Lincoln was in despair before his second election to the presidency. Most people felt the mood in the North had turned against the war. The Democrats, many of whom opposed the liberation of the oppressed in the South, had finally gotten sober and were running a general, supposedly more popular with the troops than Lincoln, for president. The Republican party? It had no choice but to support Lincoln, but not everyone liked it. One wing of the party found him too moderate and others too little concerned about meeting their private political objectives.
He was a President that the big city papers, especially the New York Times, often viewed as an inadequate leader with out a well thought out policy. His speeches were often considered embarrassing failures, lacking the stem winding and literary elegance the times demanded.
Then Lincoln won the war and suddenly everyone knew that he was great.
Once again, the nation has a war time President facing discontent. Howard Fineman recently pined for Clinton noting that Clinton knows how to explain french fry production. One could almost feel his sigh as he longed for a man who could engage us for hours in the trivial or in his own personal life. Clinton could explain the world to us and Fineman is right about Clinton’s power in the world of words.
Clinton was simply impotent in that world.
Bush has set a course for victory that will transform the world for a generation and he is well on his way to success. Iraq is not bursting into Civil War. The religious leaders know they need to unite. Our armed forces are not falling apart. . . enlistment remains high. While Clinton looks into the rear view mirror, checking on himself and Europe, Bush is making new allies with rising nations such as India. Bush is looking ahead to the future on the Pacific rim. This cowboy Bush is a Western man and he understands the future is in the Pacific. He will secure us friends in that region from Mongolia to South Korea to New Delhi that will give us powerful allies for decades to come.
Most important, he will have built a model republic in Iraq that will transform the Middle East because it is there. What will make it fail? Civil War? Who will lead it? Terrorists? Terrorists alone cannot overthrow a government and they will eventually unite the common folk in horror against their “cause.” Iran? The young people of that nation will soon long to emulate a prosperous neighbor. Twenty-first century Iraq will have more appeal to the young of Iran than the sixteenth century vision of their own tyrants.
When the dominos of democracy begin to fall across the Middle East it will be George Bush’s victory, because he stayed the course. When Israel is safe with secure borders, it will be because Bush had a plan and despite the imperfect implementation that will always plague any great vision he saw it to the end.
The mistake his opponents make is that the President will be in office for more than two more years whatever they do. In wartime, Bush will be able to act on the chief issue of our time to the very end of his term. His long struggle with Iran, Iraq, and North Korea and his goal of transforming them from an Axis of Evil to allies does not require popularity. There is little political likely hood that even his foes are so reckless to cut off the money the troops need and so Bush will be able to pursue his course to the end.
Our media culture never liked Bush and now, as they grow with all second acts, they are tired of him. The public also grows weary and wishes the sacrifice, the pain of losing our best, would end. We are irritated by the petty mistakes that by a second term add up. Bush has called us to greatness and we are tired of the trumpets. We wish we could rest, even though we know we cannot. It costs us nothing to blame the one who keeps calling us to battle to a pollster. It is easy to gripe and moan, but the vast majority of Americans will not turn back. Just as in the Civil War, only the Republican Party offers victory and Americans will not accept less.
In the end, it will not be Bush that the Democrats face in 2008. Make no mistake some other Republican, equally committed to seeing Bush’s world come to pass, will get the nomination, but he or she will be a fresh face. This candidate will have made no gaffes and will have new energy, but Bush will have locked him into a course that he will not even try to escape. He will adjust the rudder, but the direction is set. Against such a person, the Democrats will fracture between the insanity of those who wish our defeat and the responsible wing of the party which also will do as Bush is doing but with greater modifications. Bush has committed this nation to a long task that no responsible figure, not Hilary Clinton and not Joe Lieberman, could escape. Nobody more radical can win.
The next President will simply continue the Bush agenda: republics in the Middle East, destruction of terrorist cells globally, and friendship with India and Asia.
And at some point the nation will remember that for six years and counting there has not been a major terrorist attack on the nation since 9/11. Bush kept us safe, far safer than any predicted. Committees can go on writing reports of this failure of this or that department, but they cannot hide the fact that Bush and his government has been competent enough to keep us safe.
Bin Laden has failed, utterly failed, to hit the United States again since 9/11. Even if he lands a blow soon, six years of impotence cannot be an accident. George W. Bush cannot please Howard Fineman with long discussions on the economics of the french fry, but he has kept us safe from terror.
The chief difference between Bush and Lincoln when examining their time of troubles before their final victory is that Bush has already won his second term. He need only stay the course and get Iraq to stability to become a Rushmore president. They say that less than forty percent still support the President. I can understand that. We are all tired. But polls don’t show the Democrats winning in 2008 against the two leading Republicans. Why? We are tired, but we are not stupid. We will gripe at our leaders, like all good Americans, but we are not willing to fail. The next President, like the next Congress, will continue the fight that Bush has begun so well and, just as in all our great wars, the United States will win.
One day, when central Iraq looks like the Northern third does now (and do not think the Iranian Kurds do not know what Bush has done for their Iraqi brethren), then a very hard truth will occur to world.
George Bush will have led his armed forces to victory. He will have not blinked or talked himself into a new policy every poll. He will have won.
After Appomatox, everyone remembered that they had always supported Lincoln, just as (I am told) every Steelers fan now recalls prophesying the triumph of their team in the middle of the season when the playoffs looked hopeless. Such fans, such supporters, are welcome to the party. It is human nature to lose hope in tough times and then to forget that loss when those times change. Nobody would judge such folk harshly, but better still to have been more a simple human, to have been a civilized man. It is the nature of a civilized man to remain undeterred by obstacles in pursuit of his great goals.
There are forty percent, we are told, of such men and women in this war. Aren’t you glad that we can always tell our children that we were in that forty percent and know it is the truth? When we look up at Rushmore and see George W. Bush there, wouldn’t you be glad that before victory was obvious to even a Democrat you saw it coming? These are good days to support the President!