- Re-election year is shaping up as positively for George
W. Bush as it did for LBJ in 1964 and Richard Nixon in 1972.
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- Recall: Both LBJ and Nixon had engineered surging economies
for the election year. Both held the face cards in foreign policy in wartime,
with electorates wary of the perceived radicalism of their rivals. Both
were facing opponents, Barry Goldwater and George McGovern, who had been
luridly painted as outside the mainstream. And both benefited from an opposition
party polarized over its nominee.
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- So, if one had to bet the 401K, bet on "W."
But the LBJ and Nixon analogies, unfortunately, go deeper than that.
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- By 1964, LBJ had bet the farm on escalation in Vietnam.
With his "Bring-home-the-coonskin-on-the wall!" bellicosity -
like Bush's "Bring 'em on!" - and his bombing of North Vietnam
after the alleged attacks on the destroyers Maddox and C. Turner Joy in
Tonkin Gulf, Lyndon Johnson was considered a hawk who was winning America's
war in Indochina.
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- By the time of Tet, 1968, however, soaring casualty rates
and LBJ's inability to win or end the war would make him a failed president
and forever tarnish his place in American history.
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- By 1972, Nixon was adjudged a genius at foreign policy.
Peace with honor was "at hand," after he had bombed Hanoi and
blockaded Haiphong in the spring. Nixon's historic journey to China and
SALT agreement with Leonid Brezhnev's Moscow were considered coups unlike
any achieved by a Cold War president. But by 1976, detente was a dirty
word in GOP circles and Ronald Reagan was burning up the primaries with
a campaign to dump Gerald Ford for not dumping detente and Henry Kissinger
along with it.
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- What has George W. Bush wagered his presidency on? Bringing
democracy to Iraq and denying rogue regimes nuclear weapons. That is the
Bush Doctrine.
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- But if, in a second Bush term, America finds, after years
of bloody endless guerrilla war, we must leave Iraq and let Baghdad fall
to chaos and civil war, or into the hands of anti-American radicals, America
will suffer a defeat greater than Vietnam. Should that happen, George W.
Bush will be seen as a failed president, convicted of a hubristic march
of folly for sending an army into Mesopotamia, ignorant of history and
the almost-certain consequences.
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- If Pakistan, with its nuclear weapons, falls to an Islamic
coup, the president's Afghan project will collapse. If Iran or North Korea
acquires nuclear weapons - and President Bush appears to have taken the
military option off the table - the Bush Doctrine will be the Maginot Line
of the 21st Century.
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- In short, entering his re-election year, George W. Bush
seems, like LBJ and Nixon, to have embarked on ambitious policies that
to prudent men seem not simply bold, but rash and fraught with long-term
peril.
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- On the domestic front, there are also troubling parallels
between LBJ in 1964, Nixon in 1972 and Bush in 2004.
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- LBJ cut taxes and embraced a guns-and-butter budget,
and a bold civil-rights agenda. After his 1964 landslide, he launched his
Great Society, a vast expansion of federal power and an unprecedented exercise
in social engineering. But by 1968, the "New Economics" had failed,
the nation was torn apart by riots and racial disorders, and the economy
was on the skids.
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- Richard Nixon in 1972 - recalling the economic doldrums
that defeated him in 1960 - fully funded LBJ's Great Society, ran up huge
deficits, and egged on Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns to gun the
money supply. Nixon then cut the dollar loose from gold, and imposed wage
and price controls, to prevent any appearance of unsightly inflation prior
to the election.
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- Politically, for LBJ and Nixon, the policies worked.
LBJ won a 61 percent, 44-state landslide. Nixon won a 61 percent, 49-state
landslide. By 1968, however, LBJ was a broken president. By November 1976,
Nixon had spent two years in his San Clemente exile.
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- Bush is traveling the same road, having adopted what
CNBC's Ron Insana calls a "Kitchen Sink Stimulus Package." He
has cut taxes by nearly $2 trillion, is running a $500 billion federal
deficit and a $500 billion trade deficit, and has let the dollar fall to
help exports, cut imports and make manufacturers happy. He has refused
to veto a single spending bill. And Alan Greenspan has held interest rates
at 1 percent and let the money supply explode.
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- Mark my words: These chickens are coming home to roost
for Bush, and they will raise a racket unlike any we have seen in years,
as they did for LBJ, and for Nixon. Unfortunately for Howard Dean, as for
Sens. Goldwater and McGovern, the chickens will probably not start home
until well after November 2004.
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- Patrick J. Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican
presidential nomination and the Reform Partyís candidate in 2000.
He is also a founder and editor of the new magazine, http://www.amconmag.com/The
American Conservative. Now a political analyst for MSNBC and a syndicated
columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding
panelist of three national television shows, and is the author of seven
books.
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- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36008
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