I don't know if that's good news or bad news. The final straw for that man is a scandal that does not have any connection to Bush. Maybe it's indicative of the irrational nature of the American body politic. But since I want the Democrats to take at least one house of Congress, I'll take anything I can get.

Specifically, Hastert covered for Foley until the mess became public, then lied about what he knew and when he knew it, and then Bush covered for Hastert. More generally, the shell game slowed down long enough for fundamentalist Christians to realize that they have been gamed by Bush et al.

Post Election, some authentic person in the realm of Democrats needs to make the case to Evangelicals that they've been taken again in the Elmer Gantry way. First it was the trusted Christian Coalition Man, Ralph Reed, who took their money, stired up their folk to make war about Casino Gambling between one Indian Tribe and another all the while enriching Reed and Abramoff -- and now it is apparently the coverup of an Ephebophile using the House Page School as a Harem. It wasn't the Liberals who preached these things, and I do not remember the Liberal Media talking about how good these things would be -- they must be told, Politely mind you -- that they were incurious, didn't ask the right questions, and misplaced their faith. The point is to cast doubt on the linkage with the Republican Party.

And we need to understand that taking leadership in one or both houses is only the beginning of what must be done. They have to get some things done that will be popular and attract, even though Bush will probably tell us Barney insists they be vetoed. Assuming victory, the next two years will be about writing the narrative of what could happen, should we also control the Executive in 2009. The closest thing this election may be to as comparison is 1958 when we made the gains that allowed for Kennedy and the major reform legislation of the 60's. It was really 58 when the reformers of the 60's took office and began to build their programs.

It is worth noting that with all the corruption, warmongering, torture, and general political incompetence that we have witnessed in recent decades, the only thing that resonates with the electorate is a pantysniffing scandal.

We are not a serious nation.

Is it 2008 yet?

(This comment is in response to "wayitwas", not to my original post. I must have hit the wrong "reply" button).

That's a good point. I just read that Bush will be standing with Hastert in Chicago on Thursday and Tony Snow will headline a Hastert fundraiser in Illinois on Saturday. Another "heck of a job" moment in the making. No doubt, all part of the continuing Clinton-Soros conspiracy to smear the Republicans.

Bronto

I'm fairly confident the world community, like most Americans, has determined that Bush is a rogue president.

In short, they understand that what he has done during his presidency is not, and does not, reflect the values and ambitions of the United States as a whole.

Time and time again we hear about foreigners talking about how much they love Americans but hate Bush. I live in Los Angeles and see this on a daily basis. And I'm not just speaking of Mexicans. We have just about every race and religion imaginable in this city. Also, I have friends in Austria and Japan who say they same thing.

I believe that the international community is dying for Bush to leave office and for a more rational leader to emerge here.

For all of his failings, the Bush administration has shown (by default) definitively just how much the world needs American leadership.

For my money, we will be warmly welcomed back to the table when the current 'project' leaves office.

Bush was re-elected.

The American enthusiasm for Bush, his policies and his "tough diplomacy" with allies has not passed unrecorded abroad. If the Foley-scandal will push the Democrats to power in the upcoming elections, the verdict will hardly improve. People will note that wars of aggression, disregard for international treaties and national laws, using foreign countries' territory for sending suspects around the globe to years of suffering in torture chambers, without telling neither relatives nor the Red Cross, and in fact establishing secret prisons and torture facilities in countries that just in the recent decade have started to recover from that kind of oppression under the Soviet Union, ...all this went on and became known without the American public demanded impeachment. Americans may have a short memory, but foreigners have not forgotten the much noise around the impeachment of Clinton.

As with the Germans after World War II. The most damaging was not Nazi policies, bad as they were. The worst obstacle to renewed respectability was the correct impression among neighboring peoples that the German nation as a whole had believed in the seductive Master Race ideology, in the leadership-principle being superior to the "decadent parliamentarism", and supported the Lebensraum policy.

As long as Americans whine about losses as if American combatmen's lifes were, say, 100 times as much worth as Iraqi civilians' lifes, this demonstrates how Americans understand the phrase "All men are equal".

new polls show that his "evangelical support" has fallen from the high 70's to the mid-50's so I don't think that the dems have to make much a case.

as I wrote this, I was wondering if the Pope recently launched his FUD campaign against the Muslims because he saw the polls and was trying to use FUD to stir up the Bush base.

after I read his last speech, I stopped going to church "cold turkey" and maybe others are following?

Democrats scare me, primarily because of their pro-illegal alien politics. That has been a growing threat to national sovereignty that has reached crisis proportions. We may not survive that crisis as a nation. But that road to Hell is paved with good intent, and I can deal with or at least debate that.

On the other hand it is obvkous that Republicans are actively destroying this country. The Foley scandal is an example in miniature of what is wrong with Republicans. A Republican charged with protecting our children is not only failing to protect children, he is an obvious threat to children. That is how the Republicans have governed. Charged with protecting the United States and its citizens they not only fail to protect, they are found to be an obvious threat. They remind me of the Martians from "Mars Attacks" who yell "Don't run, we come in peace!" even as they vaporize all your soft tissues with ray guns.

If the Foley scandal does not give the Democrats complete control of Congress next month, then we are a nation of fools who've accepted Bush's ticket for an express train to Hell. We've all seen the damage Bush can do in six short years, and this damage is a snowball rolling down hill. I can see no way for this country to survive another two years with a Congressionally enabled madman as President. Oh, and by the way, does Cheney remind anyone of Mr. Potter from "It's a Wonderful Life"? If I weren't so angry I'd be scared to death.

Re: Democrats scare me, primarily because of their pro-illegal alien politics.

The GOP is quite complicit in that too. After all its their special interests which benefit from all that cheap labor

Re: as I wrote this, I was wondering if the Pope recently launched his FUD campaign against the Muslims because he saw the polls and was trying to use FUD to stir up the Bush base

The Vatican is quite cool toward the Bush administration and despises the Iraq War. I very much doubt that Benedict would do anything whatsoever tio help Bush out.

The real boost for illegal immigration is the near-zero enforcement of workplace rules by Republicans--something like 100 Customs and Immigrayion Service employees for the whole country. Recent increases in this department are still trivial.

Combine the availability of jobs, the preference for conveniently hostage workers, and no useful minimum wage, and the illegal immigration problem is in fact caused by the GOP. So if it is a threat to sovereignty, vote against those responsible.

I will believe it when I see it. I heard many similar laments from Republicans in my precinct in October 2004. From reading the detailed returns after the election, they managed to overcome their concerns once in the voting booth.

sPh

I'm not popping the cork for a different reason. As abhorrent as Foley's behavior and the GOP leadership's covering it up were, I still dream of a public angry about something other than sex. Just like the Pirro scandals are "really" all about adultery, just like the Clinton ones. And on and on.

Again, I'm not saying this is the moral equivalent of adultery. I'm just saying the public and the media would care only marginally if we invaded a few other countries, suspended the Bill of Rights (except maybe for the Second Amendment) entirely, and directed the next tax cut only to alumni of Skull and Crossbones, so long as everyone stopped having sex.

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

Didn't Nixon still have soemthing like 25% after he resigned?

I don't want to come off as a snob, but I really don't have a problem assuming 33% of the US population are dumber than fence posts.

You could say that about any nation. On the eve of the French Revolution the French public was agog over a tawdry little scandal involving Marie Antoinette, a diamond necklace and a fruadulent hynotist. And in 1916 it wasn't Ncholas Romanov's stupidity that excized the Russians, it was Rasputin's libido.
Sex sells. It's just the way of the world.

laurila

I can tolerate a comparison of Iraq to Vietnam, but comparing the Bush administration to the Nazi Party simply does not fly.

If for no other reason, the Nazi Party was amazingly good at what it did. The Bush administration is amazingly bad at what it does.

What's more, if the a rogue U.S. administration were to blunder militarily in any region, the Middle East is the place to do it. For one it is far removed from any of our key allies save Israel. Second, the Middle East has been a pain in the ass for everyone since the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919. Finally, even sane, competent U.S. administrations have not been able to solve the ME dilemma.

Had Bush been president in the middle 90's, when action was needed in the Balkans, the stakes would have been higher and international opinion of the U.S. may have taken a deeper shock.

Again, I'm not saying this is the moral equivalent of adultery. I'm just saying the public and the media would care only marginally if we invaded a few other countries, suspended the Bill of Rights (except maybe for the Second Amendment) entirely, and directed the next tax cut only to alumni of Skull and Crossbones, so long as everyone stopped having sex.

I Agree with your entire post. However, all of the much more valid reasons you provide for public outrage also are intellectual in nature.  That is why Democrats consistently lose elections.  Politics are at the core emotional issues. The public responses to emotional issues. That is what drives umbrage, outrage and revolt.  Not intellectual issues. Those intelectual  issues are what drive people to become  Democrats and the majority of people who are democrats are highly intelligent.

The  average public  citizen reads at the eight grade level and does not understand complex isxues.. So unfortuately Dems are stuck knowing what is right and wrong intellectually but unable to necesarily drive the majority of the electrorate unless we emotionally trigger them.  That is what makes Clinton and Obama unique, they are highly intelligent and have the political astuteness to motivate the voting public emotionally with their masterful command of  language.

Please note that I do not compare the regimes, just the impact on and of a nation's reputation.

Maybe we also need to remind ourselves that the Middle East is not that far removed from neither Turkey nor the European Union. If we wish to view either of these entities as "key allies" in the post Cold War world is of course a matter of taste.

It's hard for someone like me to figure out how "ordinary people" think and feel, but if I were to make a qualified guess, that would be that people in the industrialized world outside of the U.S. has got an impression of Americans as being far more different and disrespectful than could be believed during the Cold War. It's not one single event, but the sum that matters, and the fact that all pieces of information point in the same direction. They resonate and amplify the impression.

I had the pleasure of listening to the journalist Bruce Stokes during his visit to Europe last winter, and wish I'd had time to really read his book America against the World, but so far I've only had energy to look at some tables here and some there. They do correspond with my own experience from my half-year stint in Upstate New York. The most recent issue, the legalization of torture and the weakening of Habeas Corpus, with 12 Democrat Congressmen as acomplicies can also be illustrated by poll figures as these data on belief in torture.
To Europeans who learn about it, I am convinced it will further strengthen the feeling that the Americans are fundamentally different - be that factually right or wrong. This evokes memories of Stalinism, of Fascism, of the Greek Junta, and of semi-Fascist dictators as Franco. In the battle against Tyranny, the Americans surprisingly turn out to be siding with the enemy.

All of you have attacked Republicans for their poor performance on addressing the illegal alien crisis. Rightly so, rightly so. But none of you have acknowledged that Democrats will do nothing to address the illegal alien crisis. They will, in fact, enable Madman Bush's open borders and SPP initiative. The Senate Shamnesty Bill S.2611 was written and supported by Democrats. And I will always remember Ted Kennedy speaking for the illegal aliens at the illegal alien demonstrations last spring. Don't fret about Texas going back to Mexico. It's as good as done if the NAFTA Superhighway is built. But you might fret when you realize that the superhighway isn't stopping at the Red River, and Texas isn't the only state being sold out to Mexico.

What had surfaced by 2004? The roosting chickens started flocking back to DC when Bush's Social Security plan fizzled, thus revealing his "mandate" as a hollow dummy. Then there was the Terri Schiavo fiasco, Hurricane Katrina, runaway gas prices and a steady drop-drip of revelations of incompetence or active malfeasance. Bush went into 2004 relatively clean, marred only by the missing WMDs (which was blunted by the trumpeting hope of Iraq democracy).

He exposed himself as a fraud. He lied. But was never the less re-elected.

No alternative to the discarded Kyoto had been proposed, no compromize were attempted on internationally divisive issues as for instance the ICC and ABM treaties.

Is it necessary to remind about emasculating the UNSC, giving the European Union flat tires, undermining the inspections led by Hans Blix, general Powel's embarrasing lies for the United Nations, commencing a war of aggression, the loothing of Baghdad, the absence of security and reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition to torture chambers in for instance Egypt (the case of Muhammad Zery reported in May 2004), disregard for laws of war (cluster bombs and white phospherous) and for civilian victims, or the post-invasion destruction of important cities of which Falludja was the one in the news at the time of the 2004 election?

Take some comfort then in the fact that (according to polls) it isn't L'Affaire Foley that's driving the GOP ship to the bottom of the sea; rather it's public fed-uped-ness with the Iraq War.

But again, we are speaking here of Bush's America.

It always surprises me the number of people who are completely convinced that the United States, in the six years under Bush, has successfully undone all of the democratic inroads made during the past 230+ years of this nation's existence.

It is technically incorrect to conclude that the U.S. condones or supports torture through its new laws. All it does, in essence, is create a gray area on the issue. That in itself is bothersome to many because perhaps there should be no gray area at all when dealing with torture.

But again, the gray area directly involves the part of the law which allows the President of the United States to decide which methods are allowable and which are not. If Bill Clinton were still president I doubt there would be the outcry that there is. It is because of that rogue Bush that so many people are upset with this law.

A central theme that I have written about over the last year or so is that people need to stop over-reacting. Things tend to get blown out of proportion because we have such a terrific need to place importance on the 'here and now.'

When the Maginot Line failed and the Nazi's gained control of France, many thought totalitarianism would likely prevail in Europe.

It was natural to have such thoughts in the darkest hours of that conflict. But it wasn't to be so. The Nazi's were defeated and freedom and liberty was restored.

Now, people tend to see the U.S. as a permanantly tainted superpower. A sort of Annakin Skywalker turned Darth Vader.

My advice: let's take ten deep breaths and wait out the rogue president. He will be a lame duck in month and will be outta here in two years. The Democrats appear to be on the verge of winning back one or both houses of Congress.

Things will get better. Don't worry.

Remember the Alamo.

I appreciate both WhiteRoseBuddy's point that one really does have to communicate andJPF's that the public seems to have saner priorities than I or perhaps we all alleged. Maybe, then, it's the media that can't get enough of sex, because it may not be as central to shaping opinion but because it sells. I should bear in mind those are different, while still of course lamenting that the media's choice may have the ability to shape opinion in itself, alas. 

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

The United States has always had a different set of interests from the European nations. Since the Industrial Revolution following the American Civil War, the U.S. has slowly but effectively pushed for a globalized economy.

The problem, of course, is that other nations such as China, Japan, and Russia (for a while) managed to catch up to the U.S. in terms of production capacity and even ingenuity.

The U.S. had, until Bush took office, acknowledged the fact that prioritization of needs was in order simply because the we couldn't hog all of the world's resources.

Bush's biggest problem, and what makes him a rogue, is that he doesn't subscribe to that doctrine. If George W. Bush had been president anywhere from the 1880's through 1917, he likely would have achieved unparalleled success.

Unfortunately for everyone, his administration creates policies which would be better suited in 1906 rather than 2006.

When he is gone, we will see a new president, likely a Democrat, who places more emphasis on accountability, pragmatism, and self-improvement. Everything from trade, to assisting the middle class, to allocating more funds toward environmental conservation will likely be on the agenda.

The Cold War certainly united America and Europe in the sense that Communism (the USSR) represented a common enemy.

But even during that time period the U.S. had its own projects being tested in the Western Hemisphere in places like Cuba and Central America.

The Monroe Doctrine namely.

I'll tell you who's really traumatized by the Foley-Reynolds- Hastert scandal: parents who have sons and daughters in Iraq and Afganistan. In an instant, some have seen through the shell game, seen behind the curtain, and the claims they've been able to marginalize in the past now seem plausible to them. The Republican leadership who have put and left the demented Rumsfeld in charge of their children overseas are the same Republican leaders who have put the Congressional pages at risk. It suddenly becomes plausible to them that the war is about profit and power, not national security, that our children are dying to make the nation less safe, and less democratic.