Terror won't take 4 years off BY ANDREW GREELEY

[jbfam4]

http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel01.html
Terror won't take 4 years off

October 1, 2004

BY ANDREW GREELEY


Patently the people still believe that, although the president has messed up every other issue, he should be re-elected because he is a ''strong'' leader in the war on terror.

Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

Those who will vote Bush back into the White House this time -- without his having to steal the election -- will have only themselves to blame when terror strikes again and again and again in the next several years. The streets of America could easily become as unsafe as the streets of Israel, in substantial part for what America has done to the streets of Iraq.

If one looks at second terms in the White House since 1948, they have almost always been unpleasant experiences for the country. The Korean War smote Harry Truman in 1950. Lyndon Johnson was undone by Vietnam after 1964. Richard Nixon was forced out of the White House after 1972. Ronald Reagan's faculties notably deteriorated after 1984. Bill Clinton was impeached. In the last half-century, then, only Dwight Eisenhower experienced a relatively benign second term. Having sowed the wind in his first four years in office, Bush is likely to reap the whirlwind. Alas, so will the American people.

Americans have never dumped a wartime president, no matter how stupid or incompetent he may have been. They won't dump the present incumbent either.
And God help us all.

[aquart]

1. Well, that's damned depressing.

[glitch]

2. Can't go by history on this one - Americans never allowed USSC to select

a president before either. Besides, 9/11 changed everything.

"Americans have never dumped a wartime president..."

[KoKo]

3. Well....Lyndon Johnson had to "step down" from running.....so I guess

there's hope there.