I don't share your opinion that GWB's adminstration was a disaster.  I mean, one could look at any war we've been involved in and by looking at the first half, conclude that it was such a waste of money and resources.  The revolution didn't look too good in the begining and very simple mistakes were made.  The Union had tremendous losses in the first half of the Civil War.  Can you think of any war in which things went according to plan?  If the leaders of the nation adapt and fix the mistakes they've made, history remembers very little of the losses. 

He's definitely not on the top of my list of "best presidents" but I would not consider his presidency to be disasterous. 

I think history will be far kinder to GWB than popular opinion has been during his second term. Iraq may well wind up being democratized, and that alone will win him history points. Not too many U.S. Presidents have been responsible for successful democratic nation-building. Course, feeling confident that the job was a success will take time, and that is where Bushes' key weakness comes in.

He is, seemingly, an utter moron when it comes to acting and talking like a statesman. I know he thinks he is just being like a "common person" and talking simple straightforward direct and honest, but he is NOT a common person, he is a privileged child of an elite U.S. political familiy with lots of money from various enterprises. Bushes' main foible is acting and talking like a schmuck and not winning enough support for what were essentially reasonable and principle policies.

And here I turn my attention to Gore. I do not believe there is much evidence to suggest that, had Al Gore been Pres in 2001, that he would have done much of anything differently. I suspect that there are probably several readers here who cling to a fantasy that George Bush is Darth Vader incarnate, and that everything that has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 have been utter fiascos without any sound strategic basis, but I challenge you to show me proof that Gore would have taken a different tack. That would NOT include things Gore said post 2002, because most of the anti-war rhetoric these past years has been more anti-Bush rhetoric than anything else.

Go back to ca 1990s Clinton and Gore rhetoric about Iraq, and terrorism and also to their actions and inactions vis a vis foreign security threats. If you do so, you will find that these two jokers were a couple of warmongers who preferred to use saturation bombing to putting American boots on the ground. While the latter may (with sufficient volume) force a foe to surrender, it will do so at a high cost in "collateral damage." Based on this, as well as ever-present rhetoric in the media about fears of Ba'athist "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (which I'm sure most of you have conveniently forgotten) in the late 1990s and up through 2001, I do not believe Gore would have done anything differently.

Had Gore been in charge of the country 2000 to 2004 it would have been the partisan RIGHT who would have been taking pot-shots at his every gaff, second-guessing his every decision, pointing out every mistake, tallying up with a macabre glee every "wasted" casualty, applauding when he made undeniable mistakes that undermined his prospects of gaining a second term, and all the while engaging in the cowardly rhetoric of "We support our troops; we do not support an unnecessary war"  . . . give diplomacy a chance . . . etc., etc.

This is the idiocy of partisanism. What an opponent says automatically becomes "wrong" as long as there is any perceived hope that it can somehow be spun as having been stupid, or malfeasant on the part of one's rival. Instead of ideas and facts guiding what people say they believe and portray themselves as doing in policy and procedures, the predecent state of one's opponents stated believes, policies and procedures have become the mirror in oppposition to which the two parties are constantly redefining themselves.

In sum, had Gore won, the operations in Afghanistan probably would not have been much different at all, and there might also have been operations in East Africa. Iraq is a bit more speculative, but given the steeped rivalry that existed between Clinton/Gore and Hussein, and the number of times the Clinton/Gore regime took military or diplomatic embargo action against the Hussein regime and spoke out about their malice, I also think that Hussein's bravado and taunting following 9/11 would similarly have resulted in some form of military action against Iraq by a Gore regime in 2000 to 2004.

On presidential elections, I tend to be surprised at how often the main 2 guys are bafoons compared to so many who *could* have made it to the top spot of either of the 2 big parties.  I vote my conscience, which means in that case, I often don't vote for either guy for President.  I have voted for both my current state senators, a democrat and a republican.  I find that most people follow with the masses on most topics, and following your party lines and associating yourself fervently with it, seems to be the norm, IMO.

Scip, do you think a newer 3rd party will rise in the 1/2-near future, or do you think we are 'stuck' with our current system of 2 major parties and few to none others ever are elected in any office anywhere in the U.S?

Indeed, I'm not even so sure it is the fact of a two-party dominance in American life that accounts for the perennial, and seemingly worsening foibles of our nations political life. I think it is a far more insidious force: mass media.

Have a read of some mid 19th century newspapers. Have a read of the Stephen-Douglas debates. Read Uncle Tom's Cabin, Walden, and many MANY other 19th century and early 20th century written works that were powerful, thought-provoking, and important political commentaries. Many of these essayist, speechwriters, thinkers, were engaged in what Journalists are supposed to be doing: informing, provoking debate, playing Devil's Advocate, acting as a neutral third party presenting info. These tones of rhetoric no longer carry any momentum in our globalized, fiber-optic-saturated, high-speed video feed, pic-byte dominated world. It is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, but modern mass media has made a picture worth 100,000 words, and millions of dollars. Messages have gotten more and more terse, encoded, referential to secondary or even tertiary meaning sets. By which I mean: instead of the little bit of language used in "news" media being literal statements in English, they are quite often turns of phrase whose deeper meanings, implications, and perhaps double-meanings can only be appreciated by being "in-the-know," i.e., by learning what is being said at any given time. Like gossipy housewives who can communicate what would otherwise take 5 sentences in only two words because the two words used are referential to the information in the five sentences which has already been discussed, our news media has stopped laying it all out for us, and instead gives us sound bytes, accompanied by graphics flashing by at high-speed.

In short, the actual substance of news has diminished, even while our saturation in it, its global reach, and its ability to mesmerize with fancy imagery, expensive sets, highly-select talking heads, etc., have all increased exponentially.

Have a look at 1950s news announcers. They are not the same breed of plastic creature, specially-bred for the purpose of presenting a particular image to an audience, they were newsmen who were the pioneers of broadcast journalism. The facts of 30 or 40 years of competitive broadcast journalism have made it into primarily entertainment. The primary purpose is no longer to inform and act as a "Free Press," but simply to transfix, to beguile and to capture a few percentage points of additional viewers whose zombie-like attention will garner a few extra millions of dollars in sales for the advertising sponsors.

If we had not been taken over by media, which exists to serve our own voyeurism, a system dominated by two parties might not be that bad a thing. But with so much at stake, and a fickle, unpredictable, and somewhat uncontrollable media holding both parties (and the people) hostage, the impetus to compete against the other in more and more simplified and cartoonish ways is heightened. A politician like Abe Lincoln or even FDR could NEVER get elected today for the simple reason of the media. It would be easy to blame the degeneracy of the American political scene on the powerhungry in the two parties, but I just don't think that that is correct. It has more to do with both sides doing whatever they can to gain or retain a competitive edge on a new playing field, a field that is now dominated by globalized mass media.

I saw something on CNN about a week ago where the title was, "Should Obama start going negative?" or something similar.  Doesn't that imply that he has not gone negative at all?  Do you think McCain would agree?  Darn media bias.  I think they are all biased.

They talk about judicial legistlating from the bench... what about reporting and attempting to sway your audience to your preferred views?  Thats not as bad as the judges, probably, but will influence people far more people than most judges ever will.