The complete article may be found at the Financial Review website-- http://www.afr.com/articles/2003/09/25/1064083117132.html [This link was found on the Review's website through a Google search on 3/20/04]

Quotes--

... He is very good at fundraising. Indeed, he has no peer. He personally raised $US100 million ($157.2m) for his 2000 campaign and has now started soliciting money for his re-election. The target is $US170 million, and, in those weeks he works on it, he is already raising $US10 million a week. ...  The Republicans used to chide Bill Clinton for being 'fundraiser-in-chief'. Bush makes Clinton look like a beginner.

... The defining characteristic of the Bush Administration is that it uses its power not to implement its policies, but uses its policies to entrench its power. Not content to implement policy in the existing framework of the two-party system at home and the existing international order abroad, the Bush team seeks to bend the framework, restructure the order. ...

The actions of the Bush White House show that it seeks, above all, to structurally strengthen the Republican Party at the structural expense of its Democrat opponents. That is, the Bush Administration is working to permanently entrench the Republican Party in power. And in a close parallel, Bush's foreign policy is working to impose a new vision of permanent US global domination.

... The decision to invade Iraq not only dissolved the global coalition in support of the US, it also transferred credibility and goodwill in the Muslim world from Washington to Osama bin Laden. ...

So why did Bush decide to throw away these precious political and strategic resources? Is he destined to go down in history as the president who squandered the greatest opportunities of modern times? The answer is that he did not squander them. He chose to discard them. ...  And here is the reason: Bush decided that his pre-existing political agenda was more important than a thoroughgoing response to the challenge of terrorism. ...

This is the agenda that Bush has chosen to pursue. He has chosen partisan warfare and the destruction of the political opposition's power base over national unity. As for his decision to jettison the global coalition in favour of a unilateral invasion of Iraq, Bush has chosen this course because it works for him on two levels: as an adjunct to his domestic political agenda, and because it forms part of his Administration's vision of perpetuating US power. ...

This story was found at: http://www.afr.com/articles/2003/09/25/1064083117132.html