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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (65942)	5/15/2008 10:27:53 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 543798

I thought about this a lot today, before commenting, because this really bothered me, and I couldn't remember a sitting democratic president saying anything similar (or even a prior republican one- although I did wonder about Nixon- but a brief google didn't turn up anything)- though if they have, I deplore that also, and this is why: a president represents all of us, even if all the country does not like him- and he is our ambassador to the world when he is on foreign soil, being the face of ALL the American people. Bush is not just the president of "the republicans", or the people who agree with him, he is supposed to be the president of America, even Americans who think that (as he does at times, and as some in his cabinet think), you need to sit down and negotiate, since you can't be at war with everyone. Even if Bush DIDN'T actually practice this bit of real politik (which merely serves to make the whole thing hypocritical AND distasteful)- it would still be distasteful to publicly label so many Americans (and in an overseas venue on the world stage) so negatively. I can't recall another president doing this when he was in office, and was representing the entire US public. It's unfortunate that so many republicans respond so joyfully to this, and (imo) it bodes ill for any amity in the future- but it's also symptomatic of why the republican base is shrinking- so in one way it's very positive for democrats. The politics of demonization has lost a lot of its appeal, and while it may play to the base, it just repels independents and the old Reagan democrats.