Reply #139: I think we have had 6 years of bad government and bad policy

[theboss]

And I think it's probably going to require about ten to fifteen years to clear it up.

But I also have a general sense of faith in the stability and flexibility of the Constitution. It's taken a lot of hits over the years and it bounces back. (I mean, I simpy cannot accept the notion that this is the most dangerous time in our nation's history when I know about the War of 1812, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Great Depression, and so on and so forth).

What annoys me about this site is the fact that so many people seem to believe that history began on Dec. 12, 2000. This country existed 225 years prior to that.

This is what I think happened since 9/11/01: not a lot of good. We have an administration that is overmatched by policy and overwhelmed by a narrow worldview that took advantage of a devastating event. I agreed with the invasion of Afghanistan. I disagreed with the invasion of Iraq, mainly because I knew that the aftermath would be a disaster - which has occurred. A more competent administration may have been able to make chicken salad out of Iraq; this one simply cannot. I certainly don't like the encroachments on civil liberties that have taken place under this administration and feel bound by duty to fight them as best I can. (I also don't feel - as a lot of others do here - that these encroachments have dealt a death blow to democracy. Again, I look to history. We survived the Alien and Sedition Acts, we survived the lifting of habeus corpus under Lincoln, we survived Jim Crow...I think we shall ultimately survive this).

My main problem with the Bush Administration is that it is run by idealists. And I fear idealists. I much prefer people governed by RealPolitik - who don't "wish" ideas into being that deal in the world of facts. To be totally honest, what this administration needs is a few Henry Kissingers.