As we near the end of President Bush’s 2nd and last term in office, I thought it would be fitting to write about the legacy of one of the most maligned Presidents our country has ever had and most certainly, one of the most unpopular Presidents in my lifetime.

One of George Bush’s biggest failures has been his inability to communicate to the American people. It’s not that he didn’t have some good ideas and policies, but he seemed unable to communicate them to us, the American citizen. Coupled with his habit of doing what he thinks is right and never mind the polls, this has not put him in a good light with some of our citizens and especially, the Democrats and the media. For eight years, we were used to Bill Clinton, a President who looked at the polls and the political winds before he made any decision. Maybe our country was not ready for a President who was willing to do what he thought was right, no matter what the political consequences would be.

As an example, let’s look back to how he was accused of cutting off health insurance to children. I am referring to his veto of the bill that would have renewed the Children’s Health Insurance program, in October 2007. When he vetoed that bill, he was cast as someone who didn’t care about children and was willing to veto their health insurance. In actuality, his veto was not about cutting off the health insurance of any child, but rather about how the Democrats wanted to expand the program well beyond it’s original intent. It seemed as if President Bush was unable to explain to the American people what the situation was and although he stuck to his guns and reached a compromise with Congress that was more in line with what the program was meant to do, he was still made out to be the bad guy. I’m still not sure why he didn’t frame the debate about this issue better than he did, but it may have had something to do with another failing he has had as President, namely his knack for surrounding himself with advisers and cabinet members that have given him some very bad advice and counsel.

I can think of three people who have influenced the Presidency of George W. Bush in a very negative way; Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. I suppose Rove has been around Bush longer than any of the others and his influence upon Governor and now President Bush has been very evident. The man strikes me as being very manipulative and willing to do almost anything to win an election. He has no qualms with going after an opponent’s family, as was evident in his twisted attacks against John McCain and his adopted daughter, in the 2004 campaign. With his record, it seems senseless that he is now considered an expert on political matters and is a political commentator on FOX News, but I suppose that should be expected.

As for Donald Rumsfeld, no explanation should be needed about the former Secretary of Defense. Watching him in the days leading up to and following the invasion of Iraq showed the world what he was like. He had no military background, yet he insisted on telling the military how the war would be ran. Just one more politician telling the boots on the ground how it was going to be. It looks like we would have learned our lesson in Vietnam, but Rumsfeld must have missed that lecture. If you doubt what I am saying, just look at the success we have had in Iraq, after Rumsfeld resigned and the military was able to take control of the war. I credit the fiasco we have seen in Iraq more to Donald Rumsfeld than anyone. Had he listened to the military, to the people who had been training for this all their lives, we could have very well seen a different turn of events in Iraq and much different results. President Bush does bear some responsibility for this, since he was the one who nominated Rumsfeld for Secretary of Defense in the first place, but I can’t help but wonder how much influence the last man on my list had, in regards to the Rumsfeld nomination.

Vice President Dick Cheney has been, without a doubt, one of the most powerful Vice Presidents in the history of the United States. I believe he has had a profound influence upon the actions of President Bush, which includes his own selection as Bush’s Vice President. Were you aware that Dick Cheney was in charge of vetting potential Vice Presidential candidates for George Bush? After he had gone through and discarded each one, he presented himself as the logical choice. He also has very strong ties to Donald Rumsfeld, having served as his special assistant during the Nixon administration and as President Ford’s chief of staff while Rumsfeld was Ford’s Secretary of Defense. There has been a lot of speculation about the reasons behind some of his actions, mainly related to Haliburton and his oil interests. I am not here to debate that speculation, but it is very clear some of the hawkish policies enacted after our country was attacked are the direct result of his influence. He has been directly involved with the interrogation cases involving torture and the obvious cover up that has been associated with them. I realize he may believe he was acting in the best interest of our country, but when you begin to condone tactics such as torture, even by just turning your back on it, you begin to tear down the walls that set America apart from her enemies.

I do not believe George W. Bush is a bad or evil man, even though the Democrats have blamed him for every problem our country has faced in the last eight years. He has made some bad decisions, that much is very obvious, but he is not the scourge of America, much less the entire world, as some would have us believe. It may be true that the war in Iraq was not justified, at least from the standpoint of the intelligence reports that we all now know were faulty, but Bush believed Saddam Hussein had to be taken down and he acted on his beliefs. I am not trying to justify Bush’s actions against Hussein, but I do believe we need to understand why he took those actions. Even if Husein did not have the weapons of mass destruction that we thought he had, there is no doubt that he had had such weapons before and had in fact, used them on his own people. President Bush may have simply decided that something had to be done and was tired of waiting on the United Nations to take substantive action to prevent Hussein from using those weapons again. He has been accused of having a cowboy mentality and of believing one basic thing; you are either for or against the United States in this conflict against terrorism. In my opinion, that attitude has served him well and has allowed us to take the fight to the enemy, instead of sitting passively back and allowing another attack on our own soil.

While the liberals and the media do their best to make it sound like George W. Bush has had nothing but failures, that is far from the truth. He has show great leadership in the fight against HIV and Aids in third world countries and has overseen a massive increase in the amount of funding that was being used to fight against this plague. He has also issued executive orders that have prevented embryonic stem cell research from becoming common place in our country and reversed Bill Clinton’s policy of not requiring parental consent for abortions. Barack Obama may very well rescind those orders in the first days of his Presidency, but it will certainly not be on the watch of President Bush.

One of George Bush’s greatest accomplishments was the ban on partial birth abortions that was pushed through on his watch, being signed into law on November 5, 2003. I realize Bush was not completely responsible for this ban, but keep this in mind. During Bill Clinton’s Presidency, there were two similar bills passed by Congress and both were vetoed. The constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003 has been challenged in the courts, most notably by Planned Parenthood, and in April 2007, the Supreme Court upheld the ban by a 5-4 margin, thanks to the two Supreme Court Justices nominated by President Bush.

That is another little item of interest that we need to thank George Bush for. He has nominated two Supreme Court Justices in Samuel Alito and John Roberts and earlier this year, those two nominations proved to be the deciding votes on the landmark decision by the Supreme Court to affirm our 2nd Amendment rights. You would have thought the vote would have been unanimous, with those rights being spelled out clearly in the 2nd Amendment, but with liberals you never know. With the vote being 5-4, it makes those two nominations more important than ever. Thanks to President Bush, our 2nd Amendment rights are still intact, though who knows for how long.

George W. Bush has faced one of the most trying times in our country’s history. He has dealt with everything from skyrocketing fuel prices and a collapsing economy to the attacks on September 11, 2001. He has received the blame for the mortgage crisis and by proxy, the economy, when in fact, his administration tried to head the crisis off by looking into the dealings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Democrats in Congress cut him off at the pass and refused to allow stricter regulations on the two government sponsored mortgage companies. Maybe Bush could have handled things differently, I am sure. His Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, has not been effective at all in managing the crisis, but the biggest culprit here is the greed of the mortgage companies and the people who ran them, including Congress, not President Bush.

President Bush has even been blamed for the attacks on September 11, which is a far reaching accusation, given the fact that the attacks were planned during the Clinton Presidency. If Bill Clinton had been able to take Osama Bin Laden out of play, then maybe Bush would not have had the attacks to deal with. Not to blame Clinton entirely, because some things are simply out of the control of the President or anyone else, but to blame George Bush is a bit of a stretch. I remember watching the news in the days after the attacks in New York, Washington, and the crash in Pennsylvania and you could see the remorse in his eyes, but there was something else; a resolve to make sure the people behind the attacks paid for their crimes against our country. President Bush helped hold our country together in those trying times. Three days after the attacks on our country, he gave an address that reassured the citizens of America. In it he said:

War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing.

Say what you will about George W. Bush, but he has done his job and overall, I believe he has done it well. He vowed to do his best to keep such attacks from happening again and in spite of what you may think of him, he has done just that. There have been attempts since September 11 that have been thwarted and it was because of the diligence of the Bush administration that they were stopped.

So, in the final days of the administration of President Bush, let’s look back and realize how much he has actually accomplished. Put aside your differences with the man and look at how he has kept us safe. You may not realize it or want to admit it now, but his Presidency has been that of a decent and honest man, who has had more trouble during his tenure than any one man should have to deal with and endure. Given that fact, I believe history will look back and acknowledge that George W. Bush was a much better President than meets the eye and certainly much better than he was given credit for. I wish him God speed to go back to his ranch in Crawford, Texas and to a much quieter and peaceful life. God knows, he has certainly earned the down time.

That’s my take!

Larry

Tags: 2nd Amendment, Aids, Bill Clinton, Children's Health Insurance, Congress, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, George W. Bush, HIV, Iraq, Karl Rove, Legacy, Osama Bin Laden, Partial Birth Abortion, President, Saddam Husein, Supreme Court, Terrorism

This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 6:13 am and is filed under News/Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.