I'm off to a Denver Center-Right Coalition meeting, so I'll have to make this much briefer than it deserves.
I wonder if, instead of being the FDR or William McKinley that we had hoped, President Bush isn't going to end up more like Lyndon Johnson. Even many conservatives, being fed a steady diet of bad news from the front, are starting to look for a way out of Iraq, and Federal spending, fed a steady diet of entitlements, is starting to look like Edgar just before the gas attack. Right now, that's not inflationary or recessionary, but only because everyone else's long-term interest rates are even lower than ours.
If the party split grows, it could open the door for a serious but unpopular candidate like Hillary, playing the role of Nixon. Nixon's party at the time was about as minority as the Democrats are now - controlled nothing, and hadn't for a while. His victories did little to improve the overall party's standing, another Clinton parallel. But they did make the party credible again, and set the stage for Reagan to break the decades-long liberal monopoly on ideas.
Gotta run. Discuss.
Comments
I think a better comparision is Harry Truman. Truman was unpopular when he left his presidency, but historians are starting to rate him higher as he had to make a lot of tough decisions such as dropping the atomic bombs to end WWII, beginning the end of segregation in the military, emplementing the policy of containment (the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, support of Italy, Greece, & Turkey against communist insurgencies) to prevent the spread of communist-controlled territory. Truman does deserve blame for losing China to the communists in 1949 when Marshall convinced the Chinese Nationalists to halt their offensive against the Communists which enabled them to regroup and eventually win China. I suspect that future historians will judge President Bush favorably as he is attempting (and suceeding IMO) to reduce terror attacks on the United States by attacking the root cause of major terrorism which is idealogically-driven despotic governments.
The major difference between Bush and Truman (as well as Johnson) is that Bush ran for a second term on his war and national security record while Truman and Johnson chose not to.
It is possible that Iran will be Bush's Korea, but to quicken the death of Islamic fascist idealogy, I'm hoping it doesn't turn out that way.
Posted by: Matthew | March 13, 2006 10:28 AM
Fascinatingly lucid. I'm going to try to forget about all the times you pooh-poohed any suggestion of this kind of parallel. Regards,
Posted by: Alan | March 14, 2006 8:46 AM
Yes, we can both agree that the Iraq-Vietnam parallel is a result of leftist defeatism combined with incumbent-party skittishness.
Posted by: Joshua Sharf | March 14, 2006 3:13 PM