Can Any Candidate Clean Up Bush's Massive Post 9/11 Mess?
By Andrew J. Bacevich, Tomdispatch.com. Posted September 11, 2008.

The squandering of vast resources after 9/11 and our slide toward debt and dependency pose a greater threat to the U.S. than Osama bin Laden ever did.

http://www.alternet.org/audits/98339/?page=1

Can anyone be surprised that, once again, the attacks of 9/11/01 were reflexively ground zero for embattled Republicans? George W. Bush led the way at the Republican National Convention, saying of John McCain, "We need a president who understands the lessons of September 11, 2001." In his convention keynote address, Rudy Giuliani followed suit, zapping Obama and his supporters this way: "The Democrats rarely mentioned the attacks of September 11. They are in a state of denial about the threat that faces us now and in the future." Post-convention, it's evidently time to assure the nation that Sarah Palin is just the pit bull to handle the next 9/11.

An excellent president should have charisma and rally the people to achieve positive agenda. There are some believer's in religious dogma that are jealous of objective accomplishments as they are left out and taken advantage of. We can never be free to enjoy the hard work of motivated society unless we look at the big picture as other's look at us. We have to include all peoples of the world to have opportunities to pursue happiness. There no defense system or military security that will stop revenge. Understanding and willingness to discuss openly the facts of world peace without material gain as the goal is the only way to clean up the mess.

I'm voting no.  I don't think people understand how bad some of this stuff has got under Bush, and how bad off we really are.

Quote from: tekla on September 11, 2008, 11:03:20 AM
I'm voting no.  I don't think people understand how bad some of this stuff has got under Bush, and how bad off we really are.

I would also say no and I agree about the dismal state of the nation. It's amazing to me how people can be so deep in denial about how things are going. But, a lot of people love indulging in their "inner ostrich".

For sure on the deep denial going on.

IMO whoever gets elected has a gigantic mess to clean up from Bush, and they'll probably get blamed for some of the mess that they can't clean up. Of course, certain candidates are likely to just make more mess, and things could get so bad that it'd make Bush look good. Oy! 

Z

The anti-Roosevelt law on succession has pretty much confined American politics to 8 years at most. Inevitably the clean-up after someone like Dick/Dubya means that the successor has all the chickens come home to roost.

Trust me whoever wins is going to find out some very uncomfortable truths between November and January as they get the briefings. And also trust me, the briefings will not get to the worst of it. Whichever one it will be will discover the worst truths between January and the following January and then have to do the Dutch-Boy routine to prepare for getting re-elected.

The system may have been fine for an isolated frontier society located on the Atlantic coast with howling wilderness beyond it for 3000 miles. Something on the order of a parliamentary system that requires coalitions to "rule" seems much more rational these days.

No wonder we've been taught to see the "Founders" as demi-gods who brought the plan down from God's throne. The American system has been berry-good for the gentically rich and blessed w/out much way to check the results afforded to anyone else much at all.

Nichole 

It will take more than 4 years to fix all this, it will take more than 8 years to fix all this, I suspect it will take more than a decade to really fix all this.

Twenty-five or more years and in that while we have a possibility of 6 separate and unprepared and very different administrations taking charge of the country.

American policy internal and external has no continuity to speak of, and at most eight years. I find that problematic.

Nichole

America can still be fixed, but politicians, by nature, are incapable of doing so.  They all want to spend more money when there's no money left.  America's time as a first-world nation is over - and the rest of the world is laughing at us.

Quote from: Nephie on September 12, 2008, 09:56:29 AM
America can still be fixed, but politicians, by nature, are incapable of doing so.  They all want to spend more money when there's no money left.  America's time as a first-world nation is over - and the rest of the world is laughing at us.

Hope you have a huge lift and some huge wrenches and drills!! >

But I also really do hope that as well. I don't give a hoot about being a nation-state laughingstock, I'd just like to see some sane humanistic and consistent change and a foreign policy that actually looks at the world realistically instead of being re-warmed neocon pipe-dreams about controlling others and making American "interests" paarmount in the name or "morality."

If we could simply show a truly pluralistic social/cultural face a lot of the laughter would probably stop and if we were reliable as anything but the world's most violent (invasion, bombing, bullying, A-bombs used) nation-state we might actually be able to have all that "moral" influence that those jerks at Weekly Standard spout and haven't a clue how to be "moral" at all.

Nichole

I don't care about "national greatness", or "glory", or any of that neo-imperial PNAC madness - I just want a peaceful, prosperous place where I can live my life, and let other people live theirs.  If foreigners want to laugh at that, then they can be my guest.  What I can't stand is how Americans are destroying themselves while the rest of the world giggles (or quivers in fear, depending on whether the offending region has been "liberated").

More that anything, I'm just so tired of opening the newspaper and seeing that the government is somehow involved in every single article, column, letter, and op-ed.  America's become a nation of credulous state worshippers, where people no longer distinguish government and society.  Mussolini would be proud.