The Bush Legacy

I have seen, lately, numerous articles and television commentary about the legacy of George W. Bush. Currently, his disapproval rating is 65%. He is tied with Harry Truman when Truman left office. The only president with a worse disapproval number when he left office was Richard Nixon at 66%. “W” also holds the record for the highest approval rating in October, 2001….93%, which gives credence to the saying “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”.

I can give you a litany of reasons why I don’t like George W. Bush, most of which would be the antithesis of most of the reasons Americans don’t like him. Other than his position on immigration, I am a supporter of his domestic and foreign policies. If he is guilty of anything, it is his failure to lead. Any first year political science major will tell you the President has very little real power. The strength of the Presidency is the power to persuade. It is the ultimate bully pulpit. Here, he has failed miserably.

Domestically, Presidents don’t come any better than Bush. His tax cuts have led the way for the strongest American economy in history. We have full employment. There has been some displacement, but that is common in all transitional economies throughout time. Tax revenues are at an all time high. There are obvious problems with the size of the national debt, but it is substantially less than originally predicted, and if the economy continues at its current pace, it will shrink even more. The stock market is at an historic high, and over 60% of Americans have a direct interest in the market. Previously underfunded pension funds are now rich with cash. And the market has grown on a solid growth in profits for American companies.

In my mind, the crown jewel of his administration is his prescription drug benefit initiative for seniors. Perfect? No. But it is a firm foundation that was badly needed, and has capped the amount of out of pocket drug costs for catastrophic illnesses to about $3,700.00/year.

Longer term, his Supreme Court appointments have restored a degree of sanity and common sense to an out of control federal court system, and represents a victory in the court for the common man over social engineering.

Now for his foreign policy. The talking heads and pundits have declared from the mountain that the Bush Presidency will be judged on Iraq, Iraq, and Iraq. Maybe, maybe not. And it is far too soon to judge the long lasting effects of his Iraq policy. I have always felt that the goal was to insert a large number of American troops into the hornets nest of Islamic whacko-ism. Iraq was the excuse, not the reason. All you have to do is look at a map. I stand by my belief. Terrorism is a real threat, not just a bumper sticker war as some Dem candidates claim. But that threat magnifies geometrically with a solid alliance of anti-American countries across the mid-east, with Iran building a nuclear arsenal. Israel's destruction would be assured, along with moderate Arab states like Egypt and Jordan.

We know what the mid-east looks like with our troops there six years after 9-11. We never think about what the mid-east would look like without our troops there, and Saddam Hussein still in power. Contrary to the hysterical press and Democratic Party’s politicization of the war, a precarious Pakistan with an unchecked fundamentalist Iran arcing to Syria across Saddam’s Iraq makes the current situation look like a walk in the park. The problems we face now would pale in comparison to that. Maybe I am wrong, but I think I am right. Hillary Clinton knows this in her heart of hearts, hence her equivocation with Senator Obama in the YouTube debate. The nuances of the policy may be open to discussion, but the basic strategy is correct.

For these reasons, I believe that how the American public views Bush 40 years from now will mirror how the American public currently views the 1952 scorned Harry Truman.

My grade for Bush: a solid B.