Imagine that in the 2004 U.S. presidential election, President George W. Bush was directing the government to arrest, convict, and imprison his critics. Imagine that John Kerry was paying a scandalmonger to dig up dirt on Tom DeLay. Imagine further that John McCain was working secretly against Bush's re-election, that DeLay was plotting to replace Bush with Dick Cheney as president, and that John Edwards was conspiring to be elected president instead of Kerry.
Unimaginable, surely. But 204 years earlier in the presidential election of 1800, that's roughly what took place. The perpetrators were the statesmen who now are virtually deified as the Founding Fathers. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and just about everyone else on the political scene were performing in a dastardly manner that Bush, Kerry, Cheney et al. would never have contemplated two centuries later.
Some might have said those Americans were incapable of democracy and that we needed a benign king to hold our independence-minded states together in a single country. But we ended up building a democracy stronger than the flawed individuals who were part of the system.
People always forget that history is only settled in the past. While history is being made by actual people, the future is uncertain and nobody knows the effects of their actions. Success or failure hangs in the balance and outcomes only seem solid from the safe distance of time when we examine underlying and immediate causes for actions. Historical trends and eras are only built long after the absence of radical changes to that period indicate to us a broader sweep of history.
Iraq, which has already surprised some with mere stability, can shock again if the Iraqis move past their imperfect but still hopeful beginnings and build a real democracy based on rule of law in the heart of the Arab Moslem world. Don't be shocked if the history books speak of George the Liberator.
