Mosings on Bush

My last post was devestatingly critical of our 43rd president. While much of that was accurate, I believe I failed to illustrate the positive aspects of our much-maligned leader. Perhaps I was just angry that night, perhaps I bought into virtual lynching he has received from the liberal media. Either way, W's good deeds as well as the not-so-good ones deserve to be told. 

1. He cut taxes. All tax cuts are good tax cuts, so the Bush tax cuts must be too. 

2. His response to the 9/11 attacks was spot-on. If for no other reason, Bush's response to 9/11 will be his reconciling factor in the history books. He was prompt, he was honest, he got things done. Afghanistan and Iraq were pulled of (initially) without a hitch. Post-invasion, he stumbled. Rumsfeld was the wrong man for the job; Gates is much better. But the Surge worked in Iraq, there's no reason to think that dealing thusly with the Taliban in Afghanistan won't. Bush led on 9/11. He led the American people through a time of great sorrow, but also great unity. However, under his watch that unity also crumbled into petty squabbling. 

3. He has been consistently pro-life. As Dad remarked to me today, "Eight years of a pro-life president, even if he is a big-government pro-life president, is worth it." And so it was. 

4. He wasn't Al Gore. All criticism of Bush should be qualified with, "Well, it would have been ten times worse under Gore." Or Kerry. 

All in all, I think that Bush will be another Hoover of history. Only, however, because historians are almost entirely liberal revisionists with no real interest in facts, only spin. In any just portrait of the Bush era, he would be a largely sympathetic figure. He tried, and sometimes succeeded. But that can't fix the fact that he never had Reagan's, or even Clinton's tie with the American people--and that is what it takes to be a great president. 

In other news, R.I.P. Andrew Wyeth. A great painter.