As the George Bush presidency comes to an end it may help to put on the record his many epic accomplishments which have been so distorted by his political adversaries. Throughout it all, President Bush and the Bush family have been unfailingly civil and courteous to their worst domestic adversaries, like the Kennedy family and the civil rights leadership, almost to a fault, while the Kennedy’s, the civil rights leaders and those on the left continue to try and demonize him with the most vicious calumnies and personal slurs any modern president has been labled with. Yet George Bush keeps smiling, keeps his cool at all times, and wins almost all his political battles.
It all began in 2000. After a successful stint as Governor of our second largest state, re-elected by a larger margin than his original victory against Democrat icon Ann Richards, George Bush was elected US President after his opponent, Al Gore, tried every trick in the book to try and overturn the results of the flawed Florida vote count. Every one of the offending precincts that had had voting problems in Florida were run by Democrats, yet Al Gore’s campaign claimed the election was stolen, and he demanded a selective re-count, not across Florida, but in only certain Democrat-controlled areas. Then the Democrat controlled Florida Supreme Court blatantly misconstrued the Florida constitution and had to be over-ruled by the US Supreme Court. Finally, Bush had won. The left has never forgiven him and he has been under a relentless barrage of public and personal attack ever since.
The interesting information that has been expunged from the Democrat anti-Bush record is that several independent investigations after the 2000 elections all confirmed that Bush would have won by a narrow margin regardless of how the hanging chads had been counted by anyone other than Al Gore and his left wing partisans. So, the Democrat myth was created that Bush stole the election and that he was “appointed” by the US Supreme Court, which is absurd and patently false.
With the delay in deciding the election the Bush administration had to scramble to catch up because the economy had declined since the fourth quarter of 2000, which Bush approached by proposing cutting income tax rates and capital gains tax rates in his first budget, which was largely approved to begin October 1, 2001.
Well, we were attacked on 9/11/2001 before Bush and his administration had any time to get their hands around the rot in our defense and intelligence foundations from the feckless Clinton administration, which had, throughout the 90s refused to consider Al Qaeda as terrorists and considered them only as criminals who had all the due process protections in the US Constitution. The success of the attack sent the already slow US economy reeling.
Not only had the Clinton administration puffed up their budget surpluses by cutting defense and intelligence spending to 3% of GDP, but they had raised the information-sharing “wall” between the CIA and the FBI and had banned US intelligence operatives from gathering intel from folks they considered “unsavory”, the very people who have access to unique sources even though their information has to always be thoroughly vetted.
To make matters worse, Bill Clinton had refused THREE attempts by Sudan to hand over Osama Bin Laden to the US as documented by the go-between, Pakistani businessman and journalist Mansoor Ijaz. Clinton claimed that he did not have any probable couse to hold Bin Laden, even though Al Qaeda had already claimed responsibility for several attacks on US interests including the World Trade Center in 1993, the coordinated bombings of hotels in Kenya and Tanzania, and the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.
Then, after Bin Laden left Sudan and went to Afghanistan, Clinton refused to give the CIA the approval to shoot when they had him in their sights THIRTEEN times because of concerns for collateral damage, and this has been documented by the CIA agent in charge of finding Bin Laden prior to 2003, Michael Scheuer.
Fortunately the massive tax rate cuts that Bush had pushed through between 2002 and 2003, with help from the Republicans who controlled both houses of Congress turned the economy around and caused tax revenues to skyrocket. We had seven years of moderate growth with low inflation until the current slowdown as part of a seven year business cycle. While the economy is in the doldrums, we are not even in a recession yet based on traditional criteria.
Unfortunately, Bush’s major failure was his inability to curb wasteful government spending and earmarks passed by Republicans and Democrats alike, which, with the wars on terror and liberation in Afghanistan and Iraq, caused massive budget deficits. The Federal Reserve Bank loosened the money supply to help grow the economy by keeping interest rates low because inflation was also low. Unfortunately, right about the same time, the Ivy Leaguers who heavily populate the financial institutions and brokerages in New York and elsewhere decided like a brainless herd on a fundamentally flawed premise now known as sub-prime lending. They made millions personally through inflated growths in their business portfolios, but the fundamentals soon caught up, as they always do, and the rest of the economy is now in shambles and US taxpayers are left to pick up the pieces.
The combination of all these unfortunate events has devalued the US currency. It is small comfort to note that, because the economy had also grown, the federal budget deficit, massive in absolute terms has DECLINED as a percentage of GDP from 3.5% in 2001 to 1.9% in 2006 and is expected to increase in the next couple of years to 3% of GDP which is about where it has been on average over the longer term.
With the Democrats taking control of Congress in 2006 things have gotten even worse than the Republicans before them, and the approval rating of the Congress is now in single digits, far below even the President’s low approval ratings, fairly typical when the country is at war, and now exacerbated by the propaganda onslaught from the far left wing, largely being funded by George Soros, who always benefits financially from chaos and confusion.
Little noticed among the sturm and drang of politics and the ongoing media bias is that Bush’s education reforms have turned the US public school system around and minority school kids are experiencing historically high grades and passing rates, in spite of the powerful teachers unions which resist any attempts at quality control in education.
Bush-supported programs to encourage poor people to own their own homes has caused the highest level of minority home ownership in history.
Bush-supported vocational initiatives are retraining workers laid off from declining and obsolete industries preparing them for growing industries of the future, like energy.
Bush implemented a $15 BILLION 10-year-plan to help in the worldwide fight against HIV/AIDS, in mostly poor and tropical countries. Recently he added $48 BILLION on top of that and included TB and malaria to the plan. Yet he continues to be excoriated by African leaders like Nelson Mandela, who worship Bill Clinton who did NOTHING for Africa when he was president - other than apologize for long past atrocities like slavery to correct the effects of which the US has spent BILLIONS in reparations in the form of welfare programs and other taxpayer-funded assistance administered by a small army of “community organizers”.
America has earned some respect among previously hostile Indonesians in the aftermath of the deadly tsunamis of a few years ago when Americans were first on the scene with tangible assistance. Covered up by most in the heavily anti-Bush media was that it was Bush who ordered an aircraft carrier on its way to the war in Iraq diverted to help the devastated Indonesians.
Because of Bush, 50 million Muslims who were previously oppressed and brutalized by Muslim tyrants are well on their way to freedom and democracy, peace and prosperity in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq now has a budget surplus and is paying for most of it’s own expenses, un-reported by most of the anti-Bush media.
If the Taliban in Afghanistan and a small number of Shia and Sunni extremists in Iraq had not decided to kill innocent civilians and each other in order to thwart the people’s expressed desire for democracy, the war would have been over long ago, and reconstruction well on its way as we saw in Italy, Germany and Japan after World War II.
Because of Bush’s brilliant foreign policy strategies, Libya and N. Korea have given up their hostility and nuclear weapons plans and rejoined the community of nations, without a shot being fired. Only a rampant Iran remains to be dealt with, and a Russia that is quickly regressing to its totalitarian past. Once again, while the Europeans have the most to lose, somehow the world takes it for granted that it is the US that is responsible for dealing with such global threats. Then when we confront the threats, their drumbeat of criticism begins, almost in unison. Oh, well, that’s why it is so important for the US to continue to be a superpower and the only global bulwark against tyranny.
Because of Bush’s increased domestic intelligence and internal defense programs Al Qaeda has been unable to attack the US mainland since 9/11/2001 in spite of Bin Laden’s regular threats to do so. No one in 2001-2002 expected Al Qaeda to be unable to attack the US mainland again. History will give the credit to George Bush without whose stubborn cowboy resolve in the face of withering opposition from the Democrats and the entire left wing worldwide, none of this would have been possible.
Finally, even Bush’s harshest critics have been unable to confirm the worst canards thrown out against him, that he lied and misrepresentated the available intelligence for his own partisan purposes. Every one of the several investigations have found that Bush had essentially the same information that Clinton had before him and that every credible intelligence service in the western world had as well.
In the post 9/11 world, when Saddam Hussein was refusing to disclose what he had done with his WMDs, when his communications with the Islamic extremists were growing, when Al Qaeda had already been so emboldened by the ineffective Clinton administration as to successfully launch the worst attack on the US mainland in history, no serious US President could sit back and risk another suicide attack, this time with WMDs. They had to be stopped, and they have been. Retaliation after a pre-emptive strike with WMDs would be hollow because of the horrific casualties we would suffer.
Like Harry Truman before him, who had to make the bone-chilling decision to use nuclear weapons to stop the defiant Japanese once and for all, Bush had to step up to the plate and make a difficult call - and he did.
Democrat icon, Bill Clinton, left us with a series of scandals, a declining economy and a hidden vulnerability to attack by an emboldened enemy. George Bush is also leaving us with a struggling economy but with a nation that has safeguards in place, with Al Qaeda on the run, a southern border that is better protected and an epic imminent victory all but secured in Iraq that the Democrats who opposed him every step of the way had publicly declared a lost cause right in the middle of the conflict. No one could have predicted any of this in the aftermath of 9/11/2001.
Business cycles are an inevitable feature of a free economy, but how often can a President liberate 50 million people in the heart of an area with no history of either freedom or democracy, while also defanging two hostile countries without a shot being fired?
So, based on the facts, I’d say George Bush had more victories than defeats, a country that is safer, several adversaries who have given up their former hostility towards us, some new threats looming on the horizon, but a country that has also been battle-hardened. I’d say he can hold his head high, did his best in most cases and has a pretty decent legacy going for him when unbiased historians look back at the immediate post 9/11 era, in proper context, wouldn’t you?
