The only people who think GWB et al have been shifting goals are the morons who can’t grasp more than one goal in a list to start with.

I can see Fox news, Rove and Luntz gearing up — “yes — that’s why we went to war with Iraq (it has been difficult to decide on a reason that we can stick to, luckily no one seems to notice when we shift goals). We caused the climate change — oh, yes, and maybe a little bit of Arafat who held up the peace process to the point of turning down the extraordinarily fair offer from Israel in 2000 having finally decided to die — that might have contributed.”

See? Another Westerner.

Oh yeah. I see a wildcatter every time I watch Bush unscripted. Talk never brought in a well.

I have begun to suspect that I understand GWB rather better than most, certainly most in the MSM, not because of any special insight — not, of course, that I’ll object if someone else wants to say I’ve got some special insight — but because we’re near the same age, and grew up in the same cultural context. We grew up with Gene Autry, and Roy and Dale, and John Wayne, and The Virginian … and — well, I’ll tell you a story.

I went to grad school at Duke when Stanley Fish and his wife Jane Tompkins were running the English department, and because of various things, I got to have lots of friends in the English Department, and got to know Fish and Tompkins (and others in the department.)

While I was there, Jane Tompkins published a book on the Western novel, and wrote a lengthy introduction to Owen Wister’s The Virginian. She had a ton of good things to say, and I’d actually commend her book on Westerns, but she missed out on one thing: she really felt that the characters and the actions of the characters in novels like The Virginian were idealizations, imaginary. But I grew up in the West, on a cattle ranch, and as I’ve commented before, I’m descended from Indians and from a gradfather who changed residence precipitously, getting out of the Choctaw Nation just ahead of a posse. And I can tell you: Wister was writing a realistic novel.

Bush grew up internalizing something I didn’t have words for as a child. But there’s a fine saying about it: “Never complain, never explain.”

We will see if Abbas is just another Arafat or can actually become the father of a democratic Palestinian state that can take its role in the world as something other than the crazy adolescent criminal attacking little old women in the street.

Keep on killing the killers until the realize they arenít going to win. Then comes surrender and peace. Peace comes as a result of victory, not negotiation.

Is Abbas the one who sees this? Is Abbas the one who can act on this truth? I choose to hope.

“To seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”

Mail your entry to ‘contest@prospect.org’ with subject ’30-word’.

If Roger’s posting software will allow, this link should do it.

I’m kind of enjoying being able to say it’s me who is the liberal.

I’m serious about what has to happen at the top of the problem. But that doesn’t mean I know what tomorrow will bring, either.

I’d be happy to be wrong. Very happy indeed.

I think that all of us are operating in an information vacuum so profound that we don’t even recognise it.

A) We have been trained to think that we get important updates to our worldview on a daily basis. That’s a life habit – not a marketing ploy.

B) The People In Charge very rarely leave this misconception totally behind, even after years of experience at the pointy end learning how little charge they have over events.

C) The way this administration executes policy is machinelike. By that I mean that they have identified objectives, formulated plans, and gone about the business of getting things done.

Media opinion has been ignored. Frankly, the tactic of just going out and kicking the crap out of issues and allowing the accomplishments to speak for themselves worked well enough to establish “accountability” where it counts, in the election. Meanwhile, the Democrats whine and seethe and Howard Dean draws closer to the DNC chair.

D)Back up at B I mentioned The People In Charge; that label covers the top tier of our republic and beyond, from entertainment to media to politics to government. These are the people that can effect everyone else. Some of the PIC are incapable of anything beyond influence but blithely assume authority without blush.

Government almost always acts just the opposite; shy away, shy away from action but be ready with a sound bite or platitude.

This administration is so far from any semblance of that template I don’t think I can describe what I think is happening now- and has been happening for about three years.

Elected, resolved to be a uniter. Stabbed in the back by Kennedy.

We are attacked by al Qaeda, forced to acknowledge the existence of a lethal, global threat. Attempt to rally the nation. Election 2002, and that dream is f*cking DOA. No politics too base for Democrats to indulge in; no Democrats interested in associating themselves in ANY success that can remotely be attributed to the hated BUSH… even to the extent that they consciously prioritize defeating Bush over anything else.

I’m glad that the lines were drawn in 2002. Plenty of time for Bush to finally disabuse himself of any lingering doubts about the tools at hand to do the job…

All our discussions here are still influenced by what we think we know; what we have picked up over the last news cycle, tempered by our own filters and diligence in fact checking. We can only do what we can do.

Media has freedom to report. Government is constrained from interfering, but there’s nothing written about how comprehensive the government has to be in keeping media up to speed as long as there is no criminal intent. And I would propose that Media’s foot troops are secretly happy that their bosses are committed to taking down this administration and willing to spill oceans of ink and fill days of videotape toward that end. Why?

Because this administration has been in action in so many places and getting so much done for so long, the moment when the media could publicize the effort in harmful ways has passed. There’s no damage to be done to Bush by reporting that most of the goobers responsible for Blackhawk Down are all dead. Or by reminding anyone that most of the al Q varsity is behind wire or fertilizer. Nor by putting a figure on the obscene amount of cash taken out of the terror pipeline so far. We haven’t been attacked at home for many reasons…but Ridge’s Retards and our INS Joke Factory deserve a lot less credit than the Notes delivered to select countries late in September 2001.

I kid myself that I understand G.W. Bush, I know. I’m willing to bet that Assad, Rafsenjani, and Kim all wish they had never heard of him. Even more than our own domestic minority does. Lots more.

Apologies for length, of course, but the message to the world in the inaugural is just sinking in here.

We have a president. Now if we could just find a minority party….

Then we shall find out if we can live up to our words.

Perhaps it’s just because the days are short but I see the speech as a blank check. Actually, an unsigned blank check. Bush spoke of a generational committment on a proactive basis. I am rather uneasy with the concept of the US acting as guarantor of freedom for the world. I hope that the State of the Union clarifies the existence of some sort of plan to back the rhetoric of the Inaugural Address.

What do we do if (admittedly a big if) the students in Iran start dying for freedom in the belief that the US will be there to back them up? Or if Chinese dissidents believe that the Marines are just over the horizon, ready to help? If my memory hasn’t failed me, another Bush promised Kurds and Marsh Arabs help in defiance of a tyrant. That bit of unbacked rhetoric had a price that is still being paid in Iraq today (not to mention the horrifying price paid by the Kurds and Marsh Arabs initially).

I did not find this speech exceptional in any way. Kennedy addressed the same themes 44 years ago and the results, while generally satisfactory, cannot be regarded as unmixed.