Taking a shoe for the country

[Gooberman]

I thought this was a good read, so I am just passing it along. I like Charles, he seems to be one of the few conservative talking heads that cares more about "steering the boat in the right direction", then just throwing red meat to his base.

Except for Richard Nixon, no president since Harry Truman has left office more unloved than George W. Bush. Truman's rehabilitation took decades. Bush's will come sooner. Indeed, it has already begun. The chief revisionist? Barack Obama.

Vindication is being expressed not in words but in deeds -- the tacit endorsement conveyed by the Obama continuity-we-can-believe-in transition. It's not just the retention of such key figures as Defense Secretary Bob Gates or Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner, who, as president of the New York Fed, has been instrumental in guiding the Bush financial rescue over the past year. It's the continuity of policy.

It is the repeated pledge to conduct a withdrawal from Iraq that does not destabilize its new democracy and that, as Vice President-elect Joe Biden said just this week in Baghdad, adheres to the Bush-negotiated status-of-forces agreement that envisions a U.S. withdrawal over three years, not the 16-month timetable on which Obama campaigned.

It is the great care Obama is taking in not preemptively abandoning the anti-terror infrastructure that the Bush administration leaves behind. While still a candidate, Obama voted for the expanded presidential wiretapping (FISA) powers that Bush had fervently pursued. And while Obama opposes waterboarding (already banned, by the way, by Bush's CIA in 2006), he declined George Stephanopoulos's invitation (on ABC's "This Week") to outlaw all interrogation not permitted by the Army Field Manual. Explained Obama: "Dick Cheney's advice was good, which is let's make sure we know everything that's being done," i.e., before throwing out methods simply because Obama campaigned against them.

Obama still disagrees with Cheney's view of the acceptability of some of these techniques. But citing as sage the advice offered by "the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history" (according to Joe Biden) -- advice paraphrased by Obama as "we shouldn't be making judgments on the basis of incomplete information or campaign rhetoric" -- is a startlingly early sign of a newly respectful consideration of the Bush-Cheney legacy.

Not from any change of heart. But from simple reality. The beauty of democratic rotations of power is that when the opposition takes office, cheap criticism and calumny will no longer do. The Democrats now own Iraq. They own the war on al-Qaeda. And they own the panoply of anti-terror measures with which the Bush administration kept us safe these past seven years.

Which is why Obama is consciously creating a gulf between what he now dismissively calls "campaign rhetoric" and the policy choices he must make as president. Accordingly, Newsweek -- Obama acolyte and scourge of everything Bush/Cheney -- has on the eve of the Democratic restoration miraculously discovered the arguments for warrantless wiretaps, enhanced interrogation and detention without trial. Indeed, Newsweek's neck-snapping cover declares, "Why Obama May Soon Find Virtue in Cheney's Vision of Power."

Obama will be loath to throw away the tools that have kept the homeland safe. Just as he will be loath to jeopardize the remarkable turnaround in American fortunes in Iraq.

Obama opposed the war. But the war is all but over. What remains is an Iraq turned from aggressive, hostile power in the heart of the Middle East to an emerging democracy openly allied with the United States. No president would want to be responsible for undoing that success.

In Iraq, Bush rightly took criticism for all that went wrong -- the WMD fiasco, Abu Ghraib, the descent into bloody chaos in 2005-06. Then Bush goes to Baghdad to ratify the ultimate post-surge success of that troubled campaign -- the signing of a strategic partnership between the United States and Iraq -- and ends up dodging two size 10 shoes for his pains.

Absorbing that insult was Bush's final service on Iraq. Whatever venom the war generated is concentrated on Bush himself. By having personalized the responsibility for the awfulness of the war, Bush has done his successor a favor. Obama enters office with a strategic success on his hands -- while Bush leaves the scene taking a shoe for his country.

Which I suspect is why Bush showed such equanimity during a private farewell interview at the White House a few weeks ago. He leaves behind the sinews of war, for the creation of which he has been so vilified but which will serve his successor -- and his country -- well over the coming years. The very continuation by Democrats of Bush's policies will be grudging, if silent, acknowledgment of how much he got right

Washington post

[dissent]

Ha. The Daily Kwislings must be apoplectic over this.



Good.

[SilverFJ]

Obama opposed the war. But the war is all but over. What remains is an Iraq turned from aggressive, hostile power in the heart of the Middle East to an emerging democracy openly allied with the United States. No president would want to be responsible for undoing that success.

This is the biggest bi-partisan spin I've ever heard?? Success?

If it was such a success why's Obama getting to ride on the failures of Bush? He wasn't even ****ing running against McCain, he was running against Bush's administration the entire race.

On the same card, if they're flouting the war as a success then why is Obama being heralded in the same letter? He opposed our liberation of dozens of millions of people.

Whoever wrote this needs to stop trying to make everyone happy.

[Will Robinson]

Obama opposed the war. But the war is all but over. What remains is an Iraq turned from aggressive, hostile power in the heart of the Middle East to an emerging democracy openly allied with the United States. No president would want to be responsible for undoing that success.

This is the biggest bi-partisan spin I've ever heard?? Success?

If it was such a success why's Obama getting to ride on the failures of Bush? He wasn't even ****ing running against McCain, he was running against Bush's administration the entire race.

On the same card, if they're flouting the war as a success then why is Obama being heralded in the same letter? He opposed our liberation of dozens of millions of people.

Whoever wrote this needs to stop trying to make everyone happy.

Or....maybe the people that put Obama in office should have actually cared about what he said(and refused to say) instead of just how he said it....

I don't completely hate to say I told you so...so I will!
I have said over a year ago Bush will be remembered by historians as a successful president and not so long ago I also said Obama will quickly delete a lot of his campaign promises once he actually has to live by his actions instead of sneak by on his 'speechifying' packed with carefully crafted but relatively empty slogans.

However I think Bush is wrong on the bailout and that ultimately may be the undoing of what would otherwise be a legacy of a President who made the right choices even though it cost him his popularity with an ignorant and willfully stupid electorate.

I'm also more hopeful than ever that Obama might end up being a great President who puts democrat party preservation second to statesmanship in search of his own legacy as a truly great American President. He has the chance to be greater than anyone we've had in a long time and might be too smart and proud to pass it up just to assume the position of Leader to the likes of Pelosi and Reid et al.

It's a wacky world we live in these days but Americans usually rise to the occasion when things get tough and Obama is no slacker so I'm seeing the glass half full.

[SilverFJ]

Well, I still can't get over the fact that Obama won the for 3 reasons.

1) Rock Star Status
He appealed to the young who were upset with Bush because they didn't understand the long term, the people who believe the foolish notion that the world would be peaceful if the US dismantled it's military. These people saw him as change whether or not he had any real solid promises for it. He's a black guy, change. He's the savior Democrat. Change.

2) Bucketful of Open-ended Promises
Healthcare, prices of gasoline, and anything else anybody would consider ear-candy. If it were realistic Obama would have promised everyone their own rainbow unicorns and gumdrop blizzards. The \"I'll do this and I'll do that\" mentality with no basis whatsoever worked for the first time ever. Why? See #3.

3)The Bush Administration
Now back to topic, whether or not the Bush administration was overall successful in it's term (and it most certainly was, if liberation of an entire nation of oppressed peoples means anything), this ignorant public decided to vote against a party instead of, for a person. The most terrible cop-out I hear all the time is \"Well, I had to choose between the lesser of two evils.\"

Now Will, you DID nail it on the head that Bush will sooner or later be viewed as a success, (I already see his administration as such) but right now Obama's groupie fanbase is still listening to emo music and taking creative writing courses in what is largely a community of liberal universities. It's in the same light that we see Ghengis Khan or Atilla the Hunn as maurading conquorors of history past, while Adolf Hitler is still viewed as a malevolent, evil force. If there's still a human race in 2250, Hitler'll just be another world-potentate-wannabe on the list.

As for Obama, I disagree. I would rather feel the pain as an American now and watch him crumble in failure so that the GOP can regain our iron grip on politics, and eventually get things straight. That's something I doubt the left could ever do for this country. Hell, Clinton's administration did enough credit-taking for the long-term effects of Reagan's policies as it is.

[Kiran]

Silver, I agree with you over those same three reasons even though I am still a young person. However, I saw through those promises that Obama made and couldn't understand much of these promises that he has made. \"I voted for the other guy\".

However, the majority of America's people has chosen Obama and I really hope, for his sake and for the people of his race that he has given such high hopes to, that Obama succeeds as a great president. I don't want him to be known only as \"First black president\". I want to see him do so much more than that. He's taken his first term at a very critical time for America's economy and nobody else could have an opportunity such as this to really prove themselves in a leadership position.

At first I was scared what we would be heading into with the Obama Administration. Now, I'm more relaxed. There is nothing we can do (but to impeach him with some nonsense) until the next campaign comes along. I'm willing to hold my tongue and see what cards he play to pull us out of this failing economy. If he doesn't follow through his campaign plans, I'm bitching at the idiots who voted him for looking at the ideal situation instead of reality.

[Will Robinson]

....

As for Obama, I disagree. I would rather feel the pain as an American now and watch him crumble in failure so that the GOP can regain our iron grip on politics,....

I have no more faith in the current GOP becoming a great protector of the american dream than I do in Brittany Spears becoming mother of the year!
I think it's at least as reasonable to think Obama has as much incentive and desire to do a legitimately good job as the GOP does. He will no doubt piss me off in some of the details of how to get there but he's not as self serving and dangerous as an individual as either the Democrat or Republican parties are.

The status quo in our current government is a disease and he is the only one in the next 4 or possibly 8 years with the potential to cure that illness. I'm not convinced he will but he has shown signs of wanting to do it in his campaign rhetoric and he's stumbling face first into the practice of some of it already.

The question is, will he be his own man or the democrats man?