it's asking too much of me to imagine how Kerry would lead--that's partly why there's a fovor toward incumbents.

On another thread I arrogantly announced that history will not be kind to Bush. I don't really know, I can't predict.

But imagine a future, when Bush's intentions are not so much the question, when his determination isn't the thing, because he's not up for election.

The fact will remain that American soldiers eager to strike back at terrorists were sent to the wrong country and got mired in it, and that we spent a lot of damage to our relationships with our allies to do this. And ran up a huge deficit? Grant me that tax cuts won't look as great to people who are not getting them.
When in the future is all this going to look good? Even without appearances of, at best, mixed motives? Forget the steady curious alignments of Bush policy to other interests than the people's welfare--it's still not good at all, without that. What's it going to look like when Republicans can choose a candidate with proven military expertise, a General, to remember George W. Bush's confident appraisal of himself as a war president? On what basis? Good intentions? That won't count much.

I think if Americans look at the overall situation, they will want to give a decently qualified man a chance, even if he's not ideal. Bush's unpopular stances are unpopular for good reason, and if you imagine looking back on them, with other viable candidates in view, I think you can only really find them shockingly terrible, from any political point of view.