A couple of weeks ago I tried to put into perspective how history will possibly judge the Presidency of George W. Bush.
Today, Paul Kengor does the same, better, in National Review Online.
Kengor examines how representative government in the world came about because of our radical attempt to change things on this continent over 200 years ago. That gained momentum after our Civil War showed we could survive our own failures, and become even stronger. France’s revolution, an the other hand, reverted quickly to the age-old Supreme Leader example of European governance.
The 20th Century became America’s Century as we spread democracy throughout Europe at the end of WWII, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the early 1970s there were only 40 democracies. As the 20th century ended, there were 120.
Against incredible odds, George W. Bush may have laid the ground for Middle East democracy in the two most unlikely places, the Taliban’s Afghanistan and Saddam’s Iraq. Nowhere were women more repressed than in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Nowhere were humans generally more repressed than in Iraq under Saddam. Between the two, Saddam was the biggest destabilizer in the world’s most unstable neighborhood.
Whatever happens in two more weeks, the wheels are in motion. Bush will be remembered by history as the man who brought the promise of democracy to the last bastion of feudalism in the world. Should Kerry win, he can build on that or be remembered as the one who let it all go to waste.