( Cross-posted on my blog, wantsomewood.blogspot.com )
God, how much longer do we have to read crap like this?
Let's go over--one more time, for the slow learners at the Post--all the reasons why Bush is not half the man that Harry Truman was.
- As a senator from Missouri, Truman led an investigation into war profiteering that took place on the watch of HIS OWN PARTY during World War II. Bush and his enablers in Congress, on the other hand, have blocked even the slightest oversight or investigation into the conduct of the war they lied us into, and attack the patriotism of anybody who supports such oversight. (Fortunately, it is a tactic that no longer works--witness the election results last month.)
- Truman led on civil rights well before the civil rights movement picked up steam, running on a civil rights platform (thanks to Hubert Humphrey and others) in 1948, a platform that led future Republican Strom Thurmond and his followers to walk out and start their own party that year. While he was at it, he desegregated the armed forces. Bush, by contrast, will amend the Constitution to hurt people he doesn't think count (i. e. gays) and please his religious-right constituents. Who has more courage?
- Truman did, indeed, start fighting the Cold War--and he did so with multilateral institutions and operations (the Berlin Airlift, the Truman Doctrine, the early United Nations, etc.), instead of giving the rest of the world the finger, as Bush brags about doing.
- Truman was a true-blue liberal New Dealer, and (rightly, of course) supported his predecessor's expansion of government to help out the have-nots, instead of just the haves. Bush has another word for the "haves"--his base. (He actually said this.)