Gee, this Olson woman lives in her own private fantasy world, doesn't she? The press has been intimidated by the Bush administration? (Maybe she is thinking of FDR, who ordered tax audits for newspaper owners who criticized him.) The Bush administration has been wiretapping U.S. politicians? If Olson has information on that, she should share it.

I don't know about analogies to Neville Chamberlain, who despite his reliance on Horace Wilson was very "hands-on" compared to Bush. Chamberlain on the other hand allowed himself to be taken in (several times) by Hitler. In perfect fairness, we can't say that Bush has ever done anything as bad as that.

Setting that to one side, Bush is long overdue for some needling questions about his advertised admiration for Churchill. It's all Bush can do, after all, to find his way from one end of a complete English sentence to the other without a script; Churchill wrote dozens of books, and eschewed the use of staff to write his official statements until he was well into his 70s. Churchill had extensive combat experience in four different wars, experience that informed his thinking when he had to direct British generals himself; Bush avoided combat, and during most of the Iraq war avoided engagement with operations, on which his Secretary of Defense had the final say. Churchill was a much admired statesman but a tone-deaf politician; when he had seriously contested elections in his various constituencies he lost more than he won. Bush is far abler and more engaged in the mechanics of electoral politics than he is in any aspect of the work that government does.

There are good reasons for Churchill to be admired, studied and even, to some degree, emulated by American politicians. It's unfortunate that for so many of them he's become no more than a base to touch, a symbol that in times of crisis one will be "resolute" or "determined."

Olson's piece is even more ridiculous when you consider the extreme lengths Churchill went to preserve operational security and intelligence sources. If Bush even tried to use a tenth of the deceptive tactics Churchill employed (e.g. allowing Coventry to be bombed to preserve the Ultra secret), someone would leak and Bush would be impeached.

The idea of alliances is also analogizing the wrong thing. If Britain had been strong enough to stop Germany by itself in 1940, Churchill would have advocated that course instead of waiting around for a tortuous diplomatic effort to win over allies. But Britain was not strong enough, so Churchill had to swallow an alliance with Stalin. The military balance facing the US in 2003 versus Iraq was rather different.

Oslon spends most of the essay describing, in detail, actions by Chamberlain then claiming, without supporting details, that Bush did the same thing. Hogwash.

I grew up on a farm and I recognize fertilizer when I smell it.

As for the Slate piece, sorry I only read the movie reviews in Slate. They are the only articles with any hint of objectivity in that e-rag.

Quite creative! Usually lefties like Olson simply go for the "Bush=Hitler" agitprop. So Kudos to Olson for going above and beyond.

Like everyone else above says, the comparison is nonsense.

http://alendalux.blogspot.com/2007/07/neville-or-winston.html

"The White House was in the midst of tough negotiations with Rangel over trade pacts. But Bush did not try to cut a deal with Rangel, chatting instead about baseball. "He talked a lot about the Rangers," Rangel said. "I didn't know what the hell he was talking about.""

So can we call BS the next time Rangel or one of his democratic colleagues whines about how partisan the President and the Republicans are - and about how you used to be able to get a beer after work with members of the opposition? Is a flight from DC to NY (what, 45 minutes?) really the best time to get into a knock down fight over trade pacts?

So Bush makes a little conversation and Rangel, as crotchety and ungracious as ever, pretends that means Bush is "detached" or losing it. It's trade pacts for goodness sake! It's not like they were discussing an imminent terrorist strike or the latest intelligence from Iraq.

"Olson's piece is even more ridiculous when you consider the extreme lengths Churchill went to preserve operational security and intelligence sources."

And Bush is reckless with operational security and intelligence sources. Not a point in favor of Bush being like Churchill.

Before reading the article I thought Olson was going to compare Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler to Bush's appeasement of the left on certain issues such as domestic spending and immigration policy. Bad guess.