I've never been a big fan of Inauguration Days. By nature, they are so scripted that there is nothing "alive" about them. They are like presidential debates, with the slim chance that something interesting might happen removed. Some folks become teachers of rhetoric for the day and enjoy critiquing the speech, and while I recognize that rhetoric plays an important role in politics, when employed in these inaugural speeches it seems devoid of a real purpose. The last thing we need from George W. Bush is yet another general statement of principles. That is something we know very well already.
Here are a couple interesting takes on George W. Part Two:
By Thomas Friedman: An American in Paris
By Lanny Davis: True Confessions: A Democrat Likes George
From the Friedman article:
Funnily enough, the one country on this side of the ocean that would have elected Mr. Bush is not in Europe, but the Middle East: it's Iran, where many young people apparently hunger for Mr. Bush to remove their despotic leaders, the way he did in Iraq.
An Oxford student who had just returned from research in Iran told me that young Iranians were "loving anything their government hates," such as Mr. Bush, "and hating anything their government loves." Tehran is festooned in "Down With America" graffiti, the student said, but when he tried to take pictures of it, the Iranian students he was with urged him not to. They said it was just put there by their government and was not how most Iranians felt.
Iran, he said, is the ultimate "red state." Go figure.
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