Friday, April 29, 2005

Bush's legacy

So Bush finally takes off the mask, and as he does so, the shape of his legacy is becoming clearer. On the economic side, it will be massive cuts in the country's social insurance program; massive economic restratification (via abolition of the estate tax); and a couple trillion added to the deficit (possibly setting up a massive bout of inflation, or a devaluation of the dollar, or both). On the social policy front, the jury is still out on how successful he will be, but he seems set to at least try to inscribe Christian fundamentalist tenets into the country's basic law. And on the foreign policy front, he will be largely remembered for his quixotic effort to institute a new "Bush doctrine" of preemptive war -- with a quagmire in Iraq as its main fruit (keep in mind that Afghanistan was not the fruit of the Bush doctrine, having taken placed before the doctrine was promulgated).

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