Bush: You are No Truman!

President Bush implicitly compared himself to Harry S. Truman in a commencement address at the United States Military Academy on Saturday, saying Truman acted boldly against the “fanatic faith” of cold war communism in the same way Mr. Bush’s administration has responded to the threat of terrorism since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“By the actions he took, the institutions he built, the alliances he forged and the doctrines he set down, President Truman laid the foundations for America’s victory in the cold war,” Mr. Bush told the class of 2006.

Mr. Bush has compared the struggle against communism to the current war against Islamic radicalism in previous speeches, but his address on Saturday was his most developed on the theme. He left it unsaid that Truman was deeply unpopular at the end of his two terms in office and that it took a generation to appreciate his achievements…{{link http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/washington/28bush.html?_r=1&oref=slogin MORE}}

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