The legacy of George Bush

Yesterday, I was completely enthralled with a post on The Anchoress about George Bush’s legacy. It’s probably not what most Conservatives would say about him, let alone the Left, but it’s pretty much what I’ve been saying all along;

Perhaps I am a dim bulb, but President Bush has never surprised me, and that is probably why I have never felt let down or “betrayed” by him. He is, in essentials, precisely who he has ever been. He did not surprise me when he managed, in August of 2001, to find a morally workable solution in the matter of Embryonic Stem Cells. He did not surprise me when, a month later, he stood on a pile of rubble and lifted a broken city from its knees. When my FDNY friends told me of the enormous consolation and strength he brought to his meetings with grieving families, I was not surprised. When the World Series opened in New York City and the President was invited to throw the first pitch, there was no surprise in his throwing (while wearing body armor) a perfect strike.

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Let me tell you what has surprised me about George W. Bush. I have been surprised by his ability to keep from attacking-in-kind the “public servants” in Washington who – for five years – have not been able to speak of the American President with the respect he is due, by virtue of both his office and his humanity, because they are entralled with hate and owned by opportunism. I have been surprised that he has kept his committment to “changing the tone” even when it has long been clear that the only way the tone in Washington will ever change is if everyone named Bush or Clinton or Kennedy is cleared out and “career politicians” are shown the door….

Now, I don’t pray at the altar of George Bush or pray in the direction of the White House, but you have to give the man his due, and I think The Anchoress has done that. Whether you agree with his policies or not, he told what he was going to do before you voted for him, didn’t he? Because he told us what he believed in that first election, nothing he did surprised us – except that he kept his word. How unpolitician-like.

He said he’d never govern by polls, and by-God he hasn’t. He put his head down and plowed through the nattering nabobs of negativity (h/t Spiro Agnew) and did what he thought was right regardless of the cacophony of the dissenters – on both sides. We’d have gotten the same kind of determination from Fred Thompson, I think, but that ship has sailed apparently.
More praise for George Bush is published in, of all places, the Washington Post, this morning (I can only imagine the comments that’ll appear there before the end of the day) written by Michael Gerson;

Proposals such as No Child Left Behind, the AIDS and malaria initiatives, and the addition of a prescription drug benefit to Medicare would simply not have come from a traditional conservative politician. They became the agenda of a Republican administration precisely because of Bush’s persistent, passionate advocacy. To put it bluntly, these would not have been the priorities of a Cheney administration.

This leaves critics of the Bush administration with a “besides” problem. Bush is a heartless and callous conservative, “besides” the 1.4 million men, women and children who are alive because of treatment received through his AIDS initiative . . . “besides” the unquestioned gains of African American and Hispanic students in math and reading . . . “besides” 32 million seniors getting help to afford prescription drugs, including 10 million low-income seniors who get their medicine pretty much free. Iraq may have overshadowed these achievements; it does not eliminate them.

Conservatives have been dealt cards which are Socialist in nature. If we want the big ticket items (National Security, sane economic policy, etc…) we have to pay for the things that are aptly named “entitlements” that Democrats have used to pay for votes for decades and the victims of our public school system have come to expect. Until we either change the culture or accept the fact that we don’t want to have Conservatives in public office, that’s the price we have to pay – it’s called accepting reality.

Gerson continues;

Bush has received little attention or thanks for his compassionate reforms. This is less a reflection on him than on the political challenge of compassionate conservatism. The conservative movement gives the president no credit because it views all these priorities — foreign assistance, a federal role in education, the expansion of an entitlement — as heresies, worthy of the stake. Liberals and Democrats offer no praise because a desire to help dying Africans, minority students and low-income seniors does not fit the image of Bush’s cruelty that they wish to cultivate.

In the January 30th edition of The Weekly Standard, Joseph Loconte writes about Bush’ success in Africa against AIDS;

“Protecting our nation from the dangers of a new century requires more than good intelligence and a strong military,” Bush said. “It also requires changing the conditions that breed resentment and allow extremists to prey on despair. So America is using its influence to build a freer, more hopeful, and more compassionate world.” Under PEPFAR, about 1.4 million
AIDS patients in 15 nations in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean have received life-saving medicines. Bush announced Monday night that he intended to add another $30 billion to the program over the next five years.

Many on the left, at home and abroad, have reproached the president for his alleged failure to use “soft power” to confront religious extremism and advance U.S. foreign policy goals. Yet here is a supremely humane initiative – inconceivable to foreign policy realists – linked to U.S. security concerns. Bush rightly calls it “a reflection of our national interest and the calling of our conscience.” Just think about the number of AIDS orphans that would be scratching for survival without PEPFAR. Millions of rootless young boys cannot be a good thing for any society. Whatever the relationship between poverty and terrorism, this program is probably doing more to check the flow of terrorist recruits than all the diplomatic bloviating in Brussels, Geneva, and New York put together.

Either way he’s screwed, at least by the voices on both extreme ends of the political spectrum. A man who has always been true to his word, who kept his campaign promises, ignored the loudest noisemakers – quite refreshing considering his predecessor and the alternate choices we had in 2000 and 2004.

History will be more kind to him than his current critics. Especially if we get a Clinton or Obama term to compare to Bush’s.

Category: Economy, Foreign Policy, Politics