Semi Truths A highly irregular weblog dedicated to Truth, Justice, and American Cheese…!

This weekend (it’s already started, actually) Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs is convening “a conference of leading scholars and journalists of the U.S. presidency ” for a symposia entitled The George W. Bush Presidency: An Early Assessment. There are five panels scheduled, with presenters from the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, as well as many other universities, including Stanford, George Mason, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, UC San Diego, Wisconsin, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

From the press releases:

“The conference also will be marked by a roundtable discussion of journalists who have covered the Bush presidency, including Dan Balz of the Washington Post, Carl Cannon of National Journal, Jeanne Cummings of the Wall Street Journal, and Todd Purdum of the New York Times. Mike McCurry, former press secretary to President Bill Clinton, will also participate in the roundtable.”

“The presidency of George W. Bush has been fascinating, controversial and unexpectedly eventful,” conference organizer Fred I Greenstein, professor of politics, emeritus, at the WWS and chair of the Program in Leadership Studies, commented. “There are no shortages of defenses of and critiques of Bush and his presidency, but there has been more heat than illumination.” The plan is for the conference’s papers to be published in a scholarly volume, Professor Greenstein added.

Wish I could attend. There is a lot of information on the website; unfortunately, most of the links are to PDF files. However, the one marked Bush Chronology is worth keeping.

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1960’s. One of the icons of that time and place was the great Art Hoppe, columnist for The Chronicle. In the early seventies, as we were emerging from the pit of Vietnam and entering that dark place known as Watergate, he wrote a grand piece titled “The Mightiest Nation“. I remember reading and discussing it with my family, and we kept a faded and yellowed copy around the house for years.

The fine folks at truthout.org, an indispensable resource for progressive news and critical commentary, have reprinted the full article. It is funny, provocative, very timely, and well worth reading (or rereading).

Once upon a time, there was a country that was very small and, on the whole, very good. Its citizens were proud and independent and self-reliant and generally prosperous. They believed in freedom and justice and equality. But above all, they had faith. They had faith in their religion, their leaders, their country and themselves… (more)