Recommended Reading:

Outsider views of US politics

Since John of Argghhh! is posting one outsider view of George Bush, I thought I would provide what I felt was a very balanced view of the presidency of George W. Bush from an outsider as well, the online version of The Economist magazine. It is worth reading the entire article. As an enticement, here is the final paragraph:

Tumultuous though it has been, and despite the passions it arouses, Mr Bush's first term should in the end be judged in the same measured way as most previous ones. It is a mixed bag: successes and failures must be set beside each other. And deciding whether Mr Bush deserves a second term calls for more than an appraisal of his own record: the American people will have to judge whether Mr Kerry, another mixture of good and bad, represents a better choice. At his convention in Boston, Mr Kerry made an effort to cast the Democratic Party in a new light. Mr Bush needs to attempt something similar in New York. More of the same just will not do.

It is true that Iraq has raised doubts about the doctrine of prevention and pre-emption. But the debate has shown that the alternative “rules for going to war” are, from America's viewpoint, far worse. This is the claim, particularly espoused by France and Germany, that, except in the case of actual attack or imminent threat, countries cannot use military force legitimately without the approval of the Security Council. No American president would ever accept, or has ever accepted, such an idea. If others insist that the alternative to unilateralism is the UN, America will stick with unilateralism.

Most important, the underlying rationale of Mr Bush's transformed policy has not really changed. This is that there is a huge gap in military power between America and everyone else, that the country has opportunities denied to anyone else and that traditional alliances are therefore useful rather than necessary. Iraq has shown that the exercise of American power is harder than the administration thought; but the exercise of power is still what matters most to Mr Bush. In that sense, his foreign policy is being refined, not retooled.

Mr Bush once campaigned as a proponent of a “humble” foreign policy. In practice, he has not provided one. On the domestic front, he has been equally surprising. And despite the narrowness of his mandate, he has proved as polarising at home as he is abroad. Consider, next, the peculiar character of the president's domestic conservatism.