A friend at the University of Michigan has sent an open letter to President Bush. I thought it was worth being seen by others as well so I'm posting it here:
AN OPEN LETTER TO GEORGE W. BUSH
Here in November, 2005, you are down in the polls, just one year after being elected by the greatest number of votes in U.S. history. Your enemies, Al Qaeda, Fidel Castro, Kim Jung Il, Mohammad Khatami, terrorist everywhere, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, Jimmy Carter, Harry Reid, Michael Moore, the entire Hollywood left, the mainstream press, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and the Democratic Party are gleeful beyond words.
I would like to remind you about another President, Abraham Lincoln, and what happened to him. Here is what the press was saying about him in the 1860's:
"Mr. Lincoln evidently knows nothing of ... the higher elements of human nature ... His soul seems made of leather, and incapable of any grand or noble emotion. Compared with the mass of men, he is a line of flat prose in a beautiful and spirited lyric. He lowers, he never elevates you ...When he hits upon a policy, substantially good in itself, he contrives to belittle it, besmear it in some way to render it mean, contemptible and useless. Even wisdom from him seems but folly." The New York Post
Today, Lincoln is considered, by virtually every survey, to be the greatest of all U.S. Presidents. One of his speeches, The Gettysburg Address, is considered among the greatest speeches ever given, but here is what the press said about it at the time:
"We did not conceive it possible that even Mr. Lincoln would produce a paper so slipshod, so loose-joined, so puerile, not alone in literary construction, but in its ideas, its sentiments, its grasp. He has outdone himself. He has literally come out of the little end of his own horn. By the side of it, mediocrity is superb." The Chicago Times about The Gettysburg Address
President Bush, please take heart, ignore your critics and continue to do the right thing. As Harry S Truman said, "It will gratify some and astonish the rest."
Richard H. Francis Jr.
Well put, Richard.