Harsh Assessment

Mr. Bush's Revisionism

The last two days of editorials in the New York Times have not been shy about President Bush's appearance on TV this Sunday. I'm about to watch the tape, but thought I'd welcome comment on the appearance--and public reaction to it--now.

By the way, D.C. was great during the three hours I got to experience it. Seeing the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Jefferson Memorial was stirring as always, particularly reading the Gettysburg Address. I also heard a lot of interesting things while I was gone, including these:
"In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and shall choose the path of social justice,the path of faith, the path of hope and the path of love toward our fellow men."
"We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization."
"The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation. It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world."
Sound like something that was said over the weekend? It could have been, but it wasn't. The most interesting and inspiring of the many memorials I walked to during my eight-mile patriotic hike was the one for F.D.R., which is an open-air park featuring numerous quotes from the man on the dime, including the three above. John Kerry should take a stroll through the park as he contemplates his message for the fall; much of the wisdom of President Roosevelt is sadly relevant to life today, a point that is just begging to be made.