"Mark Houlsby" wrote in message ...
Nick wrote:
Chapman billy wrote in
message news:MPG.1942c1cb1c37583e9896e2@news.
In article 20030528172953.01703.00000469@mb-
m05.aol.com, Mark Houlsby -remove)- says...
...
My two cents: the reasons *not* to give the present administration the
benefit of the doubt about *anything at all* are too numerous to list
here, but some of the main ones a
1) it was not democratically elected.
...
2) the president may have an IQ lower than any of his predecessors, and
is at least arguably *worse* than Warren Harding, who was the previous
holder of the distinction "worst ever US president"

Bush hasn't been in power long enough to assess his presidency.

Has Bush really 'been in power long enough to assess his presidency'?
That depends on one's perspective and purpose. It's too early for a
historian to write a definitive political biography. But President Bush
already has 'been in power long enough' to have begun his campaign for
reelection in 2004. Why would you suppose that it's still premature for
Americans to 'assess his presidency' when soon they will be expected to
decide whether or not to vote for him?

Indeed. My having written about GWB that he is: "...at least arguably
*worse* than Warren Harding..." was intended, specifically, to imply
that *notwithstanding* his having held the office of President for less
than a term he is *already* a contender for worst ever (which is quite a
negative achievement).

"In the issues of December 16, 2000, to November 10, 2001, we may have given
the impression that George W. Bush has been legally and duly elected president
of the United States. We now understand that this may have been incorrect,
and that the election result is still too close to call. The 'Economist'
apologizes for any inconvenience."
--The Economist (17 November 2001)

Dear Mr. Houlsby,

You may be interested in these comments by Eric Alterman (Ph.D. from Stanford
University in United States history), an American writer and media critic:

"The media impose a narrative structure on Election Day even narrower than
that for the campaign. It can be summed up in a single sentence: 'The system
works.'...The newscaster has not yet been born who hasn't felt compelled to
marvel aloud at the fact that America has a presidential election every four
years without the presence of tanks in the streets. The media have no back-up
plan in the case of elective dysfunction. The system 'works' whether it works
or not.

The conclusion to the election of 2000 presented the media with a set of
inassimilable challenges to its narrative, however; and these turned out to
be challenges that they were unprepared to meet. The Bush team understood
its task in a way the Gore team never did. It was able to construct a coherent
story and--just as important--stick to it, in a fashion that appealed to
reporters' need for narrative simplicity and coherence. This resulted in
coverage of the election calamity that was heavily biased on behalf of the
presumed winner, now-President George W. Bush, and a significant slighting--if
not outright denial--of the many pieces of the puzzle that could not somehow
be forced into the story of the triumph, once again, of American democracy....

Of course Gore won the popular vote by about 537000 votes, a slim margin to
be sure, but far larger than that enjoyed by either John Kennedy in 1960 or
Richard Nixon in 1968....Gore also won, without a doubt, a plurality of the
intended votes of Floridians on Election Day. Yet he did not manage to win
the election.... (pp. 175-6)

Any sensible analysis of the battle over Florida must keep in mind two essential
points: First, the actual vote was a statistical tie, well within the built-in
margin of error of any system of immediate measurement. Second, the Republicans
were always going to find a way to win, by whatever means turned out to be
necessary....

All of this is true even though more Floridians, unquestionably, went to the
polls intending to vote for Al Gore on Election Day than for George Bush.
Almost certainly, more legal votes were actually cast for Al Gore than for
Bush, although many of these were successfully disqualified by Republican
officials....According to journalist John Lantiqua, 'In all, some 200000
Floridians were either not permitted to vote in the November 7 election on
questionable or possibly illegal grounds, or saw their ballots discarded and
not counted. A large and disproportionate number were black.' At the end
of August 2002, the state of Florida agreed to settle a voter discrimination
lawsuit with the NAACP, instead of facing the prospect of attempting to prove
that Bush had been allowed to get his vote totals fair and square. Miami-Dade,
Broward, Leon, Volusia, and Duval counties settled earlier rather than face
trial.... (pp. 176-7)

But buried beneath the misleading headlines was the inescapable fact that Al
Gore was the genuine choice of a plurality of Florida's voters as well as that
of America's. As the AP report put it, 'In the review of all the state's
disputed ballots, Gore edged ahead under all six scenarios for counting all
undervotes and overvotes statewide.' In other words, he got more votes in
Florida than George Bush by almost every conceivable counting standard. Gore
won under a strict-counting scenario and he won under a loose-counting scenario.
He won if you counted 'hanging chads' and he won if you counted 'dimpled chads'.
He won if you counted a dimpled chad only in the presence of another dimpled
chad on the same ballot--the so-called 'Palm Beach' standard. He even won if
you counted only a fully punched chad. He won if you counted partially filled
ovals on an optical scan and he won if you counted only the fully filled ovals.
He won if you fairly counted the absentee ballots. No matter how you counted
it, if everyone who legally voted in Florida had had a chance to see their
vote counted, Al Gore was our president.

But by the time of the release of the report, the mainstream media had grown
so protective of President Bush's legitimacy that many were willing to tar as
crazy anyone who took the trouble to read the report carefully....Meanwhile,
CNN's Candy Crowley fell back on that old reliable, 'Maybe the best thing of
all is that messy feelings at the Florida ballot have only proved the strength
of our democracy...' In fact, had the Supreme Court not intervened for Bush,
it seems quite likely that Gore would have won the count despite his own side's
incompetence." (pp. 190-1)

--Eric Alterman (What Liberal Media?: the Truth about Bias and the News, 2003)

'The demagogue flatters the clown and finds fault with the sage.'
--Hugh Henry Brackenridge (Modern Chivalry)

'He who demands little gets it.'
--Ellen Glasgow (The Voice of the People)

--Nick