Posted on 04/07/2004 8:19:18 AM PDT by the_devils_advocate_666
MORGANTOWN -- Not many would compare President George W. Bush and his British counterpart to the dynamic duo of World War II, but Newsweek magazine's Managing Editor Jon Meacham sees a connection.
In his talk, part of WVU's Festival of Ideas series, Meacham compared Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill to Bush and Tony Blair to show how the past can help us understand the world today.
Meacham, author of the bestselling book "Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship," highlighted the relationship between FDR and Churchill built in the shadow of war.
"Everyone deeply cares about leadership, especially war leadership," Meacham said.
The leaders encompassed a few qualities that, he said, made them great leaders. These qualities include candor and cooperation, which he said their modern counterparts lacked when they campaigned for the war in Iraq.
FDR believed in arming people with facts, even the less pleasant ones, Meacham said.
Although he has no opinion of whether the war in Iraq is right or wrong, he said if Bush and Blair had followed FDR's lead they would have more support for the war.
But Bush and Blair haven't completely ignored the leadership of the World War II team, and in fact, he said, both are trying to follow in their footsteps. The team doesn't share the type of friendship FDR and Churchill did, but their proactive approach to war is very similar.
Not only were both wars sparked by attacks on American soil, and the approach was to not only attack those responsible, but also their allies.
"There is a tremendous parallel between Bush and Blair and FDR and Churchill," Allan Feldman, Morgantown resident, said.
Feldman was not a supporter of the war in Iraq before hearing Meacham's speech, but said he is now leaning the other way.
Meacham's goal isn't to rally support for the war, but to give people more insight into today's events.
"History in journalism provides people with facts they need to help them make up their own minds," he said.
Meacham, named "one of the most influential editors in the news magazine business" by the New York Times, started his journalism career in 1992 at the Chattanooga Times . He then served as editor for The Washington Monthly before joining Newsweek in 1995. He was named managing editor at the age of 29.
Meacham, who supervises the magazine's international affairs, politics and breaking news, has written cover stories on guns in America, race in the new millennium and the theological implications of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
And the light goes on!
Well, I'm sure "not many" of the folks that YOU hang around with would, Ivy.
| Rank | Location | Receipts | Donors/Avg | Freepers/Avg | Monthlies | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 | Alabama | 265.00 |
7 |
37.86 |
|
|
348.00 |
19 |
Thanks for donating to Free Republic!
Move your locale up the leaderboard!
Well I certainly wouldn't!
I've got much too high an opinion of George Dubya to compare him to a socialist dictator like FDR!
And I certainly hope President Bush doesn't do anything at the end of this war as stupid as FDR's dividing Germany up with Stalin, thus setting us all up for decades of Cold War.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.