Assessments of the record of George W. Bush - as with any President - will have to unfold over time to give a full and accurate picture. Those compiled now seem more than hasty, though they are plenty.
Accordingly, amidst the flurry, here are two I recommend:
1) Charles Krauthammer discussing one adroit method of reviewing the Bush record: noting the areas where Obama ends up changing little policy, or not much at all.
The post-election pragmatism of Obama has veered significantly from the path of his campaign rhetoric, particularly that of the primary season. Topics like free trade and Iraq come quickly to mind, but the course of that dynamic through the coming months and years will be worth watching.
Part of the process will necessitate honorable persons of the left acknowledging what went right, even as others will stubbornly cling to the idiotic notion that conservatism is "discredited" and conservatives writ large are prudently compared to alcoholics. Those on the right who presumed the left was doomed after 1994 or 2004 were wrong. Errant presumptions from the left after 2008 will likewise prove false.
2) Fair critiques of 43 from the left - and even the center - are difficult to find at this time, particularly in the wake of the media-driven frenzy of calamity v. hope and change that unfolded in 2008. On the right, many have and will use their assessments of W as a means to advance ideological fights of their own. In contrast, Patrick Ruffini offers a tough yet fair discussion of Bush's record from a conservative perspective.
UPDATE: Former White House staffer Peter Wehner also offers an appropriate review of Bush accomplishments, which cross the ideological spectrum.
Posted by Eric Earling at January 20, 2009 10:49 AM | Email ThisObama's policies are wrong. Successful implementation of his liberal agenda would harm the American people, weaken our national security, threaten our constitutional liberties, and greatly increase the power of the government over the lives of individual citizens.
The new administration - Obama, Hillary Clinton, Tom Daschle, Joe Biden, Janet Napolitano - will definitely represent change. It will be change in a left direction to be sure, but change nonetheless.
The far left and the mainstream media will be cheerleaders as Obama pushes expanded government, increased taxes and spending, government-run health care, "card check" for labor union bosses, restrictions on gun ownership, weak border security, steps toward amnesty for illegal immigrants, and the nomination of activist judges who will thwart the will of the American people.
As with Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the Obama administration will harm our foreign policy, retreat before our enemies, and weaken the military.
As with Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the Obama administration will support abortion and oppose the pro-life cause.
The far left will like the Obama agenda of change - yes, change - that the new president will seek to promote. Obama will push for government-run health care, cap and trade, an auto bailout, and environmental policies that will harm the economy.
He will have the support and enthusiasm of the mainstream media, the liberal elites, and yes even the far left of the Democratic Party.
Obama will expand government and RAISE taxes.
Let's not disarm ourselves with false optimism and head-in-the-sand denial about Obama governing pragmatically, realistically, and from the center.
Obama will govern from the left; he will pursue a left agenda. If Obama is successful, liberty will be decreased.
Obama’s agenda and policies are wrong and harmful. I hope the American people succeed; I hope America remains a nation of liberty, justice, opportunity, and freedom. That’s why I hope Obama fails.
Posted by: Steve Beren on January 20, 2009 10:53 AM"Liberal" agenda? What? Making America work for the people for a change and not just the top 1% and large corporations? No way!!! You definitely would oppose that right?
Far left mainstream media? You gotta be kidding. You must mean that 8% of talk radio that is not conservative. Even CNN has "conservatives" on that have been disgraced so many times it isn't funny. Why do people that have been wrong so often still get a microphone.
Steve, you and your "party" have had their turn, and messed up our country as bad as anyone would have thought possible. Time for your trickle down, outsourcing is good dishonest criminal slimeballs to get out of the way and let someone with intelligence take our nation in a new direction. Unless of course you want to "stay the course" until every single American is out of work.
Bush = Prosecute
How's them apples?
Posted by: All Facts Support My Positions on January 20, 2009 11:13 AMI like them apples.
Posted by: Andy on January 20, 2009 11:25 AMApproval of WHAT? Being?
He hasn't done anything to rate "approval".
"We like him"... translates to 'he must be succesful'?
Nonsense.
"I, for one, will engage in an intellectual "name calling" of the new occupant of the White House and his equally deserving better half..." -- Gene Simmons
***
"The Democrats, the American hard left, and their enablers in the media (please forgive the redundancies) set the new standard for political civility and restraint in their treatment of George W. Bush over the last eight years. Applying their standard to the president-elect, it's not too early to declare the socialist administration of the painfully inexperienced, arrogant, condescending, jug-eared clown, Barack Obama, a failure....As you sow so shall you reap.
At least that's what we conservatives would do IF we shared the left's instincts..." -- Jerry Shenk Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Bush wasn't booed because of ideology. I, and many "liberals" still respect his father, and would never boo him. Jr. was booed because of his lies, his war crimes, and the damage his criminal administration has done to our land.
I can only hope his legacy is sealed by his criminal trial. Justice would for once be served.
Posted by: All Facts Support My Positions on January 20, 2009 12:30 PMBullshit. I remember the left when HW was running. They accused him of deliberatly killing his fellow soldiers on his plane that went down.
So stop the lies NO FACTS.
Posted by: pbj on January 20, 2009 01:08 PMThe Bambi clock has begun.
We'll see.
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on January 20, 2009 01:12 PM@10 pbj. I heard Al Franken tell a listener that Bush Sr. did ok and not to disrespect him. I guess Franken doesn't represent "all" liberals, but if Franken says '41 was allright, that's good enough for me. Ford did fine too, as far as I'm concerned.
Posted by: All Facts Support My Positions on January 20, 2009 01:35 PMLOL
Posted by: Medic/Vet on January 20, 2009 02:03 PM- Prosecute Democrat Thomas Jesserson, in absentia, for miscegenation;
- Prosecute Andrew Jackson, Democrat, for genocide. Jackson lied and people died on the Trail of Tears;
- Ditto Democrat Polk who, Lincoln said, lied about the origin of Polk's preemptive unilateral war against Mexico;
- Get Democrats Pierce and Buchanan for getting us mired in the quagmire of Kansas insurgency and national civil war;
- Prosecute Democrat Grover Cleveland for sending goons and the 7th Cavalry to kill workers at Haymarket;
- Prosecute Woodrow Wilson, Democrat, for resegregating the exec branch after Republicans integrated it. Prosecute Wilson for prosecuting Americans (10 year terms for criticizing Wilson) during wartime and for unleashing a reign of terror after the war;
- Prosecute Democrat FDR for torturing American citizens in concentration camps. Ever been to Powell, Wyoming, in January or July? Way worse than waterboarding;
- Put away FDR for killing antilynching legislation; for trying to pack the Supreme Court with cronies; and for putting a lifetime member of the Klan on the Court;
- Prosecute FDR for paying farmers to destroy food while "one-third of a nation" was going hungry;
- Prosecute FDR, in absentia, for destroying the livlihoods of black sharecroppers in the South;
- Prosecute FDR for using military tribunals to effect the executions of harmless saboteur terrorists;
- Prosecute FDR for fomenting secret war while the United States was officially neutral. Joe Persico notes that FDR lied, then lied again, about a Nazi takeover of South America and Central America;
- Prosecute FDR for his tenure as undersecretary of Navy. He said he broke so many laws and cut so many corners he could have been put away for 999 years. Should have been;
- Prosecute Truman, Democrat, for nuclear genocide against the Japanese;
- Prosecute Truman for allowing Acheson, his secretary of state, to foment the Korean War in which almost 40,000 Americans died and millions of Koreans died;
- Prosecute John Kennedy, Democrat, for sending more than one thousand freedom fighters to die or to be tortured by Castro. Kennedy lied about air cover, and people died;
- Prosecute Kennedy for conducting foreign policy through the Mafia;
- Prosecute Robert Kennedy, Democrat, for wiretapping Martin Luther King;
- Prosecute Democrat LBJ for turning Kennedy's Vietnam disaster into a debacle;
- Prosecute Johnson, in absentia, for getting rich by manipulating FCC licences;
- Persecute Jimmy Carter, Democrat, for being an idiot who turned the Islamic Middle East into a cauldron;
- Prosecute Carter for building bad houses;
- Prosecute Carter for his policy of pouring food into gas tanks, and for the current famines his idiot policy caused;
- Prosecute Carter for treason. Lib historian Douglas Brinkley uses the word 'treason' to describe Carter's anti-diplomacy of 1990 and 1991 when he tried to destroy the coalition being built by GHWB, Baker, and Cheney;
- Prosecute Bill Clinton, Democrat, for raping Juanita Broaddrick and for molesting Kathleen Willey. Let them have their days in court and let him quit hiding behind statutes of limitation;
- Prosecute Clinton for being AWOL during the Cole, Khobar Towers, and the blown-up embassies;
- Prosecute Clinton for not taking bin Laden when OBL could have been extradited from Sudan;
- Prosecute Clinton for spying on Amicans via projects Eschelon and Carnivore;
- Prosecute Clinton for outsourcing torture via extraordinary rendition;
- Prosecute Clinton for selling Loral guidance systems to China in exchange for illegal contributions;
- Re-try Sloppy Sandy Berger, Democrat, for stealing and manipulating evidence in an apparent effort to mislead an inquiry;
- Shout down Clinton, Richard Clarke, and the Air America tard last week who said careful Democrat planning caught Ahmed Ressam. Ressam was nailed only because he was fortuitously profiled;
- Prosecute Clinton et al. for allowing the 9/11 plot to fester to fruition on their watch;
- Blow off Paul Krugman whose columns in October 2001 were predicting an immediate liquidity trap that didn't happen. You say he presciently 'predicted' stuff back then that didn't happen until 2008? I say J.Z. Knight could have done at least as well, or that Krugman talked down our resilient 2001 economy, planting the seeds of the 2008 recession.
Reagan saved us from Carter. Reaganomics saved us from Carterquagmire. Remember the Misery Index? Double digits for unemployment, inflation, and interest rates? That was Carter's legacy, and Reagan killed it, thank God.
Give Carter credit for jump-starting deregulation and for having the belated brains to hire Volcker. But that's the totality of his usefulness. Thank God Reagan put us out of Carter's Misery.
Please. Tell us your places of business. I'll avoid them like the plague.
Posted by: jimg on January 20, 2009 04:13 PMOn that we can agree. Support or oppose his policies or positions (and there were many of both for me), you could not deny that President Bush did what he thought was best for the country, and put country ahead of self. It was not aggrandizement nor popularity that drove him, but betterment of these United States.
If only past Presidents had been so intentioned, and I pray the current President is of like mind as President Bush in this regard.
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on January 21, 2009 08:54 AM