Is history already starting to look favorable on Pres. Bush from some of his critics?

Not all of the news out there is just about the incoming president. Some people are using this time to reflect on where we’ve been the last eight years and what Pres. Bush did good as well as bad. And SURPRISE, not everyone is throwing stones, snickers, boos and jeers. Remember, we are all human and have imperfections. Presidents make some mistakes that are big, some that are small but none which are intentional. I don’t think any President takes the office with the goal to do harm to this nation, or turn its citizens against each other, or put them in a unfavorable light to the rest of the world. Despite President Bush’s mistakes, there were some successes. To deny this would be a skewed perspective – or what many conservatives call is Bush Derangement Syndrome. While I don’t think most of President Bush’s critics suffer from BDS, I do think that he got the brunt end of the stick more often than he deserved. Perspective is everything sometimes and it will be interesting to see how people judge President Bush in 10, 20, even 50 years. If Iraq & Afghanistan become self-preserving, capitalistic & democratic economies – President Bush should be given the credit he deserves. If they don’t I’m sure many of my friends when we are in our 70s will mock him without hesitation – and they will be justified. But remember it was President Truman who left office with a 20% rating and an environment much like the one we have now. It was President Lincoln who died with half of the country hating him so much so that one of his critics assassinated him for it. Now they are seen as a couple of our greatest presidents. I’m not saying that President Bush will be looked at as a great president, but to say he is one of the worst is to say so with tunnel vision (and ignore the entire Carter administration IMO).

To me, his best moments :

  • The creation of Homeland Security
  • Cleaning up Carter’s mess by leading the war against terrorism in Iraq & Afghanistan (this doesn’t make me pro-war BTW)
  • The Bush tax cuts
  • His rejection of the pathetic Kyoto global warming treaty (not because of global warming, but because of it’s exception to China & India)
  • His support of Israel’s statehood
  • Appointing a diverse cabinet (I’m a fan of Condi Rice!)
  • Appointments of Roberts & Alito
  • Support of faith-based programs
  • Supporting the surge in Iraq even though it was the extremely unpopular thing to do at the time.

Now, I’m not 100% President Bush fan.  I leave out Katrina because I blame the govts. of LA and New Orleans more than the federal govt.(this is just my opinion, you may think I’m wrong – but honestly deal with it, my opinion on this isn’t changing). And everyone, including Mayor Ray Nagin seemed to get their act together the second time around – therefore they should be given credit for that.  His downfalls to me were:

  • His communication skills (this is key when you are president and if he had done a better job at this I don’t think people would be harping on him as much as they do)
  • Supporting No Child Left Behind (created by Ted Kennedy; just giving credit that this is not “a failed Republican” policy as many people incorrectly attribute it as)
  • Supporting the $700++ billion bailout
  • His low support/funding for science education programs.

I think how another blogger quoted Teddy Roosevelt is the most appropriate I’ve seen in the past few days to show the gratitude we feel for President Bush’s service:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Leaders are put in positions of leadership to make the hard decisions, not win popularity contests. To deny President Bush’s leadership ability because he made decisions you don’t agree with doesn’t make him any less of the leader that he truly was. He recognized time and time again that the decisions made under his administration may not have been the popular ones at the time, but that they were hard decisions to make in order to protect the people of the land he was sworn in to protect as President. To that I say THANK YOU, President Bush. Here are some people that can more eloquently express this point. In fact, I’ve included both liberals and conservatives to illustrate that even those who were strong Bush critics can see there were some good years and decisions made by our outgoing president.

Liberal Reflections:
http://www.clareified.com/2009/01/18/farewell-to-president-george-w-bush/
http://www.slate.com/id/2209133/?from=rss

Conservative links:
http://jameshudnall.com/blog.php/site/comments/farewell-bush/
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/20/goodbye-mr-bush/
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1232292908169
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/bruce-anderson/bruce-anderson-history-will-vindicate-george-bush-1419292.html

And to those critics who say Obama’s administration has brought a new era of “change,” and were move to tears by the words in his inauguration speech, I offer this little video demonstrating how little then they paid attention to what President Bush had been saying to the American people the last 7 years.

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