What a shock. Fred Barnes could only find 10 things to praiseabout the Bush Administration.
Were I generous, I guess I'd give Fred his 10, against, say, the Center for Public Integrity's list of 128 Executive Branch Failures since 2000. But I think we all know where generosity towards neocon ideologues will lead you - any failure to debate every point they make will be heralded by them in the future as your complicity in whatever failures they create. Given that list of 128, we know where that will get us.
Bush had ten great achievements (and maybe more) in his eight years in the White House, starting with his decision in 2001 to jettison the Kyoto global warming treaty so loved by Al Gore, the environmental lobby, elite opinion, and Europeans. The treaty was a disaster, with India and China exempted and economic decline the certain result. Everyone knew it. But only Bush said so and acted accordingly.
He stood athwart mounting global warming hysteria anyelled, "Stop!" He slowed the movement toward a policy blunder of worldwide impact, providing time for facts to catch up with the dubious claims of alarmists.
Except that the official policy of the Bush Administration is now that man-made climate change is a problem, and we should do something about it.
The DOD is actually making plans for how we're going to be able to deal with the military implications of an ice free Arctic Circle. The Dept of Agriculture and Forest Service are revising plansin light of climate change induced drought. The Bush Dept of Energy is pushing development of 0-carbon emission energy.
Whatever you think of Kyoto, Bush basically made sure that the US did little or nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for years. If Bush now thinks man-made emissions pose a risk, he pissed away 8 years of a chance to do something about it. Sort of like pissing away 8 months of time to build a counterterrorism strategy in 2001, and the effects may in the long run be far more catastrophic.
Second, enhanced interrogation of terrorists. Along with
use of secret prisons and wireless eavesdropping, this saved American lives. How many thousands of lives? We'll never know. But, as Charles Krauthammer said recently, "Those are precisely the elements which kept us safe and which have prevented a second attack."
And why WOULDN'T we believe Charles Krauthammer over, say, the numerous intelligence officials who have stepped forward to say torture doesn't work ... and moreover, that it added fuel to an anti-American jihad fervor in the Middle East?
Like Former FBI Interrogator Jack Cloonan?
Or former special intelligence operations officer "Matthew Alexander"?
Then again ... torture of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi did provide false intelligence on an Al Qaeda/Saddam connection that the Bush Administration used to originally justify invading Iraq ... so if you're just an evil bastard, maybe torture does work.
Bush's third achievement was the rebuilding of presidential authority, badly degraded in the era of Vietnam, Watergate, and Bill Clinton. He didn't hesitate to conduct wireless surveillance of terrorists without getting a federal judge's okay. He decided on his own how to treat terrorists and where they should be imprisoned. Those were legitimate decisions for which the president, as commander in chief, should feel no need to apologize.
Sure. Who needs a Constitution?
Achievement number four was Bush's unswerving support for Israel.
And it has bought Israel so much ... Hamas in power in Palestine. Hezbollah having power in Lebanon. Israel getting their butts kicked in their war in Lebanon. Iran probably far further down the nuclear pathway. A government in Iraq which will now ally with Iran. I'm sure that Israeli's feel great about their security today, as opposed to those bad old days of 2000.
His fifth success was No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the education reform bill cosponsored by America's most prominent liberal Democratic senator Edward Kennedy. The teachers' unions, school boards, the education establishment, conservatives adamant about local control of schools--they all loathed the measure and still do. It requires two things they ardently oppose, mandatory testing and accountability.
It also pretty much requires schools to spend a disproportionate amount of time on test-taking skills, rather than on real instruction.
The program has been a boom to the test-taking training software industry (to the financial benefit of Neil Bush), and has done nothing to improve graduation rates.
But kids are learning that gaming the system is more important than basic knowledge ... and I can't think of any better legacy for George W. Bush.
Sixth, Bush declared in his second inaugural address in 2005 that American foreign policy (at least his) would henceforth focus on promoting democracy around the world. This put him squarely in the Reagan camp, but he was lambasted as unrealistic, impractical, and a tool of wily neoconservatives. The new policy gave Bush credibility in pressing for democracy in the former Soviet republics and Middle East and in zinging various dictators and kleptocrats. It will do the same for President Obama, if he's wise enough to hang onto it.
So what was that about Bush providing military supplies to Fatah to try to help them overthrow the democratically elected Hamas government in Palestine, Fred? Do you really believe that that's not the example of Bush's "focus on promoting democracy" that sticks in the minds of most Middle Easterners?
The seventh achievement is the Medicare prescription drug benefit, enacted in 2003. It's not only wildly popular; it has cost less than expected by triggering competition among drug companies.
Bush's Medicare program basically put Medicare on a pathway to fiscal insolvency, doubling the spending on Medicare over 8 years. The prescription drug benefit was good, but note that Barnes didn't put any kind of percentages on his "less than expected" claim. The Bush Administration HAS tried to control the rate of spending - but not by challenging big Pharma, rather by trying to cut the reimbursement that physicians get for treating Medicare patients. Trickle down medicine, I guess.
Then there were John Roberts and Sam Alito. In putting them on the Supreme Court and naming Roberts chief justice, Bush achieved what had eluded Richard Nixon, Reagan, and his own father. Roberts and Alito made the Court indisputably more conservative. And the good news is Roberts, 53, and Alito, 58, should be justices for decades to come.
If you're Fred Barnes, that is a success, I'll admit. I look forward to his followup heralding the success of Bill Clinton in the appointments of Ginsburg and Breyer, as well as future Obama successes.
Bush's ninth achievement has been widely ignored. He strengthened relations with east Asian democracies (Japan, South Korea, Australia) without causing a rift with China. On top of that, he forged strong ties with India.
Sure. Bush oversaw an economic policy that encouraged American companies to outsource jobs throughout the Far East. Why wouldn't they like him? Of course, that created conditions over here where our economy became increasingly dependent on housing construction to provide jobs ... so that when housing slowed, the rest of the job market tanked.
Finally, a no-brainer: the surge. Bush prompted nearly unanimous disapproval in January 2007 when he announced he was sending more troops to Iraq and adopting a new counterinsurgency strategy.
As one pundit has noted, Bush claiming credit for the surge is like a surgeon slicing an artery during an unnecessary surgical procedure, and then claiming credit for stitching it closed.
How does Bush rank as a president? We won't know until he's judged from the perspective of two or three decades.
Fred Barnes ignores the biggest economic disaster in decades, a 2-3 trillion dollar war of choice in Iraq, and the intelligence disaster that was 9/11, and asks for perspective.
I'm guessing that two or three decades from now, those blunders will cast an even darker light on the Bush legacy than they do today ... as the many Bush defenders who are basically defending their own years of uncritical support for Bush pass away, there will no longer be a generation of Fred Barnses with a self-serving reason for carrying water for the Worst President Ever.