Will Dean Be One of Our Greatest Presidents?

So how does the Presidential race look right now, with Saddam captured? It will give an immediate boost to Bush, but it won't last. Already, attacks are continuing at pretty much the same pace as before. Since Saddam had no cellular phone and absolutely no way of communicating with others on the outside, therefore, the bulk of insurgents in Iraq are anti-US rather than pro-Saddam, and so they will not go away. So there will be basically no change.

Right now it seems that Bush will get elected unless the Iraq situation gets out of hand so bad that it causes keys to topple, and the economy sputters. This is certainly possible. But what it means is that if Dean is elected, then these things will have occurred. This means that Dean will have a hard task ahead of him, trying to run a country whose economy is listless and with the Iraq situation getting even worse than ever. I don't know if I want that kind of job; it would be highly stressful. If Bush gets elected, that means he will have either a good economy or a good situation in Iraq with him, or both, so he will have an easy time of it.

But look - how will the economy topple and Iraq get much worse? By the Fourth Turning starting then, that's how. These conditions will smack Bush in the face and lead to his defeat, leaving Dean with the task of putting it back together. Dean will be a Fourth Turning President, and the previous Fourth Turning Presidents - Washington, Lincoln, and FD Roosevelt, have been the greatest Presidents we have had. This means, unlikely as it seems now, that Dean will become one of our greatest Presidents also. He will be the one that will get us over the Iraq mess, a weak economy or even a depression, and the results of the upcoming oil and other resources shortage.

However, if Bush gets elected, that will because 2005 will enter still in the Third Turning. During Bush's second term, he will get whacked by the Fourth Turning - probably the oil shortage, and he will either resign or lose the next election in a landslide, perhaps to Hillary Clinton. This means that Bush will go down in history as one of our bottom-tier presidents, and Hillary will be one of our Greatest Presidents.

So it is interesting that the answer to the question, "Is being the President of this country going to be an enormous challenge?" will be Yes if Dean gets elected and No if Bush gets re-elected, and this is concluded based on a combination of the Lichtman Keys theory and the Fourth Turning theory. It will be interesting to see what happens.

We Got Him!

Today when I got up and looked at the Web I saw an unlikely but possible event had just happened. US and other forces in Iraq had captured Saddam Hussein! This sounds like a joyous day, especially for Iraq. The dictator has been captured. He was the Ace of Spades. But Iraq reminds me more of chess than of cards. They captured a bishop there, a pawn here, and here a rook gets captured, and then over the summer a couple of queens. Today, however, was checkmate. Supposedly the game is over. But I also thought about Dorothy's arrival in Oz that killed the Wicked Witch of the East. The people all started singing "Oh, Ho, the Wicked Witch, the Wicked Witch is dead!" and I thought of the Lewis Carroll poem "Jabberwocky", and especially the lyrics "Oh frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!" and "Hast Thou Killed the Jabberwock, my Son?"

This Jabberwock is not dead, however. That is good, because he can talk about what's been going on in Iraq for the past 30 years or so. Now with the head of the old regime gone, it seems that things should improve remarkably in Iraq. Indeed, this may happen. Perhaps the people conducting the attacks were so doing in Saddam's name, and with Saddam captured, the appeal of his mystique may vanish.

However, there are some who think other things may happen. An article by Ayaz Amir in the Pakistani web periodical Dawn, says this: "If Saddam were captured or killed, this resistance, far from dying down, would gather more strength." He says this is because the resistance to occupation forces is more broad-based than just Saddam loyalists and is focused more on America.

So now we need to know which is the case. That may determine whether Bush gets reelected. If the Iraq situation remarkably improves, he may become unbeatable, as Lichtman himself said today. If the Iraq situation gets worse, Bush may squeak by if the economy stays good, but if it deteriorates, then Bush is in trouble. The next two or three weeks may tell the story.