Newsweek: Bad Luck That Bush Won In 2000
I swear, the pomposity of these clowns over at Newsweek just boggles my mind at times:
Was there any more mind-boggling bit of historic bad luck than what happened after Election Day 2000, when those 537 votes in Florida wobbled, then stayed in George W. Bush’s column? Never mind what kind of president Al Gore would have been—he would have been adequate, I suppose, but so would have most Republicans—it is hard now to avoid the conclusion that Bush was precisely the wrong man at the wrong time. Perhaps Bush would have been OK fighting another kind of war, a Jacksonian Battle of New Orleans-type war. But at a moment in history when we faced the most subtle sort of global threat, when we needed not just a willingness to use military force but a leader of real brilliance—someone who would carefully study a little-understood enemy—we got a man who actually took pride in his lack of studiousness. No surprise: Bush never once presided over a grand-strategy session to divine the nature of Al Qaeda, and he ended up lumping Saddam and every Islamist insurgent and terrorist group with Osama bin Laden. He ensured that a tiny fringe group that had been hounded into Afghanistan with no place left to go—one that could have been wiped out had we focused on the task at hand—would spread worldwide and become a generational Islamist threat.
And at a time when we needed a world leader who understood the nuances of burden-sharing in the international system, we got a president who so badly wanted to be a cowboy and not his father (offending even some Texans: “all hat and no cattle” is the term they use down there) that he proudly declared he doesn’t “do nuance.” Bush stomped around huffily in his first term, talking loudly and carrying a big stick, in the process all but trashing a half century of carefully nurtured American prestige. No surprise: he alienated a world we desperately needed on our side, thus leaving America alone with all the burden and generations’ worth of bills to pay. Now we face two serious rising threats, North Korea and Iran. And having squandered our attention, resources and prestige on a trumped-up threat, Iraq, we are simply too weak and friendless to confront them as they should be. That’s what I call bad luck.
So, we’re just so “unlucky” to have George W. Bush at this moment in our history. Poor America. What a tragedy…
Puh-lease.
I’ve said many times in the past that things happen for a reason. I’m a big believer in fate, destiny, providence…whatever you want to call it. I firmly believe that things happen for a reason and people are born to be at a certain place, at a certain time, doing certain things that only they can do. My favorite saying (borrowing from Jurassic Park a little) is that “history will find a way”, meaning that providence will always find the right person at the right time for the right job.
For example, back in the 1930s, Winston Churchill was nearly killed by an automobile during a visit to the United States. By all accounts, he should have died. But he still had an important role to play, and I firmly believe he was spared for reason.
Just as it was no accident that Churchill survived and went on to become Prime Minister of Great Britain and fought Hitler, I don’t believe for a second that it was “bad luck” or an “accident” that George W. Bush is our President at this moment in history.
But to the left in this country, the election of George W. Bush was the worst thing (next to global warming) that could possibly happen to this country, and they still haven’t gotten over the fact that the robot Al Gore lost in 2000 and that Lurch John Kerry couldn’t beat him, either.
Update: I said this in the comments, but I think it bears repeating up here:
I said “things happen for a reason”. We may not know what that “reason” is at the moment, but given time, we will. I trust in the Almighty to do the right thing by mankind.
And I’m fully aware that the same things could be said of Hitler, too. He was nearly killed during WWI and at least once in WWII. Yes, it would have been better had that happened, but God, I believe, does things for a reason.
Now, why he would have a man like Hitler rise to power, I’m not sure. Maybe it was to teach us a lesson about absolute power, or that there is pure evil in the world. Maybe it was to teach us the lesson that we can stop evil before it starts (a lesson not learned in time to stop Hitler).
One of my favorite quotes from any movie is in “Oh, God”, with John Denver and George Burns. Denver asks “God” how he can allow all the suffering and misery in the world, and “God” replies “I don’t allow it. YOU do.”
Brian runs the website Iowa Voice, and is filling in for ST for a few days.