When you get inside the margin of state-mandated recounts, hanging chads, and outrage over Secretaries of State, the larger voting population becomes suspicious because in those instances, they have every reason to suspect that the final tally rigged by one side or another. The voters are not interested in following every twist and turn in the legal machinations, and what both sides do to a large extent is hate the system that brought all the pain and drew out the process.

Keep it up for a few cycles and people start calling for much more authoritarian forms of government, just to get some clarity in their lives. At least they’ll know who to support.

We’re on the road to that right now.

Contractors, however… they might not be so lucky…

As far as Penetta messing with DOD intel… um… no.

With Gates at the Pentagon for another year atleast… the DNI and the DCI won’t mess with the Pentagon. In reality… the SECDEF can tell the DNI or DCI to go spit in the wind…. They are both cabinet secritaries, equal under the POTUS… (only when the POTUS favors one over the other does he have diminished power)

However, “people like Valeri Plame” are so entrenched within the bureaucracy, that barring retirement, they’ll still be there to undermine the next President Bush.

I’m pretty far from being even a basic Bush supporter–frankly, I never voted for the guy– but I agree with many of the things he has done, especially free trade and Africa, both of which could pay massive dividends down the road. I fear greatly for the future of our free trade efforts under Obama, though I hope I am surprised.

I’ve also come to see that Bush, personally, is a decent man, certainly exponentially better than President Clinton ever dreamed of being. Voicing this opinion in certain bars in Chicago has caused some funny looks among my more liberal drinking pals.

I was a big fan of the J. Roberts appointment–might not agree with all the Justice believes, but he is a smart, perhaps brilliant man with deep respect for the Constitution–though I, too, wish Bush had been able to find a better, tougher way to deal with N. Korea, as our policy has long been a joke.

They’ll be sorely needed to fill the void left by a rudderless CIA who clearly has the propensity to avoid risk at all cost.

There are some Democrats reading this who are indignant at that thought. The partisan part of me approves of that indignation.

Moe

PS: And then there’s India to consider… and, honestly, the policy ramifications of strengthening ties with that nation will far overshadow the straightforward liberation and reasonably straightforward temporary occupation of a country of twenty million people.

Lovely bit of writing here, Mr. Emanuel.

Since then, his stock on the Right has increased somewhat.

I imagine that, a decade hence, Democrats will be explaining that, apart from the Iraq thing, Bush wasn’t that bad.

And Republicans will look back on him with a much more jaundiced eye.

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