I quite like this typically pithy note in today's Daily Telegraph, from
the (hard right) mayor of London:

"The legacy of George Bush may take years, if not decades, to determine.

But at present he seems to have pulled off an astonishing double whammy.

However well-intentioned it was, the catastrophic and unpopular
intervention in Iraq has served in some parts of the world to discredit
the very idea of western democracy.

The recent collapse of the banking system, and the humiliating resort
to semi-socialist solutions, has done a great deal to discredit - in
some people's eyes - the idea of free-market capitalism.

Democracy and capitalism are the two great pillars of the American idea.

To have rocked one of those pillars may be regarded as a misfortune.

To have damaged the reputation of both, at home and abroad, is a pretty
stunning achievement for an American president."

When Margaret Thatcher's successor is backing Obama - as he is ,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/m.../2008/10/21/do
2101.xml

it\s a strange day.

Has anyone seen Oliver Stone's movie, btw?

L