At first glance, Reagan was different in two respects: he was of a generation that lived through the war and depression and he was not the son of a wealthy, famous POTUS, grandson of a wealthy man.
Reagan's humble roots made his bon vivant cluelessness sometimes charming; Bush's folksy charm does not outweigh the damage his unilaterialist, preemptive doctrine has already done. The economic debt he is imposing on us and the next generations will further decimate a once great power. Whatever the final outcome in Iraq, my instinct is that historians and others will judge it as a lesson in gross miscalculation, execution and design. If nothing else, I would say it was conceived as a shortcut to avoid the longer, harder effort, but will be much more costly and harder to complete than if it had been done right in the first place (as my grandfather would have scolded). KWC It worked for Pres. Reagan. Why not for Pres. Bush? -----Original Message----- From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 3:12 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Futurework] O'Neill on Bush There was an intriguing item on BBC Radio 4 this morning concerning ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's adverse comments on G.W. Bush. These arose from a TV interview in the US and perhaps an FWer might be able to source this more accurately and flesh it out. O'Neill is no doubt piqued by being sacked by Bush so peremptorily three or four months ago but, nevertheless, what he says about Bush conforms exactly with what I've picked up from seeing and hearing Bush on TV -- and, of course, what a number of other people whose opinions I respect say about him. O'Neill describes Bush, when meeting with his team, as being a blind man leading deaf men. He says that when Bush appointed him as Treasury Secretary, he seemed totally detached and didn't ask him a single question. I have no animus against Bush as a person. It is just that he is a person of such pathetically limited abilities that he ought not to be a leader of a large and powerful nation. Thank goodness he is so limited in intelligence and experience that he does as he is told by others. The problem is that his chief mentors and manipulators, Cheney and Bush Senior, refuse to be questioned in the normal way that one expects in a democracy, so one can't examine what are the real reasons for their decisions. The way that political leaders are now increasingly chosen according to their performance on TV augurs badly for the future of the nation-state and suggests that our electoral procedures have reached the end of their usefulness. KH Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org> _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
