Dan

Calabrese

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January 15, 2009

Sorry? Hardly! Bush’s Record of Achievement is Solid

My friend and colleague Stephen Silver, an excellent writer and analyst, did a nice job on Tuesday of capturing the establishment media take on President Bush's farewell press conference. Steve describes himself as a Democrat whom the Democrats don't always love (that's because he is far too rational far too often), and he used the occasion to assess the Bush presidency as one would expect a Democrat to assess it.

The piece needs a rebuttal. Far from the sentiment expressed in the headline, "Bush's Sorry Legacy"), the sorry legacy stemming from the Bush presidency will not be of Bush's achievements in office, but of a press corps that could not or would not recognize them, and of a general populace too distracted by trivia to recognize the leadership from which they were benefitting.

Indeed, when Steve scoffs at the notion that history will vindicate Bush, he falls right in to the current conventional wisdom that the spin of the moment will surely be locked in as history's perspective.

For starters, two of Steve's primary pieces of evidence against Bush are actually points in Bush's favor. One is the use of torture against terrorism suspects. The other is what Steve describes as Bush's inaction on global warming.

Bravo on both counts. It appears that torture, at least in the form of waterboarding, was only used three or four times, including at least once against 9/11 "mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. That torture yielded intelligence that saved innocent American lives. The real scandal is not that Bush authorized the use of torture, but that the New York Times and other liberals think it would have been preferable to let innocent Americans die as an alternative.

With respect to global warming, what Bush declined to do was ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which would have hamstrung American industry and put us at the mercy of a UN enforcement branch to compel us to take actions that would not have been in our best interests. Oh, by the way, since the Earth has been on a cooling trend for the past decade, which includes all of Bush's presidency, maybe doing nothing was a pretty good idea.

Other indictments Steve cites are either absurd (he "presided" over 9/11?), misleading (the federal government "stood idly by" while New Orleans flooded?) or just plain silly, and the example fitting the latter description best captures the conventional wisdom of the Bush presidency.

Remember that "Mission Accomplished" banner? Of course you do. The media and the Democrats will never stop talking about it. Bush flew to an aircraft carrier populated by members of the Armed Forces who had just achieved a significant objective in the Iraq War. Wearing a flight suit (because he had just been flying), Bush stood in front of a banner hailing the achievement. Soon thereafter, because much of the overall Iraq mission had clearly not yet been achieved, Bush's political opponents and their media enablers turned this event into a public relations disaster for the president.

Now it is cited as a failure of his presidency. That's right, a public relations event that backfired is cited as a serious argument against a president's entire legacy. Ridiculous. It is Bush's antagonists who have turned this into the most important event in the history of the republic, not the president himself. It was not a policy decision. It was not anything of substance. It was a banner on a boat. Big whoop.

Finally, Steve cites the recent financial meltdown, which certainly did occur on Bush's watch, but Steve declines to mention a) that Bush tried to take steps to prevent the meltdown five years ago, and that Democrats Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank prevented the president's proposals from being implemented; or that b) Bush stood up and took bold action – angering his own political base in the process – in response to the crisis.

The one criticism that's fair is the ballooning of the national debt during Bush's tenure, led for the most part by Republicans in Congress, but as Congressman Paul Ryan told me recently, "neither hurt nor helped" by the president, who made the regrettable choice to spend his political capital elsewhere.

Of course, Steve also neglects to mention the economic growth spurred by Bush's tax cuts, and while he grudgingly credits Bush for the surge in Iraq, he refuses to acknowledge that Bush showed political courage and good judgment by taking Saddam Hussein out in the first place – intelligence failures notwithstanding, as the war was about much more than just weapons of mass destruction.

President Bush has every reason to hold his head high. He made mistakes and he leaves with serious problems in the offing, but overall he racked up a solid record of achievement. If his critics could recognize policy substance and results, rather than polls and PR events, they would see that. But they can't, so they don't.

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