The Past

Here's a famous quotation.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

Here is a quotation from an article on last Friday's Presidential Debate.

For me, the defining moment of this match was the last question of the evening, directed to the President. The questioner asked: "President Bush, during the last four years, you have made thousands of decisions that have affected millions of lives. Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it." The question clearly struck a raw nerve, you could see it in the way his eyes narrowed into paper cuts. Bush huffed about accepting the verdict of historians, which is just another way of saying, "as I see things now, I'm perfect". He even balefully accused the questioner of having veiled motive, of trying to trap him into some admission about Iraq saying, "That's really what you're ? when they ask about the mistakes, that's what they're talking about. They're trying to say, "Did you make a mistake going into Iraq?" And the answer is, "Absolutely not." It was the right decision."

But I think the questioner was actually trying to induce the President into a moment of more general introspection on his own character. Eventually he reluctantly mentioned that he'd made appointments that were mistakes, which is to say, the mistakes were yet again external; the products of being disappointed by lesser men he has no control over. Any guesses that those appointments he had in mind were the people who disagreed with him (Richard Clarke? Paul O'Neill?). In short, it seems he thinks his only mistake was in appointing a choice few people who thought that he could be mistaken.

Here is another quote.

"The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past." - William Faulkner

Enjoy tonight's debate if you are so inclined.