non-ecumenical ramblings

I've stated many times that Bush's second term would be less worse than his first, but never set-up a criteria that I could use to judge the truth of that statement. What are my criticisms against Bush? He's a protectionist, spend-thrift who got us into a quagmire.

There are other beefs I have of course: Executive Order 13833; his AG fighting to prevent a citizen from seeing a lawyer - we don't need to present any evidence, just trust us; his AG's vendetta against medical marijuana. In those cases I don't expect any improvement beyond what the Supreme Court will force, and when the next Democrat is elected president, he will rescind Executive Order 13833.

For the 3 issues at hand - trade, deficits and war - it's time to come up with a standard. Anti-Bush folks like to say, "Well he's not going to invade another country" and that's certainly true, but it's a cheap standard. Defenders on trade say that "oh steel tariffs were just the price to obtain 'fast track' approval, and Bush knew the WTO would give him the cover to get rid of the tariffs". That argument comes across as a bit too far thinking & I'm siding with the Foreign Affairs article that argued that Bush/Zoellick gave away too much too obtain FTA, though they argued that Bush/Zoellick had learned from their error. My brother (the only conservative who's also a Keynesian that i know) argued that Bush spent just to get us out of the recession. Given all those inputs & many many others, my criteria is:

Trade: Approval of the Doha Round

Deficit: Keep the promise of cutting the deficit in half ($220B)

War: Less than 20 deaths per month for a 3-month moving average

So far the signs don't look good. For trade, there's rumblings of a shrimp tariff on poor Vietnam, and believe it was the same Foreign Policy article (can only access the intro now) pointed out that regional trade blocks are actually counter-productive in the CAFTA case. We pool with small trade countries, while China forms regional trade blocks that block us out in part, and Europe does the same. Read one prediction that Doha would be approved in 2007, but sure don't see any momentum, and since the stated priorities of Bush's second term are Social Security & tax reform, then I just can't see the spare political capital for such a difficult, but useful task. I will give him credit that during the campaign he didn't pander to protectionism like Kerry did, but my gut feel is that the rhetoric was empty.

Obviously the deficit peaked at $4xx,000,000,000.87, and will decline, but by how much. My prediction today is that Bush will get the deficit below $300B before he leaves office, but not down to his stated goal of ½. Also do agree with the Atlantic Monthly's description of Bush as a "supply-side Keynesian" - guess that means I agree with my sibling that Bush spent to get us out of a recession and it worked, so Keynes is now re-abilitated!

Iraq: I have a response to the administrations comments "it will be violent before the elections" "it will be violent before the turn over of sovereignty". True. It will also be violent after the turn over of sovereignty. It will be violent after the election. It will be violent period. Air America pointed out that November had the highest death toll of any month (136 vs. 135 last April), but that's to be expected during a Falluja offensive. What's more important is the death after the offensive - that tells you how effective you were strategically. So far through the first week of December, there's 23 US dead which means are steady-state death toll will continue to be 50-80 each month. At this rate, we'll have roughly 4,000 dead and 30,000 wounded by the end of Bush's second term.

I don't see an exit strategy today, or any sign that Bush's 2nd term will truly be less worse than his first, but ultimately it's events not bloggers that determine historical reputations.