It is time to return to the optimism of President Ronald Reagan. It is important to remember that President Reagan was not fortunate enough to have a party in control of both houses of Congress. He, in fact, faced a House of Representatives much more heavily Democrat than the one facing President George W Bush today. And yet he was able to push through congress the policies he believed important to the American people and to the prosperity of our nation.
See, the thing is that Reagan had an honest to goodness mandate. Most of what he had in mind was popular. Bush, on the other hand, has all the popularity of a fart in an elevator. Ditto his policies. While the voters want an end to Iraq, an end to corruption in congress, and a return to fiscal sanity, Bush plans to resurrect the ghost of his failed Social Security privatization. Talk about optimism -- Bush has it by the bucketload. Along with its idiot cousin, delusion.
Besides, optimism is the freakin' problem, not the solution. The situation in Iraq is the result of an insane dose of optimism. It was going to be flowers and candy and a brand new, minty-fresh democracy almost immediately. As Donald Rumsfeld put it, "It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." We're in the throes of optimism run amuck.
What we need is realism and hope. I've always define hope as the knowledge that the best possible outcome is a possible outcome. Hope, unlike optimism, is always realistic...
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Tags: politics Iraq war republican propaganda Reagan optimist
