A Liberal's View Of Bush
Whether you are interested in politics or not, this is interesting and
informative reading. Written by a close associate of Bill Clinton simply
adds to authenticity of this article.
Subject: Fw: A Liberal's View of Bush
Interesting considering who wrote it. A liberal's view of Bush you need
to
read. No matter what your opinion is of Bush, I think this is on
target...Difficult Times seem to make a person's image in life. This was
a
great article that was written by Dick Morris, the man who helped get
Clinton elected for his second term.
BUSH BEARS THE BURDEN, by Dick Morris, March 19, 2003.
His tie hung low around his shrunken neck like a necklace. His ears
seemed
larger as his face looked gaunt. Hair graying, his eyes burned with
intensity and purpose as he addressed his nation announcing the war.The
burden of the presidency seemed etched in the lines of his face.
George W. Bush looks like he has aged ten years in the last twenty-seven
months; he has matured twenty years. Elected president, he has become a
leader. After 9-11, he responded to events. Now he transcends them.
As this president faces the tasks imposed by history, he rises from its
pages. It's time for us all to thank the Lord that we have this decisive
man
in office at this crucial time. One comes to respect his intelligence
and
political skill, but more his clarity, his understanding of what is
important and his focus on the values he carries in his soul.
His wisdom is not the product of complexity or subtlety. It stems
instead,
from the simplicity of his profound understanding of good and evil.
In the State of the Union speech, he spoke of his daily task of facing
new
terrorist threats and the hourly burden of responding. Now we watch in
awe
at the dignity with which he bears our burden. Like a gyroscope he keeps
his
bearing, always rising above the coming horizon. He intuitively knows
where
he must lead like the needle of a compass shows us the North. But, on
the
critical aspect of his presidency, the war on terror, he is right on and
has
always been.
He keeps his political balance as he maintains his internal ballast. His
clarity of vision rises above that of his predecessor and his grasp of
the
requirements of history is deeper and more thorough.
Clinton always lamented that he was not in office during a time of
overwhelming national emergency. He once told me that you needed a war
to
rise to top rank among presidents. Yet it is the bitter irony of his
presidency that he had a war to fight, he just never realized it and
never
fought it.
Bush would be wasted in another era. His skills would not have been as
finely developed as they have been under this challenge. We would never
have
truly known him. He likely would not have even come to know himself as
well
as he now has.
Some say Bush's diplomacy has failed. That's not true. He succeeded in
conducting negotiations without letting his purity be corrupted or his
vision dimmed. This is the ultimate success, not failure, in diplomacy.
Others say he has squandered the sympathy the world had for us after
9-11.
Again the criticism is wide of the mark. He demanded their tears give
way to
resolution, their empathy to action, their victimhood to victory. He
didn't
dissipate global support. He mobilized it and those whose camaraderie
was
phony fell away. Bush has not abused democracy, he has mobilized it. Nor
has
he shattered checks and balances, he has carried them into action.
He is not over reaching the powers of his office, he is using them.
Roosevelt, Lincoln, and Churchill all looked different to contemporaries
than they do to historians. FDR seemed to emerge as a wartime leader
only
after Pearl Harbor rescued him from a time of vacillation and indecision
during the late 1930s. Lincoln appeared to be weak and unable to harness
the
moral issue of slavery to the task of winning the war. Churchill seemed
an
imperialist and an empire builder pining for war in a time of peace. But
history has a different view of all three.
Bush lives amid the ambivalence of democracy, but we are watching a
Roosevelt, a Lincoln, or a Churchill in the making. |
