'George #1 built international consensus and coalition before the Kuwait action, in stark contrast to his son's approach to Iraq. Even Obama has given George #1 props for that decision.'

***It was better to get consensus rather than not, as his son did. 'Twould've been better had no war been fought at all, and we'd just paid off Saddam, as we've done countless dictators over the last century. Bush 1 set in motion the catastrophic events that have led us to this war. This is like saying that it's better to have Herpes than AIDS. true, but good health is still better, and had Bush 1 not stuck American parts in none too nice holes, we'd not have herpes.

'Recessions happen and are rarely the fault of the sitting president in office at the time.'

***Correct, it was Reagan's trickle down economics that did it. Bush called it Voodoo once, then sucked it in deeply for power. How does he not share the blame, when he knew better? And, again, the mortgage crisis, the runaway and unacountable debt run up in the S&L and other scandals were forerunners to the Enron and Worldcom scandals, not to mention the meltdown of the greenback, with China, India, and other countries holding our economic futures in their paws.

'Andrew Sullivan and others have labeled George #1 one of “the most quietly effective presidents of our time.” Good enough for me.'

Even if I thought Sulivan was a top notch wonk, you have to do better than the Appeal to Authority fallacy.

Granted, he was not a terrible Prez ala LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, nor his son, but he ranks as a failure, with Ford and Carter. Slick Willy might be the only Prez of my lifetime to approach mediocrity, and that's a big 'might.'

South Carolina is interesting insofar as it has much conservatism there, and a strong Religious Right presence (the Bible Belt is a crescent through the southeastern to central US and there's a separate “front” of the Religious Right along Colorado's Front Range), so Huck should do well there in theory, but outside this area, Huck won't be strong at all, so continues the theory. Also, the South is the Black Belt, where most black Americans live (and many will return there from elsewhere when it is time to retire, if not earlier in their lives; for ages they have been going the other way). So, it will be interesting to see how Obama does in South Carolina.

(1990)

http://www.census.gov/geo/www/mapGallery/images…

(2000)

http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/atlas/…

The big Tuesday series, it will involve big-metro states including New
York, New Jersey, and California, where Huck would do poorly. The big question will be how well Clinton and the machine do there vs. Obama.
(I've already written off Edwards.)

Here's what I base it on …

George #1 built international consensus and coalition before the Kuwait action, in stark contrast to his son's approach to Iraq. Even Obama has given George #1 props for that decision.

Recessions happen and are rarely the fault of the sitting president in office at the time.

Andrew Sullivan and others have labeled George #1 one of “the most quietly effective presidents of our time.”

Good enough for me.

In what universe?

If the GOP remains weak, will we see Jeb Bush?