The situation in Haiti is just another example of the "band-aid diplomacy" practiced by former President Clinton that will have to be cleaned up by President Bush.  Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president of Haiti in 1990, but was almost immediately overthrown in a 1991 military coup.  In 1994, Clinton sent 20,000 US troops from the 82nd Airborne to put down the rebellion and restore Aristide to power.  As they were about to land, the new leaders of Haiti signed an agreement to step down, and Clinton called it a done deal.  The problems that led to the coup, however, were never addressed, nor were the problems afterwards.  They were just covered up by a Clinton band-aid and left to fester, only to break out again after Clinton's watch was over.  Aristide allowed his puppet, Rene Preval, to take power in name only in 1995, but "won" re-election in 2000.  After that, perhaps feeling that the US would always protect him, he became a tyrant... and nothing was done about it.  Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) said in February 2003, "When Haiti elected its first democratic president in 1990, we had a great hope for economic and political stability and respect for basic rights.  But even Aristide has failed to bring in a new era of peace and prosperity.  Instead, we have seen escalating political violence. Illegal arrests, arbitrary detentions, disappearances, killings, crackdowns on political opponents, and restraints on free speech and free assembly are all too common.  In the last six months, we have seen new waves of violence, targeting journalists, students, human-rights activists, and the government's political opponents.  Those who commit these harsh acts of brutality and intolerance often operate with impunity, and in some cases, they appear to be acting with government support."  Of course, Kennedy and so many others were equally critical of Saddam Hussein until President Bush actually did something about the situation in Iraq, after which they changed their tune.  We'll have to see whether leading Democrats begin to criticise Bush for not acting to "preserve democracy" in Haiti. 

How many other problems did Bush inherit with his Presidency?  The first thing he had to deal with was the recession, which began in May of 2000 when the unstable tech stock "bubble" burst.  By the time of the election that November, the stock market was already dropping, and firms were beginning layoffs.  So-called "dot-coms" which had dominated the market throughout the 1990s were disappearing like a magician's trick.  Now, thanks to President Bush pushing his tax cuts through Congress, the economy is strong again.  The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) grew at a healthy, sustainable rate of 4.1% in the fourth quarter of 2003, and looks to keep on growing at a rate of 4.5% this quarter.  All economic indicators bear this out.  It's simple math: when you don't tax companies (and the people who own them) down to the ground, they have the money to expand and hire employees.

Don't let anyone fool you about the job situation, either.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that unemployment is at 5.6%, meaning (of course) that 94.4% of Americans are employed.  Sure, it's not quite the 2000 high mark of 95.8% employment from early 2000, at the height of the bubble era, but it's far better than the Great Depression-style 25% unemployment rate "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime" picture of doom the Democrats are painting.  In fact, it turns out that 700,000 jobs have been created since President Bush took office, over and above the millions of jobs the Democrats constantly insist that he "lost" (the figure changes from day to day) but were not.  The discrepancy comes from the data they deliberately ignore from entrepreneurs, small businesses, and the self-employed. 

Though 75 percent of jobs are created by small companies, according to the Small Business Administration, this sector’s entrepreneurial activity and the jobs it creates are left out by Washington bean counters when calculating official new job numbers.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does its Payroll Survey by phoning businesses to crunch the number of jobs that have been gained or lost. This is where Democrats grabbed onto their lifeline, the 2.3 million figure. Look only at the Payroll Survey, and there has been a gain of only 522,000 jobs since Bush took office.
But here’s the rub. The Household Survey is used to determine the unemployment rate and accounts for those who are self-employed, and small emerging businesses that might be overlooked by the Payroll Survey. But the number of U.S. firms isn’t static, and the "fixed list" used by the BLS for phoning established businesses does not reflect new entrepreneurial activity.

President Bush has spent his entire first term in office dealing with the economy, al-Qaeda, corporate scandals, Iraq and North Korea -- all problems from the 1990s, each covered up with a band-aid and left behind by his predecessor.  Faulty or poor intelligence -- due to a reduction of CIA covert action during the 1990s -- kept us from preventing 9/11.  If the CIA had been fully funded, supported and used by Bill Clinton, we might have known that Kim Jong Il and Saddam Hussein were both breaking their agreements with us.  We might have known that Libya and Iran were close to having nuclear weapons.  We might have known that Abdul Qadeer Khan of Pakistan was running a nuclear clearinghouse, in fact.  We might have known that Saddam Hussein was making billions by skimming off the oil-for food program (as reported in The New York Times), and buying support around the world (especially from France, Russia and China) with oil vouchers.  We might have known exactly what Saddam did with the weapons of mass destruction the UN told us he had -- whether he destroyed, buried or moved them, and where. 

Haiti is just the latest in a long series of problems facing the last Administration that were given a coat of paint and a promise, to be redeemed by the present one.  I wonder how many more little time-bombs from the '90s are ticking away around the world, waiting to explode?