THE SHADOW IS CAST BACKWARD:

In His Father's Shadow, a Son Charts His Course (Robin Abcarian, August 29, 2004, LA Times)

Yale and military service, the Texas oil business and politics: George W. Bush has traveled a route similar to that of his accomplished father, sometimes seeming diminished by his father's long shadow. Even when he became president, the son's lack of foreign policy experience was shrugged off by many who thought his father's expertise and former aides would guide him.

But this week, as he accepts the Republican nomination for a second term, President Bush is clearly more than his father's son. The man who will stand before the nation on Thursday is a product of his father's example, his high expectations and expansive advantages, but he is also someone who has bristled at them enough to establish his own style: openly religious, politically combative and aggressive in his approach to foreign policy and tax cuts.

The path Bush has chosen also has put him in one more competition with his formidable father. If he wins in November, he will have surpassed the career of the first President Bush, who was defeated after a single term.

If he loses, Bush will end up repeating his father's fate as a one-term president in part because he worked so hard in the White House to cut a different path.

Every paper in the country is probably running some variation on this nonsense this week, but it's completely thoughtless. Imagine a political science or history textbook fifty years from now and, regardless of whether the son wins a second term, which Bush is likely to get more paragraphs? The elder Mr. Bush is a footnote to history. The younger has already played a significant historical role--both at home and abroad--and has a chance to be a truly pivotal figure in the spread of freedom in America--via the Ownership Society--and in the Islamic world--via war and Reformation.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 29, 2004 5:09 PM