The clock is ticking down.
I am a bit of a history buff when it comes to politics, and I don't have to go back far to say that in the future George W. Bush will be looked at as a great president. Maybe even one of the greatest.
Ronald Reagan was a hated man when he left office. Had a great approval rating, but hated none the less. The media and the left hated him. Sound familiar?
Harry Truman had, until George W. Bush, the lowest approval rating in history. But is now regarded as a one of the greatest of all time.
History will treat George W. Bush very well.
Think about what he has gone through while in office.
The repercussions of the dot.com crash. This was well on its way to reality when he took office.
Then 9/11. Something that should have been dealt with more fully in Clinton's presidency. Though I think that will come down to partisanship being the cause, as those on the right (before my political time) were focused on a stain on a dress. Clinton was even criticized for his one response on the issue. 9/11 almost bankrupted this country immediately. I specifically remember a claim being made that all we bombed was a place that made medicine! Which lead to the war in Afghanistan. While there is still a lot to be established there, but the foundations of a democracy in this country are in place. I remember well before 9/11 hearing many Hollywood stars calling for action over there to protect the women and children. Life over there is much better for them today.
Then it led to the Iraq war. You hear the statement, there were no WMD's found. I disagree. Radical muslims are WMD's. We have found a lot of them in Iraq. This war was interesting. We certainly went in without an exit strategy. We didn't know we'd get in as easy as we did. Before this war started it was talked about how we'd be fighting Iraq for years. Not in Iraq, but Iraq. As we all know we marched right over Iraq, then the WMD's came to us there and we haven't been able to leave/
So in the future when we have two more great muslim allies in that part of the world, we have George W. Bush to thank. This alone will be what defines his legacy for the masses.
Loss of manufacturing jobs. NAFTA. Plain and simple, this is the cause for our issues. I remember right after this was passed (early in the Clinton years) a local paper announcing that a manufacturer was relocating to Mexico. They specifically stated that their reason for the move was NAFTA. A Republican at the time was quoted trashing the legislation. By time Bush was in office, repealing NAFTA would have completely trashed our economy and foreign relations. Which is why Obama won't change this either. But to lose this many jobs and still have an incredibly low unemployment rate throughout his presidency was amazing.
Katrina. Katrina was a twice a century kind of Hurricane. The fact that it fell on Bushes time in office... pure 'bad luck'. Could the handling of that been better? Of course. But really, how do you handle a city where people refused to evacuate in spite of warnings? Then lets be real, how many false alarms are there in regard to this each and every year? We had one this year!
Wall Street / Mortgage Crash. So this is the current problem. Bush gets the blame, he's in charge so I get that. But what is really the blame? Bad bankers. People were given mortgages that they couldn't pay. So no big surprise when they didn't pay them. What caused bankers to give these loans? Greed and regulation.
They were greedy to make more money in the short-term. They were forced by democratic wrote legislation to give loans to people based on where they lived and not necessarily on ability to pay. It wasn't a lack of regulation, but bad regulations that fed into this.
In the grand scheme of things 10% of mortgages failed. If people are running business where 10% makes THAT big of a difference, then they need to learn how to do better business.
The Media. The media is left to begin with and when you have that many big things going on in your term you will make mistakes. So they picked up on it big time and gave no grace to the situation. The reason for that leads to the other reason he will have a legacy.
George W. Bush was a major player for the religious right. Never before have we had, since abortion was unheard of, such a pro-life president. I really think the stance the West has on abortion will swing back so far to the right that when it happens GWB will be looked at as a beacon during such a dark time in human history. I can't see how a civilized country can justify killing babies. Yet here we are. GWB stood firm in is opposition to embryonic (and I love how people leave that word out of the argument) stem cell research. Only to have science prove him right. Why we are still bickering over this is just stunning. Science has shown that they can take a normal adult cell and 'reformat' it to make it just like an embryonic stem cell. A technology that likely wouldn't have been found had he allowed the research.
Marriage was under attack during his presidency and America stood up against it. The left would like to believe that in time this will become a non-issue. I actually think our country will become more intolerant of things like homosexuality over time. Thanks to our interactions over in muslim countries we will see a great influx of muslim families in our society. You think Christians are unreasonable in relation to relative morals, you haven't seen anything yet.
I've disabled comments on this post because this is not something I'm wanting to debate, but will leave it as a moment of praise from my to our great president. George W. Bush. People say he caused so much. I only see one thing that you could even pin on him as the cause, and even then I think it lays more with the regulations in place and greedy bankers. EVERYBODY thought attacking Iraq was the right thing at the time. Only the wise ones still agree with that.
Now lets not confuse my praise for blindness. I know that GWB made mistakes, but to take his complete body of work... I can do nothing but praise it. If I could change something about his policy it would be two things.
Immigration and financial responsibility. He was way to willing to give a pass to illegal immigrants and while countries do run deficits during war time, they didn't need to be THAT big. However, a good chunk of the 6 Trillion dollars of deficit were added during the time when democrats had control of congress, the place that actually passes the budget.
What I do think history will see when they look back at recent history is partisanship. This country has been pretty divided since the end of Ronald Reagan's last term.
So Mr. President. Thank you for 8 great years. History will treat you well.
HT: CNN.com