Yeah, allright, it's from the Huffington Post, so you're warned.

And everything Dubya-related gets lots of reads and generates lots of heat.

And I DON"T CARE if this thread gets hijacked.

And take a look at the second paragraph.  Kaplan is using a line of argument advanced sometime within the last year, IN THIS VERY FORUM, by none than than the much-maligned and seriously underappreciated JackO.  Take a bow, JackO!  Your ideas are good enough to be ripped off.



       
Marty Kaplan  

Washington, Lincoln, Bush
Posted February 17, 2008 | 02:43 PM (EST)

         

Here's a desirable "learning outcome" for first grade students in the public schools of Georgia: being able to answer the question, "How are Washington, Lincoln, and Bush alike?" In their classrooms, Georgia's 6-year-olds "will compare and contrast information about Washington, Lincoln, and our current president. This information will be recorded on a Venn diagram."


I don't know how many other states require this Venn diagram to be created, or whether first-grade teachers will accept -- as information for the place where the three presidents' circles overlap -- commonalities like not having gills, possessing opposable thumbs, or putting on their pants one leg at a time.

But I do know that George Bush loves to say what he has in common with Washington and Lincoln: how little it matters what people say about him today. "I don't think you'll really get the full history of the Bush administration until long after I'm gone. I tell people I'm reading books on George Washington, and they're still analyzing his presidency," he told 60 Minutes. At Camp David, he told ABC's Charlie Gibson, "I tell people I read three books on Washington last year, and if they're still writing on the first guy, the 43rd guy isn't going to be around to see it... I spent a lotta time reading about Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln had no earthly idea that the Gettysburg Address was a great speech.... You know, history, it's just, it, I, I've always felt that there needs to be a long leash to history. That you can't judge an administration, immediately. And, particularly one that has pushed hard for some big ideas, like, like, my administration has done."

Ah, yes, those big Bushie ideas. Tax cuts in wartime, the unitary executive, signing statements, waterboarding, gay-baiting... You can almost imagine a first grade exercise that teaches them. Put a circle around the ones that don't belong:

A. American Revolution.
B. Civil War.
C. Iraq War.

A. Beware the baneful effects of the spirit of party.
B. The party lash and the fear of ridicule will overawe justice and liberty.
C. Democrats are terrorist-loving cut-and-runners.

Bush, of course, takes the long view of his place in presidential history. No one who saw this fly-boy swagger beneath the "Mission Accomplished" banner (on the USS Abraham Lincoln, no less) is qualified to characterize that act as one of the most loathsome, preening, hubristic degradations of the presidency in all of American history because... well, because none of us is dead yet! It'll take a hundred years, and a hundred books, before people have the perspective needed to acclaim his guitar-strumming indifference to Katrina as just what our glorious Republic needed from its POTUS at the time. His flying back from a Crawford for a midnight signing of the Terry Schaivo bill? Why, the only presidential historians who can call that one correctly (a victory for the rights of the undead? a miracle of long-distance diagnosis?) will be the great-great-grandchildren of kids in first grade right now.

I have no difficulty imagining the future historians who will rank W right up there along with the Father of Our Country and Honest Abe, rather than way down there with Warren Harding and Franklin Pierce. After all, the servile savants already beatifying Bush on Fox News, right wing talk radio, and in The Washington Times are as likely to pass their genes and memes down to future generations as is slime mold, and the Snopes clan that inherits the earth in Faulkner's dark vision. And as someone who lived through the Nixon terms, and then the Nixon funeral, and the Reagan terms, and then the Reagan funeral, I'm all too familiar with the press's fondness for the revisionist airbrush. De mortuis nil nisi bonum: speak only good of the dead.

The thing I'm having trouble imagining, though, is the scenario for America's future that George W. Bush thinks will ultimately make him look good. Does he really believe that future historians will look back at his Middle East record as the happy tipping point between radical-fundamentalist-jihadist-extremism and freedom-is-on-the-march? Or does he secretly hope that the tragedy looming in that region's future will be blamed not on him, but on his successors who inherit his broken crockery? Can he really imagine that his contempt for checks and balances, and for the Bill of Rights, will one day be compared favorably to Lincoln's boldness in saving the Union? Or does he believe deep down that the fact he ended up not being impeached will in the long view of history more than outweigh any pesky lefty aspersions about his abuses of power?


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/washington-lincoln-bush_b_87076.html

But then again, his myopic hatred could be clouding not only his thoughts today but also his judgment. Ironically for him, he most likely won't be able to prove his point until after he is also long dead.


-- Modified on 2/19/2008 3:37:54 PM

Put a circle around the ones that don't belong:

A. American Revolution.
B. Civil War.
C. Iraq War."


Before during and after the American Revolution and the Civil War many thought it was the wrong course ..History proved the American revolution was the right thing to do ...History showed  the Civil War had a good ending many years later...Lets not forget or deny  Lincoln was hated by many in both the North and the South during and after the Civil War....
I expect the Bush monuments will be going up within 20 -40  years

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmRSuYIL1zc

Bush failed to master the thoughts of Ronald Reagan.

see how good he is?!

well, maybe cheerleading & substance abuse.   My favorite people, drunk cheerleaders!!!!!

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on a career of steroid-enhanced pigeon breeding,

-- Modified on 2/19/2008 9:39:38 AM

he probably even types worse than me

BTW, what does a brain look like?

monument.  Someday there will be a Titanic monument, just you wait and see!

Where? Tora Bora?

j/k of course, but seriously, 6 in a row??

-- Modified on 2/19/2008 7:12:28 PM

don't worry, RWU, I doubt if it will hapen againnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

These are only 20% of the reasons he will eventually go down as a great POTUS.


reversed Clinton's policy of not requiring parental consent for abortions under the Medical Privacy Act.

Signed the Teacher Protection Act, which protects teachers from lawsuits related to student discipline.

Signed two income tax cuts, one of which was the largest dollar-value tax cut in world history.

Turned around an inherited economy that was in recession, and deeply shocked as a result of the 9/11 attacks.

In process of permanently eliminating IRS marriage penalty.

Killed Clinton's "ergonomic" rules that OSHA was about to implement; rules would have shut down every home business in America.

Passed tough new laws to hold corporate criminals to account as a result of corporate scandals.

Reduced taxes on dividends and capital gains.

Provided $20 million to states to help people with disabilities work from home.

Reduced H1B visas from a high of 195,000 per year to 66,000 per year.

Killed the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty.

Killed Clinton's CO2 rules that were choking off all of the electricity surplus to California.

Successfully executed two wars in the aftermath of 9/11/01: Afghanistan and Iraq. 50 million people who had lived under tyrannical regimes now live in freedom.

Disarmed Libya of its chemical, nuclear and biological WMD's without bribes or bloodshed.

Has been one of the strongest, if not THE strongest friend Israel has ever hand in the U.S. presidency.

Signed the LARGEST nuclear arms reduction in world history with Russia.

Prohibited putting U.S. troops under U.N. command.

Brought back our EP-3 intel plane and crew from China without any bribes or bloodshed.

Led the most extensive reorganization the Federal bureaucracy in over 50 years: After 9/11, condensed 20+ overlapping agencies and their intelligence sectors into one agency, the Department of Homeland Security.

Ordered each agency to draft a five-year plan to restructure itself, with fewer managers.

Killed the liberal ABA's unconstitutional role in vetting federal judges. The Senate is supposed to advise and consent, not the ABA.

Ordered Attorney General Ashcroft to formally notify the Supreme Court that the OFFICIAL U.S. government position on the 2nd Amendment is that it supports INDIVIDUAL rights to own firearms, and is NOT a Leftist-imagined "collective" right.