Monday, January 19, 2009
Farewell President Bush - You Served Well
| There remain only a few hours left in the presidency of George W. Bush. For eight years he has given us his best. There were some low points but there were fewer than the media and liberals would have you believe. Katrina was a low point but even that, President Bush really can’t take all the blame for himself . But for liberals, President Bush was there scapegoat. Hurricane Katrina ravaged Mississippi every bit as much as it did Louisiana, yet Mississippi, under the leadership of Republican Governor Haley Barbour, did not encounter the same long duration of recovery or mishandled evacuations that Louisiana did. Mississippi’s local leaders did not decide to park their busses on low lying surfaces as did New Orleans’ Democrat Mayor, Ray Nagin. No, Mississippi’s first line of defense in natural disasters, their local governments, the governments closest to the people, came through and were every bit as prepared as they told the federal government that they were. Not so in New Orleans though. But a liberal bias from the media helped to make Hurricane Katrina President Bush’s fault. Shortly after the events of Hurricane Katrina many left leaning conspiracy theorists also claimed that Hurricane Katrina and a few of its devastating predecessors were the product of Japan where the Japanese government was inventing a new weapon that increased the intensity of tropical storms into category 5 hurricanes and directed them to land masses that they targeted. Many of the same people who made this claim gave blame to George Bush. That should tell you something. Although Katrina may not have been Bush’s fault, the recovery effort in Louisiana does get blamed on him and to a degree that is acceptable. So I guess, on the other side of the coin, the successfully rapid recovery in Mississippi warrants some credit for President Bush? Putting aside the blame game of Hurricane Katrina, there are two things that when grading this presidency, bring his average down. The first is his delay in approving the surge that his own Secretary of State urged for a year before he finally accepted it. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been advocating for more troops in Iraq. It was a strategy called “clear, hold and build”. It was also the same strategy that Senator John McCain called for. Clear, hold and build was successfully used by Col. H.R. McMaster in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar. The strategy called for door to door operations that cleared insurgents from the city along with an ongoing troop presence in each neighborhood that was cleared. Once this was achieved residents felt secure, and U.S. troops were able to begin rebuilding there. Wherever this strategy was conducted, it worked. The resurgents were gone and our continued presence there, prevented them from returning. As a result, citizens no longer lived in fear and life began to flow unimpeded by terror and violence. To carry out clear, hold and build, more troops were required. But increasing the number of troops was not something the administration wanted to advocate for. Although it was required in order to successfully carry out clear, hold, build the administration was afraid of the reaction to such a call. The President flinched in this area. It was one of the few instances where he allowed public perception to make him second guess his policy judgment. After Viet Nam, we should have learned that if you are going to enter into a fight, throw everything you have into it from the onset. Otherwise don’t get into the fight. In the case of Iraq, we held back. Had we went along with the surge from the beginning, we would have avoided the upsurge in violence that led to the waning of support for the war effort. The other area of deep negative impact on this administration was the financial collapse that brought on the current economic crisis. President Bush does not get blamed for causing the collapse, but it happened under his watch and it should not have. The President, through his advisors, should have seen this coming and helped to avoid it. He should have aggressively turned back some of the policies which led to the overextended loan practices which ultimately tied up loans and the markets. Many of the policies that brought us to this point were from Bill Clinton's administration. Clinton‘s National Homeowners Strategy was a financial scheme that promoted insanely low down payments and coerced lenders into giving mortgage loans to first-time buyers with unstable financing and incomes. It was a way to increase homeownership. That is an admirable motive but as usual, the liberal mentality, forced government to do that which it should not have done. Essentially, the Clinton era initiatives that forced government action on private sector interests led to the need for government to take over FannieMae and FreddieMac. This is not to say that private sector greed and bad business practices did not add to the wrong minded government policy, it did, but what happened here is that government solutions to one problem, created another . Now, ironically, the government which helped to create this problem is having to solve it . As for George Bush, this all came to a head under his watch. For that he must be blamed. So we have the recovery effort in Louisiana, delaying the surge in Iraq and not avoiding the economic crises that we are in, all helping to lower the average of this administrations grade. I have two more things to add though. One is immigration. On immigration President Bush was most inept. On this issue his positions were no where near appropriate for the leader of a sovereign nation. The Presidents refusal to accept that illegal immigrants are participating in illegal conduct that needs to be prosecuted was a horribly blundered policy and it is one that has not helped to solve our border security problem or alleviate the continued problem of illegal immigration. The other issue I hold against President Bush is his administrations inability to articulate their cause in a way that appealed to the people convincingly. The administration had been doing quite well in it’s first two years when the voice of the President came from then White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. Once Ari Fleischer left and Scott McClellan entered the picture, the White House lost any sway with the press or the public. This President was great with messages when we were in crisis and he had the people's attention, but in between crisis his message was jumbled and unconvincing. That, for this administration, was half of the battle and after Fleischer left they lost it. On the upside President Bush has many, much wrongly maligned, initiatives to help bring his grade up. Their was his “Faith Based Initiative” which allowed government to accept the involvement of religious institutions in helping out. Faith based initiatives were no longer penalized or denied by the federal government because of religion. It was something long over due in America, especially in an America where religion is not to persecuted against. There was "No Child Left Behind”. This policy was one which had universal support except for some extremist fringe players and teachers union.. But not willing to give credit where credit was due, liberals charged that President Bush backed out of his No Child Left Behind policy by under funding it. Truth be told, federal education spending is at record levels so that argument doesn’t swim. There are many other policies such as the Medicare prescription drug benefit, enacted in 2003. It triggered competition between drug companies and wound up costing less than expected. The Bush tax policy is also to his credit. He didn’t ask for lips to read on this issue, he simply created no new taxes and when he did not reduce them he held the line on them. I only wish he could have added drastic spending cuts to that. Another high point in this administration was the appointment of two supreme court justices, one being the chief justice. The appointments of John Roberts and Sam Alito were remarkably good choices. Neither had any judicial or personal blemishes and neither see the role of the judiciary to be one that makes law but rather interprets it. Add to that their relative youthful ages and the Roberts and Alito appointments to the bench will have a profound on our great nation for decades to come. The next greatest achievement of the administration was twofold. It involves The War On Terror and Iraq. Despite charges that Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism, the two are entwined together as violent threats. Pre-Saddam Hussein Iraq did not send to us the pilots that took nearly 3,000 Americans in one day but it had intentions just as dire. Saddam did not have any tangible links to 9/11 but he did have links to terrorist, including several who dabbled with Al Quaeda and he did continuously bereak and defy the cease fire agreement that he signed after the first Gulf War. Combine that with the fact that everyone from Bill Clinton and Al Gore to John Kerry and Ted Kennedy swore that Saddam was a threat and you had every reason in the world to eliminate Saddam Hussein. After 9/11 George H.W. Bush realized that we must eliminate threats before they eliminate us and so he took out the threat known as Saddam Hussein. In doing so not is democracy being brought to the Middle East but the power and richness of freedom is being delivered to a people that have long since forgotten what independence offers. Add to that that you can say what you want, but we no longer have to worry about any threat Saddam intended, and for that I thank the President. I also Thank him for the second part of this War On Terror effort. Under his watch not another single attack occurred on mainland territory since 9/11. Now if you want to blame Katrina on Bush because it happened during his watch you must also credit him for there being no more attacks under his watch. And when you think about, more attacks occurred under Bill Clinton then George Bush, so I thank President Bush for that as well. The final most valuable thing brought to life under President Bush goes back to exactly four years ago. In his inaugural address , after being sworn in for the second time, President Bush stated: “America has need of idealism and courage, because we have essential work at home – the unfinished work of American freedom. In a world moving toward liberty, we are determined to show the meaning and promise of liberty.” He went on to articulate a policy that directed the United States to end tyranny in the world as we know it. Now some may have seen that as a declaration of war by him but most read it the right way. He went on to say………“We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.” “All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.:” The speech has since been forgotten by most but it has not been forgotten by me and hopefully President Barack Obama will also remember it.. In its entirety, the address presented the essence of what it means to be an American and it captured the most important role that America must play in this world as its current, last remaining superpower. For me it Bush’s second inaugural address was the foundation for our greatest doctrine ever, the doctrine to achieve and true freedom and peace. When you have the time, click here and read the speech. You will be moved and you will understand our place in this world. The bottom line……. President Bush is a good man and was a good President. He will not go down in history ranked along side of Washington or Lincoln nor will he be lumped together with Franklin Pierce or Jimmy Carter. Ultimately, I believe George W. Bush warrants a B-. Many on the left will now assault me for giving that grade but I base George Bush’s presidency on the truth of reality not on the lies and distortions that they have spent the last eight years perpetuating and when you add that to the retrospect of history, I believe George W. Bush's name will slowly rise to its proper placement among American presidents. That is something that will take time. As President Bush recently put it, “they’re still debating and writing about how good or bad George Washington was, so I assume the same will happen with me”. |
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