I like President Bush, and think it altogether possible, in 30 or 40 years, we may find him right. I may be wrong, but someday we will know what he now knows, and will be able to decide if his judgments were good.
Like the current President, the following Presidents . . .
Bill Clinton
George W Bush
Ronald Reagan
Jimmy Carter
Richard Nixon
. . . according to my memory,were vilified especially in the last year of their Presidency. It's a particularly Western sport to elevate a man one day and tear him to shreds some days later. Why we do this I do not know, but we do. Gerald Ford wasn't hated, but he was characterized as a bumbling oaf, something he was not.
Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and even George Washington were mocked and ridiculed by their peers and the public to the point that Washington couldn't get out of Washington fast enough (Philadelphia actually, I think).
A President may be wrong about many things, and if he is he should be, questioned, debated, challenged and even run out of town, that is the ugly beauty of our system. But there is also a thing called civility and grace, qualities needed for our system of government to actually work. There is a tilting point in a nation, when enough people are brutish in their everyday affairs, civilized society can not bear the weight and crashes, only to be conquered by the strongest brute available. How far we are away from that I do not know. But when I walk down a city street listening and watching I sometimes think we are at a balance point, tilting the wrong way.
I am suspicious of popular opinion, especially when it comes to national politics.
The majority is almost always wrong.
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