Ray Malone's Commentary

It has happened so many times in our past. One party gains control of the congress and the presidency and the other party goes into its opposition mode. Most of that opposition has little to do with reality. It is not well thought out or perhaps even considered. If the in power party is for it, the out of power party is against it. They are against it even when the in power party adopts the former policy of the out of power party. It happened in the late 30s as Republicans attacked FDR. If Franklin Roosevelt was for it, the Republicans were opposed.

Thus we had Republicans trashing Roosevelt about getting involved in WWII. Senator Robert A. Taft, known as Mr. Republican, made a major speech on the day before Pearl Harbor claiming that the Japanese were no threat to the USA. Yet the signs were everywhere that we could not avoid war with Japan and Germany. It was the hatred of FDR that blinded the Republican party of 1941. It is the hatred of Bush that drives the Democratic party today.

2007 and 1947 have a lot in common except the parties are reversed. Back then the Republicans had won control of the congress a year earlier. A sorry little man the media thought was stupid and ignorant held the White House. He had next to no support in the media and the polls showed him in terrible public disrepute. The Republicans were on a roll after 16 or so years out of power they were back in control of the House and Senate. They had investigations of the Truman administration going full blast. Everyone knew that it was just a matter of the 1948 election before the great Thomas E. Dewey would take his rightful place as the nations president. Once again the Republican party would be the majority party.... every poll showed it.

Swap the parties and replace Dewey with Hillary and we have today's situation.

On the way to the 1948 election things went wrong. ... badly wrong for Thomas A. Dewey. First of all the people liked Harry S. Truman. He was not the smartest man in the world as the media constantly reminded the voters. Thomas A. Dewey was the smart one. But Truman was a man the moderate voters felt they could trust. He was a man who would confront enemies. He would not cut and run. Dewey was a man who would stay above the fray... and do nothing.. when it was obvious that something needed to be done.

Every time the voters looked at Dewey they got a queasy feeling. He did not look like a person they wanted in charge. He looked cocky. He looked like a man who thought he was better than others. He of reminds me of Hillary.

Go back and read the press in 1947 and 1948. The media told us the economy was terrible even though it was not.. The Republicans and Thomas E. Dewey, the media said, had the solutions to the problems. They never told us what those solutions were.... Dewey was very good at pointing out the problems and placing the blame on Truman. It was finding and adopting workable solutions that gave him problems

In 2008 the nation faces a similar situation. There is a threat to our nation, a threat that did not seem to exist all that long ago. There is the view that if we just leave the Muslims, i.e. Russians, alone they will leave us alone. Back then Republicans said just needed to get out of Europe and Asia and leave the rest of the world to its own destiny. That was the Republican view in 1948. It is the Democratic view today. Just bring the troops home and disengage. Hitler ( Saddam) is gone.

Hillary has a real problem. She knows enough to understand that the cut and run policy of the Democrats will result in the destruction of our nation. Dewey knew that too. But Hillary, like Dewey, knows that if she supports what the president is doing it will mean defeat in the primary elections. Hillary like Dewey 50 years ago will try to solve her problem by staying above the fray and "ACTING PRESIDENTIAL". She will make proposals that are not really proposals.

The real turning point in 1948 was Truman demanding that Dewey make concrete proposals. When he finally did, Truman called congress back into special session and demanded that the Republican congress pass Republican nominee Dewey's proposals. The Democrats realized that the Dewey proposals were just campaign rhetoric. Were they to pass them the consequences for our nation could have been good. Their enactment would have destroyed the Republican party. The Republicans back then were not trying to solve our problems they were all about ruining Truman.

So congress met in the fall of 1948. Congress debated and then congress adjourned after passing nothing... nothing at all.

Truman ran by attacking the "Do Nothing Republican" congress. It was Truman's "Give 'em Hell" campaign. The issue before the voters was not what has Truman done.. but that the Republicans had refused to actually do what they said they would do if elected. Failure to act cost the Republicans the House the Senate and the Presidency.

Today the Democrats are repeating the Republican mistakes of 1948.

One thing I do know. George W. Bush is a student of history. Especially the 20th century history.

If he understands history and acts upon it he will go down in history as a Harry S. Truman, and Hillary will go down as a Thomas E. Dewey.

Yet in 1948 the public did not buy the media and Republican pitch. Yes Truman had a very low approval rating, but not nearly as low as the approval rating of the Congress.

2008 will offer a new opportunity. .. if the Republicans are as smart as Truman was in 1948. Truman made two major points in asking to be reelected and to regain control of congress. The first point was that the Democratic congress was not interested in passing or even finding solutions to the days problems. The congress was only interested in blaming Truman.

The second point was that there really was terrible danger in the world, and our population would suffer if we did not continue the long path to containment.

The path being taken by Bush is much like the path taken by Truman and all that followed him until the fall of the Soviet union. That was the containment of the Soviet Union. We went on limited offense, so that the Soviets were constantly in a situation where they had to find a way to get to the point where they had at least a chance of defeating us.

Today there is a new type of threat. It is not a nation threat.. It is a religious threat. It is the militant Muslims who threaten us. They have the infrastructure in many nations to allow their religion to attack all those who do not belong to their religion. They wield enough power that governments dare not try to put them down. In Iran they are the government.

Of course we could have gone into the Middle east and killed Muslims until none were left with the will to oppose us. That is what we did in Japan.

In WWII we napalmed residential areas of Japan killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese. It took them a while to figure out we would kill them all. It was Truman who had taken that course. But the cost of defeating Hitler and Japan was 50 million lives.

In the case of the Soviet Union Truman chose to contain them until those that wanted world domination were no longer in power. It took Ronald Reagan to spend the Soviets into bankruptcy and thus into the role of a former superpower.

Today we face similar choices. We can choose to believe that if we leave them alone they will leave us alone. We can chose to destroy them all. That is kill Muslims until those who remain will capture and punish those that want to harm us, or continue to contain them in the middle east.. until the situation ends.

The danger of containment is that we will tire and decide that the cost of containment is too high and the proper thing to do is come home.

That will most certainly result in the use of the third option. We will save some of our necks by killing all of them after they kill a few million of us.