Future approval

[dazzleman]

Political alignments change, and I don't assume that the "Republicans" of the future will automatically love George Bush, while the "Democrats" of the future will automatically love Bill Clinton.  Issues change and loyalties shift.  I would bet the Franklin Roosevelt is more highly thought of among today's Republican's than Herbert Hoover is.

Having said that, I think that in the long run, Bill Clinton will be forgotten and irrelevant, while vaguely held responsible for not dealing with serious issues during his term.  His big claim to fame - the economy - is not something really considered in the long run.  Nobody knows or cares how the economy was doing while Lincoln was president, and the economy does not really play a factor in how any great president is judged.  One thing for sure is that nobody became a great president by presiding over a strong economy alone.  Clinton will be looked at as an unserious president for an unserious time, and his various escapades, and the American public's tolerance for them, as a form of escapism.

Bush's legacy depends on the outcome of his effort to defeat the scourge of militant Islam and the threat it poses to decent, peace-loving people around the world.  Bush is somewhat in the position of Winston Churchill before World War II, telling people a lot of things they really didn't want to hear.  Many Europeans favor peace at any price, and seek only to deflect the terrorist threat onto other people, namely their American "allies."  Some big-name liberals have publicly said that terrorists should only attack areas of the country that vote Republican.  There is an unwillingness among those on the left to face up to this issue.  They would rather blame the president for it.

But if Bush is successful ultimately, as I believe he will be, then he will have earned an honored place in world history.

[dazzleman]

This is a fairly easy question. Clinton will be neither hated nor loved. His legacy of economic success, inadvertent though it may have been, will be overshadowed by Lewinsky/Impeachment.

Bush...well...it all depends on how the War on Terror plays out and whether or not Iraq continues its positive drive towards the first true Arab Democracy. If Bush wins a second term and his policies continue to be successful, he will be treated VERY KINDLY by historians. His Bush Doctrine will be one of the defining policies of American international relations, plus his Axis of Evil speech will go down as a defining moment like Reagan's Tear Down This Wall speech. If Bush has problems in his second term, he will still be treated relatively well because history tends to look favorably upon Presidents who take decisive action. Obviously the only way Bush receives bad grades historically is if Terrorism grows into a massive problem and you see continued terrorist acts on US soil for more than a decade, including nuclear and/or biological attack. Also, even if Bush is voted out of office and fails to earn a second term, he will likely be treated well by historians. Remember that Winston Churchill was voted out at the end of World War II, but that did not prevent him from taking his rightful place among the greatest men of the 20th Century, and arguably the finest Prime Minister in England's glorious history.

I agree with Hughento that if Bush is voted out now he and Churchill will not be comparable.

Churchill was voted out after a dramatic win in World War II, during which the British suffered greatly.

As far as Bush and the War on Militant Islam go, many have not even woken up to the fact that there is a war.  Many Europeans hope to deflect the consequences of the war onto their "allies" while some Americans [mainly liberals] simply wish for attacks to happen in parts of the country other than where they live.

If we were to use the World War II analogy, we are probably more in the 1938 period, during which the war had really begun (with Hitler's attacks on Austria, Czechoslovakia, etc.) but many had not yet really faced up to the need to fight it.

Whatever the outcome of this war, it will probably not be as dramatic as the surrender of Germany, but there could be very dramatic attacks.

Bush is like Churchill in that he has been a voice telling Europeans and liberal Americans things they don't want to hear, so rather than hating those who want to attack them, they hate him.  This similar treatment of Churchill by the British people before the war ended up costing them dearly, leading to a very difficult war that they could have won easily if they had woken up sooner.

[dazzleman]

The big difference is that the terrorists do not pose a threat even close to that of the Nazis. Hitler COULD actually have won, at some point at least, but the terrorists have no chance of winning. I think terrorist organizations, like all ORGANIZATIONS, are having their powers very exggerated. There's a difference between a bunch of scum-bags living in caves in Afghanistan and one of Europe-s biggest and most powerful coutnries.  

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The terrorists pose a different type of threat than the Nazis did.  They don't need to "win" in the same sense as the Nazis in order to damage us severely.  With a strongly global and highly sophistocated economy, they can inflict severe economic damage with a few well-placed attacks.  If they were to take control of countries that produce oil, or effectively sabotage the oil production, they could destroy our economies.

There is also the threat that they could smuggle nuclear weapons into the country and kill large numbers of people.  So they don't need to win in the conventional sense to have a huge negative impact on the lives of millions of people.

[dazzleman]

I don't think the terrorist networks ahve that sot of power, genreally speaking. 9/11 was the exception rather than the rule, and despite the hatred and the war on terror, the terrorists haven't come close to repeating 9/11. Bin Laden is hiding in a cave somewhere or is dead, the Afghanistan War basically wiped out the only terrorist group with real potential.

I hope you're right, but I'm not confident.  An attack like 9/11 was relatively easy to carry out, and I think it could be repeated.  It's very hard to protect the number of targets that we have.  That's why we have to take the war to the enemy.