Open Thread for Night Owls & Early Birds

Robert S. McElvaine at the History News Network writes:

^{HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst.}

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians
conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations. ...

In a similar survey of historians I conducted for HNN four years ago, Mr. Bush had fared somewhat better, with 19 percent rating his presidency a success and 81 percent classifying it as a failure. More striking is the dramatic increase in the percentage of historians who rate the Bush presidency the worst ever. In 2004, only 11.6 percent of the respondents rated Bush’s presidency last. That conclusion is now reached by nearly six times as large a fraction of historians.

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

This evening's Rescue Rangers are vcmvo2, grog, shayera, hhex65 and joyful with Avila as editor.

• Killer of Sacred Cows invites us to Come Walk a Mile in My Context, in which we get the background concept to good ole "framing." (grog)
• Gorette summarizes the powerful testimony before the Committee on Foreign Relations about conditions in post-surge Iraq: Mythical Victorious Surge, listen to Nir Rosen. (vcmvo2)
• Milos Janus Outlook brings us a lyrical diary on mountaintops, MLK JR. and Three Cups of Tea. (joyful)
• Redneck Liberal begins The one-sided "conversation" about race . . ., a stark story about being white, an Obama supporter and grappling with a personal "stain of racism". (grog)
• Shaviv highlights some truly unique things that man has asked animals to do in Mad Science Project of the Week 4: in which pigeons turn out to be smarter than you thought possible. (shayera)
• Philip Munger explains how and why April 1st Anchorage Elections Spell Trouble for Alaska's GOP. (vcmvo2)
• xofferson asks the rhetorical question What would you rather have than a war? The subsequent dot connecting highlights the outrage everyone should have over not only the cost of President 24%'s war, but where that money went. (grog)
• In Flat Tops Wilderness, Brahman Colorado shares some personal memories and impressions of time spent in the magnificent Colorado mountains, and notes how they differ from the oil, gas, mining and timber companies' visions of the same land. (hhex65)
• taonow brings us news of the huge increase in the cost of Rice....and you sadly might have to adjust your eating habits. (joyful)
• Historiker analyzes why McCain's presidency would be so dangerous in John McCain and Cynicism. (vcmvo2)
• Not everybody can talk about Our Christmas afternoon with Ralph Nader. No, chicago minx didn't debate him on the issues, rather, she discovered how one man can be a speed bump on the road to the bathroom. (grog)
• RubDMC shares My day in the MICU and you'll find your heart lifted by the tale, regardless of your spiritual affiliation. (joyful)
• seaturtles has some good news in Jekyll Island, GA: Developer vs. the public. Sometimes, the little guy comes out ahead. (shayera)

We hope you'll enjoy these diaries.  Please promote your own favorites in the open thread.

CREEPer to Elizabeth Edwards: Cut the Cancer Talk

[Promoted by DHinMI: The press just loves to talk about how John McCain is so dreamy, partly because they refuse to face the fact that to get the nomination McCain has prostituted himself to the same lobbyists, televangelists and rightwing nutjobs that have captured the GOP over the last few decades.  Dean does a great job of showing the deep connections one of McCain's key finance people has to some of the more loathsome features of the Nixon administration.  It's a "bonus" that the guy is also a jerk]

Recently, cancer survivor Elizabeth Edwards made a brilliant observation about cancer survivor John McCain: that neither of them would be covered under McMaverick's do-nothing health care plan.

Well, according to McCain's National Finance Co-Chair Fred Malek, cancer patient Elizabeth Edwards shouldn't be talking about cancer in a political context:

Might bin Laden Be Captured Before the November Election?

Few Americans know as much about the history of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda within Afghanistan and Pakistan as Steve Coll.  A few years ago Coll won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.  He's just published a new book, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century.  Yesterday on NPR's Fresh Air with Terri Gross, he speculated on something that if it happens would not only have a big effect on US efforts to combat terrorism, but on the U.S. Presidential race as well:

Coll: It's more likely now, in the next year or two, that [bin Laden will] finally be captured or killed than at any time since late 2001.  I say this not because American efforts to find him have improved; I don't think they have.  But the situation in Pakistan has changed dramatically in the last six or eight months.  He's now a much more unpopular figure than he was even a year ago.  And also, the new government has a different set of motivations to find him in comparison to the government of President Musharraf.  

Gross: So even though the new government is less friendly with the Bush administration than Musharraf was, you think the new government is going to do a better job of going after Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.

Coll: They have better motives to do so.  The United States got itself in to a strange situation with Musharraf, in which the structure of its aid to the Pakistan government essentially incented the government not to find Bin Laden because if they found him they had reason to fear that the US would end this flow of more than $10 billion that it was providing directly to the army.  The democratic government came to power arguing to Washington that constitutional democracy was a better counterterrorism strategy than reliance on an authoritarian military leader.  So, I think they understand, if they can deliver Osama, they're not going to be punished for it, rather they're going to be rewarded.  So, for the first time, you have somebody in the Pakistani government who has motivation to find him.  And at the same time, the population in which he's hiding has turned more hostile to him, so the possibility of someone dropping a dime on him is much greater now than it was a couple of years ago.

Before she was assassinated, Benazir Bhutto had broken through the relative silence among Pakistani elites about Islamic extremism, and had spoken bluntly about the need to confront the extremists.  The Musharraf regime, according to almost all observers, was severely compromised by it's thick ties, via the intelligence services, with extremists in the tribal areas on the border of Afghanistan.  In the recent elections, a coalition led by Bhutto's party prevailed over Musharraf's coalition.  The new government bitterly opposes Musharraf, and is hostile to the Bush administration, which it believes has supported anti-democratic forces in Pakistan, which subsequently fostered a rise in extremism which helped Al Qaeda.  

For it's own survival and the survival of a secular Pakistan, the new government will work much harder than Musharraf's to capture bin Laden.  They surely also have paid close attention to Barack Obama's much more aggressive position toward Pakistan and doing whatever is necessary to capture Bin Laden.  As Coll argued, the motivations for capturing him have changed, and will change even more should Obama become president.  

But what happens if Pakistan captures Bin Laden prior to our election in November?  Surely Bush will claim credit and try to use the opportunity to boost the chances of John McCain to continue Bush's third term.  Will the American press recognize that capturing bin Laden would probably have far more to do with the new government in Pakistan?  Would the US media make it clear that the utter failure of US policy toward Pakistan helped breed turmoil within Pakistan, which in turn finally led to the election of a government that is both hostile to the political interests of the Bush administration while simultaneously acting in a manner that's in the security interests of the United States?  

If the new government of Pakistan succeeds in capturing Osama bin Laden, will the US media help Americans recognize that for the last seven years, much of what's been done by the Bush administration and it's Republican enablers--including John McCain--has actually undermined the security interests of the United States?  

I wouldn't hold your breath expecting it to happen.

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