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Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (4204)	7/8/2002 3:20:47 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 15516

OIL INDUSTRY LEADER SPEAKS OUT Mephisto, Llewelyn King is no leftie. He's an apologist for the energy industry. But today he came out on Energy News Live and said he is "appalled" by the current situation. kingpublishing.com "The Energy Daily" Capital Diary BY LLEWELLYN KING For President, The Going Gets Rough, Confused BY LLEWELLYN KING If President George W. Bush were a contemplative man, which he is not, he would wonder why his presidency has lost so much altitude in the last two months. He would wonder why we are at odds with Europe - with whose people we share the values that he cherishes and promotes. He would wonder why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is further from settlement than it has been in decades and under any other president. He would wonder, too, why his administration has abandoned two critical ideological positions: a balanced budget and free trade. And finally, he would wonder why America’s largest companies, which he has so admired, have been looted by their executives and have been seeking to hide their mismanagement in accounting fraud. But the president is not given to contemplation. Instead, he offers his principles - a catechism of American good - and seems angered that opponents at home and abroad are not drawn to his beacon. George W. Bush’s world is clearly a simple place where virtue - American Republican virtue - ought to be admired and replicated. But more Americans are seeing Bush as so pragmatic that he tips into the opportunistic, ordered around by the politicial imperatives of small constituencies. After Sept. 11, Bush gathered the country and the world to him. Now they are slipping away, worried about his long-term vision and his capacity to promote and adhere to long-term policies. He has changed course on Israel, trade, peacekeeping and foreign aid. And he has accepted debilitating compromises on education, campaign finance reform and the farm bill. Even the war against terrorism is looking a little ragged. He has not told us what he plans for Iraq, suggesting he does not have a plan. He has kicked up a constitutional storm over the rights of detainees and citizens caught up in the war against terrorism. Civil libertarians fear that the war against terrorism, which presumably will go on forever, is also an excuse for authoritarianism and an erosion of constitutional protections for all Americans. Bush is reorganizing the government to create a massive new Department of Homeland Security, which prima facie will not function any better than its component parts have in the past. President Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education and the Department of Energy because he could not fix the education system or solve the energy crisis. So there is reason to wonder why a Department of Homeland Security will mitigate terrorism. The president has his environmental problems, undercutting his own Environmental Protection Agency and antagonizing the world, especially Europe. Some of Bush’s problems are problems of style, particularly in dealing with our allies on the environment and trade. And some of them reflect his naivete in dealing with the world. At heart, he is a fundamentalist: a good man who sees issues in terms of good and evil and who seems to have no understanding or comprehension of the roots of conflict. Of all the president’s disagreements beyond our shores, the escalating differences with Europe are the most significant. What, in the end, are trivialities are dividing the great Western house, which has shaped our civilization for centuries and is the greatest alignment the world has ever known. As Bush relaxes this summer, he may want to ask himself why things are going wrong and why he is dividing, not uniting, the Western world. The division has no purpose: it will not make American industry more competitive, it will not save the environment, and it will not lift up Africa. After 18 months in office, the president needs to do some deep thinking and make a course correction. Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, hailed Bush’s election as the onset of a “transformational presidency.” Indeed. But a transformation to what? """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" A FAILED PRESIDENCY? I sure think so. Mr. Bush, for the sake of the country - Resign.