Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 11/16/05 10:06 am:
I forgot to mention the few Republican Senators who saw through the dangerous chirade of yesterday's vote.

Bunning, Burr, Chambliss, Coburn, DeMint, Graham, Inhofe, Isakson, Kyl, McCain, Sessions, Thune, and Vitter.

At least they understand that it is not wise to tip your hand to the enemy.

Clarification/Follow-up by excon on 11/16/05 11:50 am:

Hello again, El:

Yeah....... Marilyn Monroe...... I could get lost in a body like that. Yessssir. She'd be worth the whole farm.

I loved JFK for a lot of things - especially his taste in wimin.

excon

Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 11/16/05 12:09 pm:
Tom,

In August, we hit the lowest level of unemployment since August 2001 at 4.9%. In September 2001, we of course had the WTC attack, which drove unemployment into the high fives and low sixes.

In September 2005, unemployment jumped to 5.1% due to Katerina. But then in October unemployment started going back down again, decreasing to 5.0%.

I suspect we'll see unemployment either stay at 5.0% or decrease to 4.9% again for November. I also suspect that this trend will be completely ignored by the MSM.

Elliot

Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 11/16/05 12:10 pm:
Excon,

Can't fault you there.

Elliot

Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 11/16/05 1:09 pm:
to illustrate my point about Truman David Cloud at The American Enterprise writes this :

“I wonder how well you have been sleeping these last nights? Mothers and fathers all over our beloved land are spending sleepless nights worrying again over their boys being sent to fight wars on foreign soil—wars that are no concern of ours.”

—Letter to the President from the parent of a U.S. soldier





Talk about discouraging. All year long the negative numbers about the war rolled in like the tide. The President’s approval rating in the Gallup poll bottomed out at 23 percent. Another poll showed that 43 percent of Americans thought it was a mistake to have entered the war. The enthusiasm from early victories quickly evaporated.



Opposition party members spared no effort in blasting the President and his Administration. One senator called the Secretary of Defense a “living lie,” and another called for the Secretary’s resignation. The most bombastic senator went so far as to call the Secretary a traitor. Another senator began using the President’s name when referring to the war, and his intention wasn’t to honor the Commander in Chief.



Newspapers and magazines also joined the frenzy. A New York Times editorial characterized the Administration’s war misjudgments “a colossal military blunder.” A front-page editorial in the Chicago Tribune called for immediate impeachment proceedings against the President. Time said he was “responsible for one of the worst military disasters in history.”



The pessimism was not confined to the opposition. Members of the President’s own Administration shared the negative mood. His Secretary of Defense conceded, “We were at our lowest point.” The British Prime Minister believed that the conflict should be abandoned in order to focus resources on protecting Europe. The British leader flew to Washington to lecture the American leader on how to run the conflict after the President performed badly at a news conference.



Finally, in a severe blow to the President’s pride, his party suffered badly in the off-year elections of his second term. Only 42 percent of the vote went to his party, their Senate majority went from 12 seats to 2, and the margin in the House declined from 17 to 12.



Now wait a minute…aren’t the off-year elections next November? You got me.



The preceding information is not about President Bush and the war in Iraq. It’s about Harry Truman and Korea, and the information was culled from David McCullough’s masterful biography, Truman. This is the same Harry Truman who is now consistently ranked amongst the best presidents in our history. Most rankings place him in the category of “near great,” ahead of such luminaries as Monroe, Madison, and John Adams.



The letter quoted above was typical of the mail Truman received, as his letters ran 20-1 against the war. The term “Truman’s War,” coined by Nebraska Republican Kenneth Wherry, became an epithet. “To err is Truman” was a clever saying of the time. George C. Marshall, Truman’s Secretary of Defense, was vilified by the right wing and singled out for special abuse by Joseph McCarthy. When he announced that he would not run in 1952, virtually no one—including Democrats—was sorry to see Truman go.



But a funny thing happened after Truman left office. Historians and the public began to realize the importance of what he had done in standing up militarily to Communism in Asia. It is frightening to think what would have happened if Truman had heeded British leader Clement Atlee’s call to forsake Asia in order to safeguard Europe. With Korea gone and China already lost to the communists, the defense of Japan might have been impossible. Imagine the hardworking, industrialized Japanese as part of the Soviet or Chinese sphere.



As one looks at the falling poll numbers of George Bush, they are eerily similar to Harry Truman’s—and the criticism is nearly the same. At the time of his Presidency, Truman was little appreciated, and most agreed that anyone could have better handled the Korean matter. But as time has passed, his actions in Korea have gained wide acclaim as the proper use of force to contain Communist aggression.



The history is not yet written on the Presidency of George W. Bush. Ultimately, he will be judged on the success, or failure, of the operation in Iraq. If twenty years hence a functioning democracy is in place in Iraq, and the nation serves as an alternative to the apocalyptic visions of the Islamofascists, then history will look kindly on his Administration. Contrary to the words of Ted Kennedy and so many others, Iraq may not be Bush’s Vietnam, but rather, his Korea.

Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 11/16/05 1:33 pm:
Great article Tom.

Thanks for posting it.