Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital
Call it a reinforced closet. It might very well be that he is afraid that they get him because he knows he's one of them...Crossroads Inc. wrote:I mean, dear god, blast proof windows because you are afraid of militant homos???
He came damned close to losing at it was, in an election where security against terrorists was the top thing on American minds according to the polls. So I wouldn't be surprised.JME2 wrote:Yeah, 9/11 remains the big What If of the Dubya debacle alongside the Supreme Court decision; How would his administration have fared if the attacks hadn't been carried out.
Personally, I'd like to think he'd had been given the boot in 2004 and we could have avoided this insanity.
In itself this article won't make much of a dent because it's a news article. It can't make anyone do anything. But. [thinks]LaCroix wrote:Call it a reinforced closet. It might very well be that he is afraid that they get him because he knows he's one of them...Crossroads Inc. wrote:I mean, dear god, blast proof windows because you are afraid of militant homos???
Any idea what impact this article will have on Fox? Are they still capable of learning and changing their way, or is that ship already too far out of the harbour? Given the new info on the chairman, I doubt that this could happen.
I don't know if I remember it as a train wreck. I remember disagreeing strongly about their position on stem cells, because it was based on faulty science. I knew they were going to get one, maybe two conservatives on the Supreme Court, which would probably knock it a bit to the right for a decade or so, which I thought (at the time) would be annoying. I thought their obsession with missile defense was stupid. But honestly most people figured the recession they were going to have to deal with right out the gate was going to cost them in the mid-terms and there was a very good chance he was going to be a mostly ineffective, non-entity single term President. He wasn't even going to be best single term President with the last name Bush.lance wrote:I recall the Bush presidency was being seen as a train wreck for about 3 or 4 months before 9-11.
Yeah, so close.Simon_Jester wrote:He came damned close to losing at it was, in an election where security against terrorists was the top thing on American minds according to the polls. So I wouldn't be surprised.
A lot of people in my family, especially my mother, fall into this category. She wasn't really underestimating the determination of the Iraqis, though. She knew that there would be an insurgency. Her mistake was thinking that since she realized this that the administration must have been planning for it, too. Especially since Bush had a lot of people like Cheney and Powell working for him who had a lot of experience in middle eastern political affairs while working for Bush Sr or Clinton.Simon_Jester wrote:Some of them overestimated the degree to which there was a smart strategy behind the Iraq War, one with a real chance of long-term success that would bring peace and democracy to the region. On that basis, I'd argue that the worst they were guilty of was underestimating the determination of Arabs not to be ruled by foreigners. Better men than I have made the same mistake.
For reasons of my own I call them "Den Beste Republicans," and as a general rule I do respect them; if the Republican Party were what they'd thought it was in those days, we'd be a happier and better country today.Civil War Man wrote:A lot of people in my family, especially my mother, fall into this category. She wasn't really underestimating the determination of the Iraqis, though. She knew that there would be an insurgency. Her mistake was thinking that since she realized this that the administration must have been planning for it, too. Especially since Bush had a lot of people like Cheney and Powell working for him who had a lot of experience in middle eastern political affairs while working for Bush Sr or Clinton.Simon_Jester wrote:Some of them overestimated the degree to which there was a smart strategy behind the Iraq War, one with a real chance of long-term success that would bring peace and democracy to the region. On that basis, I'd argue that the worst they were guilty of was underestimating the determination of Arabs not to be ruled by foreigners. Better men than I have made the same mistake.
How long it took for that to happen varies- as is natural; human beings will write off incidents that ought to shake their faith in the competence of their leaders a certain percentage of the time. Most of the ones I respect have already (long since) had the scales fall from their eyes by now, but I don't fault them for trusting the Bush administration to have a workable plan in 2004.Of course, by 2004 we were neck deep in the Abu Ghraib scandal, and so when the election rolled around her belief that the administration knew what they were doing, or that the US was in the right for deposing Saddam, had already been destroyed.
Fair enough. That was a generalization on my part.Simon_Jester wrote:snip
3 or 4 months before 9-11 Bush had only been President for 4 or 5 months. That's hardly enough time to call his presidency as "train wreck" at that point. There was a fiasco with his election in the first place, given the Florida voting controversy so perhaps that is what you were recalling.lance wrote:I recall the Bush presidency was being seen as a train wreck for about 3 or 4 months before 9-11.
To elaborate a bit, the problem with Kerry was that he didn't seem to have any real conviction. He had garnered the reputation as a flip-flopper, or a political opportunist - not things to be admired in someone who you want to make the right decision, not neccessarily the most popular one. During the debates I seem to recall an instance where when asked about using the military in the defense of the American people, he responded by, and I'm paraphrasing, that "it had to be done in a way that passed an international test" - a line that Bush immediately jumped on saying "You go to war when American people are threatened". It made it appear as though Kerry would be unable or unwilling to act if the end result weren't politically advantageous. It basically came back to an element of trust. The majority of American people did not trust Kerry as President. I happen to think that if Gore had run again he very well could have beaten Bush.Simon_Jester wrote:I try to avoid defining "intelligent" as "thinks enough like me to agree with my politics." There are people I sincerely respect who, for varying reasons, thought Bush would make a pretty good president in 2004.
Some of them believed, on a fundamental axiomatic level, that a fertilized embryo is human, and are single-issue abortion voters (more or less). I can argue with the rights and wrongs of that position, as can you and probably anyone on this forum, but I can't argue with the conclusion giving the starting assumption. If you really believe that, then pretty much anything short of "vote National Socialist!" looks like an appealing alternative to "vote pro-abortion!"
Some of them overestimated the degree to which there was a smart strategy behind the Iraq War, one with a real chance of long-term success that would bring peace and democracy to the region. On that basis, I'd argue that the worst they were guilty of was underestimating the determination of Arabs not to be ruled by foreigners. Better men than I have made the same mistake.
Some of them thought Kerry didn't have much (if any) more political forcefulness to him than Bush; these people had drunk a certain amount of electoral Kool-Aid. But not that much: a lot of Americans were looking for decisiveness and force of will, and Kerry never managed to make the case that he had it.
But this was 2004; there was more room for people who didn't know what to expect from having a far-right "decider" in office, one hellbent on remaking America in his image. And in all fairness Bush, for all his faults, wasn't that man- there were limits on what he was willing to push for, and if he were as far to the right as the Overton window ran in the US we would have a lot fewer problems at the moment. The Tea Party might produce such a candidate some day, a real "great decider" of the anarcho-corporatist right wing... but Bush wasn't him.
And in the final analysis, in 2004 the Democrats committed the grave tactical blunder of running a president who didn't look like a quasi-typical American. If you're going to do that, your candidate will stand out, and people will look at him and wonder "Who is this guy?" instead of filling in the blanks on their mental map of his character. And having people stop and wonder "Who is this guy? I don't understand him" about your candidate is only all right if they can lead.
Obama had both of those- he really does look like America to a lot of Americans (those not choked and blinded by racism), and he does have the ability to rally the troops. Say what you will about his policies disappointing you, but his ability to organize a movement of people who really truly wanted him in charge, as opposed to just wanting to deny the office to the other guy, cannot be denied.
But Kerry's credentials as a commoner were never very good, he wasn't good at creating the illusion of commoner-credentials, and he wasn't all that good at rallying people to his banner. He had a problem with being wooden even before the Republican campaign machine got through with him.
And so Kerry only almost won- a failure that should have surprised no one and left no one feeling especially betrayed by "the American people." There is some minimum standard of political savvy to be expected of people before we can say they 'deserve' to win an election; the exact level of the standard varies but it's always there. Kerry, in the context of 2004, didn't really pass the standard in my opinion.
And of course, McCain appeared as a flip-flopper himself after going from a staunchly moderate Republican into the viper's nest.TheHammer wrote:Strangely enough, roles were reversed in the 2008 election where it was Obama boldly proclaiming that he'd go into Pakistan after Bin Laden given actionable intelligence (a statement he obviously followed up on), where McCain appeared to be somewhat weak willed, with his own "international test" response saying that it had to be approved with Pakistan etc.
No, I it had to do with deregulating something/s poisonous/toxic and O'reilly saying something like -what does president bush have to do to convince us that he's not trying to kill us. I think their were a couple other things like amnesty for illegals.TheHammer wrote:3 or 4 months before 9-11 Bush had only been President for 4 or 5 months. That's hardly enough time to call his presidency as "train wreck" at that point. There was a fiasco with his election in the first place, given the Florida voting controversy so perhaps that is what you were recalling.lance wrote:I recall the Bush presidency was being seen as a train wreck for about 3 or 4 months before 9-11.
Indeed... In many ways, McCain mirrored Kerry's mistakes. It seemed as though both of them were trying way too hard to please everyone, and by doing so ended up pleasing no one. McCain wanted to appear to be "different from Bush", while simultaneously not alienating Bush supporters in his own party. Because of that, he lost a bit of himself. His other gaffes such as the Palin selection, "suspending his campaign to combat the wallstreet financial crisis" etc were nails in a coffin he built for himself.JME2 wrote:And of course, McCain appeared as a flip-flopper himself after going from a staunchly moderate Republican into the viper's nest.TheHammer wrote:Strangely enough, roles were reversed in the 2008 election where it was Obama boldly proclaiming that he'd go into Pakistan after Bin Laden given actionable intelligence (a statement he obviously followed up on), where McCain appeared to be somewhat weak willed, with his own "international test" response saying that it had to be approved with Pakistan etc.
The tough guys do run the show, for better or worse.CaptHawkeye wrote:You know all of the fallout from Bush and Kerry's talks on war, like the reasoning for hostilities and action really just go to reveal the incredibly fucked up perception of war most Americans have. They view international politics like it's the WWE, where the tough guys run the show.
QEDTheHammer wrote:The tough guys do run the show, for better or worse.CaptHawkeye wrote:You know all of the fallout from Bush and Kerry's talks on war, like the reasoning for hostilities and action really just go to reveal the incredibly fucked up perception of war most Americans have. They view international politics like it's the WWE, where the tough guys run the show.
