Speaking broadly, there are two ways for presidents to err. They can do stupid things, like invade Iraq. They can also dither until it's too late to act, as when we failed to intervene in the Rwandan genocide. It might seem that the liberal party should be more susceptible to errors of commission while conservatives frown and fret until it's too late to do what needs doing. In our country, however, it's the Dems who are apt to worry and analyze, worry some more and reanalyze, while the Republicans sprint pell-mell across the stupid line.
I think I prefer the Dems partly because I am myself more of a ditherer. Medicine's Hippocratic oath--"First, do no harm"--seems like a fallible but generally useful guide, including in statecraft. It also seems to me like a conservative axiom, but don't tell that to all the cock-sure, spittle-specked hard asses in the Republican party who complain about the Current Occupant being "weak." What they mean by "weak" looks to me like what the first President Bush was fond of calling "prudent." I never voted for him but I think prudence in a president is highly desirable.
