The Bush Years

A reasonable person might conclude that George W. Bush was a bad president, or that he was a reasonably good one.  No reasonable person could view his Presidency as a smashing success.  Those who view him as the worst President ever are stroking their own puds.  The Washington Post has a reasonable take, from the Left. 

In Iraq Mr. Bush gambled his nation's international alliances and reputation. We agreed with him that Saddam Hussein's defiance of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions was intolerable and that sanctions against his regime could neither contain the long-term threat of weapons of mass destruction nor deliver the Iraqi people from unendurable tyranny. Like the president's, our sense of the war's necessity was shaken by the absence of WMD. Unlike the president's, our sense of his administration's competence was shaken by the war's disgracefully bad planning, which contributed to Iraq's post-invasion plunge into horrific violence. The global backlash against the war, especially in Europe, has cost the United States dearly, making it more difficult to rally the world against Iran's nuclear ambitions. Though relations with Europe have been significantly repaired, Iran exploited the divisions in Western ranks to make mischief in both Iraq and Afghanistan -- and to advance its bomb-building.

But, as matters in Iraq now stand, there is a decent chance of a reasonably pro-American incipient democracy in the heart of the Arab Middle East. This would be a major accomplishment, and one that would cast the invasion, the failures of the early years of occupation and the painful loss of more than 4,000 American lives and many thousand more Iraqi lives in a different light than the one in which they are seen by most Americans now. It would also vindicate his unpopular decision to stabilize Iraq with more U.S. troops rather than abandon it to civil war and possible genocide -- an instance in which Mr. Bush's self-assurance and steadfastness paid off.

Perhaps the brightest example of humanitarianism in Mr. Bush's record is his commitment of vast new resources to the battle against AIDS in Africa. With the Millennium Challenge Account, he attempted to link foreign aid to honest and efficient governance. And he put the United States firmly on the side of democracy and freedom, arguing, correctly, that the transformation of dictatorial regimes is, in the long run, necessary to peace and security. "Around the world, America is promoting human liberty, human rights and human dignity," he declared on Thursday. But he did not always practice what he preached; in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, support for dictators, justified by the anti-terrorism campaign, trumped support for liberty. The same desire for anti-terrorism cooperation may explain his protracted reluctance to recognize or respond to Russia's descent toward autocracy at home and bullying abroad. In China and North Korea, trade and denuclearization, respectively, prevailed. It is still too early to tell whether his choice of diplomacy in those areas will pay off; by not following through on his rhetoric, though, Mr. Bush ensured that he would get blame for being inconsistent without getting credit for any results. And, it's worth remembering, his blind faith in simplistic economics -- tax cuts for every season -- led him to pay for all his wars and foreign aid on credit, helping produce today's fiscal disaster.

That’s what a fair critique of the Bush years looks like.  The WaPo admits what most Bush critics completely ignore: that Saddam Hussein’s defiance of U.N. resolutions and agreements he himself signed would have been grounds for war in any earlier age.  I would add that neither President Clinton nor Al Gore nor John Kerry nor the Democrats in Congress ever offered an alternative Iraq policy.  The WaPo is unusually fair on other matters. 

From the right, Charles Krauthammer makes a more important point.

Except for Richard Nixon, no president since Harry Truman leaves office more unloved than George W. Bush. Truman's rehabilitation took decades. Bush's will come sooner. Indeed, it has already begun. The chief revisionist? Barack Obama.

Vindication is being expressed not in words but in deeds -- the tacit endorsement conveyed by the Obama continuity-we-can-believe-in transition. It's not just the retention of such key figures as Secretary of Defense Bob Gates or Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner, who, as president of the New York Fed, has been instrumental in guiding the Bush financial rescue over the last year. It's the continuity of policy.

It is the repeated pledge to conduct a withdrawal from Iraq that does not destabilize its new democracy and that, as Vice President-elect Joe Biden said just this week in Baghdad, adheres to the Bush-negotiated status of forces agreement that envisions a U.S. withdrawal over three years, not the 16-month timetable on which Obama campaigned.

It is the great care Obama is taking in not pre-emptively abandoning the anti-terror infrastructure that the Bush administration leaves behind. While still a candidate, Obama voted for the expanded presidential wiretapping (FISA) powers that Bush had fervently pursued. And while Obama opposes waterboarding (already banned, by the way, by Bush's CIA in 2006), he declined George Stephanopoulos' invitation (on ABC's "This Week") to outlaw all interrogation not permitted by the Army Field Manual. Explained Obama: "Dick Cheney's advice was good, which is let's make sure we know everything that's being done," i.e., before throwing out methods simply because Obama campaigned against them.

Yes.  Obama will keep more of Bush’s policies than he rejects.  Sorry. 

In a recent telephone conversation with an esteemed South Dakota reporter, I gave Bush a gentleman’s C.  That’s not because his policies were mediocre, but because a lot of highs and lows average out.  Bush failed to adequately prepare for the invasion of Iraq, but he did belatedly correct his policy and we did win the war.  He oversaw an expansion of government that we can now ill-afford.  On the environment, the U.S. has done better than most of our scolding European allies.  Bush didn’t nail Osama, but he gutted the international terrorist apparatus, by wrecking its finances, reducing its communications to smuggled video tapes, and by killing so many of its leaders that no one left in Al Qaeda can know or trust anyone else.  Maybe a gentleman’s C was unfair.  It was not overly generous.