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It's kind of funny. All the naysayers were saying prior to the election, GWB has no foreign policy experience. And up to 9-11, he was chugging along with all sorts of domestic issues, while meeting with various heads of states. (You know, relationship building) After 9-11, this strategy had to do a complete 180 regarding foreign issues (good thing he did some relationship building). It reminds me a of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. I don't agree with him 100%, but he's doing better than anyone ever expected. He got off to a great start, and now everyone believes he is capable of so much more when a mere 18 months ago, he was the dufus from Texas.

All the naysayers were saying prior to the election, GWB has no foreign policy experience. And up to 9-11, he was chugging along with all sorts of domestic issues, while meeting with various heads of states.

I have to say this much at least: Whatever I did or did not think of his prospective governance watching and listening to his campaign, I never thought he was the dolt he was caricatured to be. I did, however, think that he might well prove along the line of his father, concerning the balance between foreign and domestic policy; he certainly didn't have the experience going in that his father had had regarding foreign matters, but that isn't always an indicator of someone's aptitude for them.

If anything, I am more of the mind that, as regards domestic policy, the proper enough place for the federal government is, simply enough, to butt the hell out; the properly-construed Constitution imposes very considerable limitations thereupon. And, to mind its primary mission of protecting the United States and her citizens against enemies real and prospective from abroad. I think that had that been adhered to strictly enough - and, well enough before Mr. Bush assumed office - we might not have had to contend among other things with a 9/11.

There are yet two years and eight months to go in Mr. Bush's term. It is like a baseball pennant race in this regard: it ain't over until it's over. From here and now, practically anything can happen; from November-January, of course, depending upon how the Congressional and even gubernatorial contests do or do not turn, that "anything" could become something different enough, particularly if there emerges any further sense that what we once considered the intractable enough Republican issue foundation of very limited government has become, if not extinct, then at least shadowed enough. And the road to Democratic hell is paved with Republican good intentions.