So President Bush’s approval is extremely low. I was wondering last night what the “truth” could be about the circumstances of his presidency, and what his legacy will be eventually. Some people believe him to be one of the worse president’s ever, a view I don’t share. I think there are three possible truth scenarios:
1. He’s a psychopath, hell-bent on taking over the world and ruining the United States In this scenario, he is proven to be involved in manipulating intelligence so he could go to war with Iraq under false pretenses, for his own political gain. I think this is a wacko idea mostly because I’ve never perceived a malicious intent in him, and ultimately his decisions have led criticism, not glory. I give this a 10% chance to be the truth.
2. He’s just not very smart In this scenario, we are only able to take the intelligence for what it was (no proof of falsification), and we only know that he says he considered his options carefully and thoughtfully, and made some hard decisions. But he lacked the political agility (and perhaps mental acuity) to effectively defend himself and his decisions. I fear this could be reality, but I am rooting against it, since I voted for him. Still, I’ll give this one a 50% chance to be the truth.
3. He’s a patriot In this scenario, we discover that he “took one for the team,” the United States. The entire body of intelligence had to remain classified for strategic reasons, but eventually the whole picture was revealed to us and his legacy will be that of a courageous man who sacrificed his own political image for our benefit. I’m the eternal optimist, so I’ll give this a 40% chance of being the truth.
I look forward to the answer, some day.
4. His opinions are misguided. He thinks that government solves problems rather than getting out of the way so people and companies can address things. Like the others in Washington, he doesn’t care about the Constitution or the limits it sets for our government. He seems to really believe that an interventionist foreign policy where we police the world and engage in nation building is a logical course of action even though history says otherwise. He thinks it’s ok to take money from some and give it to others.
Henry Hazlitt said that “government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn’t first take from somebody else.”
Well spoken like a true Ron Paulite, Duff :) I agree with your assessment of misguided policy, and until I came across Ron Paul this election cycle I was oblivious.