries, starting with Iraq...
Vol. 38 • April 2005 • No. 3
