I told you so doesn't quite cover it: "Beware Bush's American Dream",
the headline of a 2001 Observer Op-ed read, stating also: "This president is not to be trusted".
Furthermore, the article characterizes the Bush administration in harsh words that were later to become the mainstream profile:
But
the Bush cabinet is neither centrist nor compassionate. In home
affairs, it is brutalist and reactionary - for tax cuts overtly biased
towards the rich, against the protection of consumers, workers and the
environment. In overseas affairs, Mr Bush has appointed Cold War
warriors from his father's era who do not appreciate the nuances of a
transformed international environment.
The article also contained a warning and a prediction about the transatlantic relations:
Britain
and Europe will find doing business with this administration tense,
oppositional and unproductive. It would be difficult enough had Mr Bush
won a mandate. Without it, we are in for a very rough ride indeed.
Reality exceeded the prophetic warnings: Disastrous is probably a more appropriate term than unproductive.
The
reason why I take this trip in the time machine is to remind us all
that even the most fearsome prediction can be insufficient to describe
the extent of the calamity produced by the poor judgement of voters and
policy makers.
In my latest op-ed I suggest that readers take
into account the possibility that the future will be characterized by
neither the end of the world in a nuclear show-down in 2025 as CIA
recently predicted nor the triumph of Western democracy.
Instead,
we may live to see the end of the longest and most succesful democratic
era in recorded history. Not too many years ago a scenario like this
would have been readily rejected as a nightmare scenario cooked up in
the feverish mind of an overstimulated intellectual.
Now, all of a sudden, it seems increasingly possible. It is more than a wild card in the study of potential futures.
-Spencer, December 18, 2008
