MarkDel
Sr. Member
Posts: 2,149
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« on: March 21, 2004, 02:22:07 AM » |
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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.
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