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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (92535)	12/28/2004 1:32:32 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793775

THE WESTERN FRONT The Second Term Curse George Bush beat John Kerry. Now he must beat Richard Nixon. BY BRENDAN MINITER Tuesday, December 28, 2004 12:01 a.m. George W. Bush is now facing the legacy of Richard M. Nixon. Only two other presidents have won re-election since Tricky Dick resigned in disgrace amid the Watergate scandal in 1974 and both of them--Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton--found their second terms mired in scandal. So what will be Mr. Bush's fate two years on? Will he be well on his way to reforming Social Security and the tax code? Or will scandal consume his presidency too? The answer rests in the origins of the curse of the second term. Lackluster second terms pre-date Nixon, of course. George Washington's first term was pivotal, but his second is most remembered only for his farewell address. James Madison's second term saw the British burn the White House. But what changed with Nixon's resignation is that journalists realized they could bring down a sitting president. It doesn't matter now whether the corruption (and any bureaucracy as large as the federal government contains corruption) actually leads to the Oval Office. The knives are out and, electoral mandates notwithstanding, presidents are most vulnerable after they have a first term record to pick through. But no president is doomed to this fate. Republicans are of course deluding themselves if they think the media hounds aren't out there sniffing for a scandal to howl about. And there are plenty of "scandals" to be found. Abu Ghraib became an issue because many journalists thought, ah ha!, evidence was finally found that proved this White House was ready and willing to through civil liberties to the wind. Every "torture memo" revelation since the war on terror began has only confirmed the suspicion that the next Watergate story is out there and that it is somehow connected to the shadowy war against al Qaeda. In a perfect world, we'd now be talking about openness and transparency as a way of beating the curse. Yet for Mr. Bush, no matter how open he is, if the future is about tweaking the policies he already has in place to fight the war on terror, the media will eventually find a scandal that resonates. To beat the media gotcha game, the president might want to consider a little advice sometimes given to new elementary school teachers: Keep them busy or they will keep you busy. Mr. Bush might succeed with his interesting and ambitious second-term agenda precisely because he has an interesting and ambitious agenda. Just keeping up with what is new in government will be work enough. In the coming years we may find that mini-scandals never become big scandals because the public is clamoring to know what is happening with substantive policy changes that will affect their everyday lives. Nonetheless beating back the attacks will not be easy. As his critics are fond of reminding him, Mr. Bush doesn't have history on his side. Reagan won landslide re-election in 1984, but two years later was mired in the Iran-Contra scandal. Reagan still turned in one of the most influential presidencies in a half-century or more, but mostly because of the policies he enacted in his first term. Mr. Clinton floundered in scandals from almost the beginning, but they reached their crescendo two years into his second term when he was impeached. What's more, historical trends show that a president's party tends to lose seats in Congress in off-year elections, so Mr. Bush may have at best two years to work with a cooperative legislative branch. History, however, is only a good predictor until it isn't. Before Election Day this year, we were incessantly told that Mr. Bush was going to be turned out of office because--among other things--no president had ever won re-election after having a net jobs loss on his watch. Two years ago we heard the point echoed today about a president's party losing seats in off-year elections. Yet somehow Mr. Bush managed to win re-election for himself and to add to the Republican majorities in the House and Senate in both the 2002 and the 2004 elections. If anything, the history of the Bush presidency so far is that it isn't following historical trends. One reason Mr. Bush has "beat" history is that the nation is in the midst of a realignment that has been a long time in the making. The war on terror and the end of the Cold War has already transformed foreign policy. Building liberal democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq is also giving the nation a fresh look at its own moral underpinnings. Meanwhile, voters are being confronted with changing the definition of marriage and saving Social Security--the bedrock of the New Deal--from bankruptcy. It's no wonder we're now seeing a string of close elections. The nation is now in the midst of setting a new course in history. Whether President Bush is successful in helping chart that new course depends on whether he can now excise Nixon's ghost from the White House and from the newsrooms around the country. Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays. Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

To: LindyBill who wrote (92535)	12/28/2004 5:52:45 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793775

Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: "No one can ignore the relentless increase in extreme weather events and so-called natural disasters, which in reality are no more natural than a plastic Christmas tree." Speaking to the same newspaper, Friends of the Earth Director Tony Juniper pressed the argument home: "Here again are yet more events in the real world that are consistent with climate change predictions." Yikes!!! Now that's freaky. I could understand Al Sharpton wondering about this, since (I believe) his education is as a minister. But you'd expect directors of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to have basic training in geology!

To: LindyBill who wrote (92535)	12/28/2004 10:12:16 AM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793775

Just finished Crichton's "State of Fear". I thought generating a tsunami to boost fund raising efforts of a global warming NGO was a stupid plot twist. How could anyone blame an earthquake on global warming? Then I read your post.