Working with Americans: what if Bush had made the right moves?

Is great overall!

Anyway, besides being made fun of (very funnily) of being Canadian in very many respects (eh!), the most notable interesting aspect has been learning political/social/cultural opinions of Americans.

Rick, the engineer who's been there the longest (and is very, eccentric?), and who happens to sit across from me, has very interesting opinions, which sometimes mirror my own, but most of the time are on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Anyway, he's a very educated, Republican. His views are logical, not just conservative in every way: he thinks as I do, that drugs should be legalized (even though his brother works for the "war on drugs" feds) .

Anyway, he noted to me that, although Bush did not win with a major% of the people's votes, neither did Clinton in either of his 2 terms (although, I pointed out to him, that Clinton never had an under 30% approval rating.) He argued that Ross Perot ate up 12% of the votes, most of which would have been Republican votes (that's arguable), enough to sway the vote either way.

An interesting break-up of Republican/Democrat parties: Democrats hold almost all the large cities, and Republican the rest :) I wonder if Canada would have a similar structure with the Conservatives / Liberals (which, really, are the only 2 significant parties.. the Bloq are a joke and the NDP too underpowered.)


According the him, the biggest mistake the current administration made was to not the War on Iraq seriously, right away.

He's right: had the US went into Iraq with perhaps 2-4X the force, and ready for a semi-long war, the sectarian violence would never have escalated to this level,the Iraqi people would have had better supplies/infrastructure (i.e. working electrical grid). Bush would have been praised for saving Iraq and "winning" a battle on terrorism, instead of being damned for muddling it up.

Ultimately: Cheney, Bush, and his government gambled on a war in Iraq (and are still struggling to win.)