Scott,
You are correct that Democrats have more organizational skills than Republicans. They also are less adverse to playing "dirty politics".. Republicans are generallly too "proper" to make up wild @ss accusations that have no basis (though there have been exceptions).
And that's exactly what I opine is the case right now.
Lord knows how badly off we would be if a "marshmallow man" like Gore were in office. He'd have NO CLUE as to how to restore consumer confidence, let alone how to deal with the aftermath of 9/11. Were Gore in office, I would be willing to bet that the Taliban would still be in office and Osama Bin Laden still alive (I believe he is dead) and thumbing his nose at the US.
And this corporate greed we've seen was fostered under the Clinton administration. The foundation for the accounting scandals we're seeing began under the Clinton adminstration.
Yet, democrats are willing to use it to lay blame at the doorstep of a president who has only been in office less than 2 years. A president who has taken the only course possible, the reduction of the tax burden.
Lord knows that Gore is a better spoken man than Bush, but he is a man without substance or set values. He was the man who tried to bargain his vote for 20 minutes of speaking time, when this nation was voting to go to war with Iraq in 1990.
So let's have no illusions about this. Were Gore in office right now, the market would likely be even lower, and he would be suffering the political fallout of the accounting scandals and economic consequences of 9/11.
But that said, it's true that the Bush administration is vulnerable unless they get the message out that they are essentially being tasked with cleaning up the mess of the previous administration which was in charge for 8 years.
But the truth may really be that neither the Clinton/Gore administration, nor Bush/Cheney really could have altered the inevitable.
I personally don't believe that the US is "fumbling" our foreign policy. We've been attacked in a manner that was more devastating than Pearl Harbor. Yet the rest of the world's leaders seem to be paying "lip service" to that fact. We have a network of religious extremists willing to commit suicide in order to destroy western values and install their own Islamic theocracy. It is the same kind of theocracy that has economically devasted Iran and created chaos throughout the region (and world).
This nation cannot be a follower, it must be a leader. But that said, it cannot be a leader if no one will follow. Thus, the challenge for the US is to create convincing enough arguments for its policy, AND PROVIDE THE ABSOLUTE COMMITMENT TO SEE THEM THROUGH, in order to qualm the fears of regional leaders who are frightened by a US history of "here today, gone tomorrow" foreign policy which generally leaves them holding the bag.
Hawk |
