George W Bush

The attacks on the 2nd President Bush have been brutal. This President has had monumental triumphs and monumental mistakes. Mostly let's remember the President for the man he has been. From the time who took the oath of office he took the high road with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress he reached across the isle in much the same way that Reagan did. He reached out to the leader of the Liberals Ted Kennedy for friendship and legislation. Unfortunately his attempt at goodwill with the opposing party did not have any positive results.

This has been a wild ride this past eight years and it is important to note the challenges we faced as a country with this President:

2000 ELECTION:

This is where the crazies on the left started hating the President. By every objective measure the Florida electors were duty bound to cast their vote for President Bush. At every turn the Bush team showed they could meet the challenges of the various ways the Gore team and the Florida Supreme court were changing the rules of the game. Finally after so many changes for 37 days the supreme court ruled and the Gore team accepted the loss. Even the analysis by the major media (Wasington Post, New York Times, etc...) agreed Bush won the state and therefore won the presidency.

CHINESE HOSTAGES:

Many may have forgotten but this was the first foreign policy crisis and where most experts in that field expected our country to spend most of our energies on. When these men in uniform were taken hostage by the Chinese and accused of espionage there was very little we could do. The President utilized all the diplomacy in his arsenal to convince the worlds #2 super power to do the right thing. It must be noted that the attack heard by most is Bush does not use diplomacy. This first challenge has proven his detractors wrong.

TECH BUBBLE:

When President Bush first started running for President in 1999 we were in the midst of a period of unprecedented economic growth. What the Bush team saw and no one prepared for was that most of the economic and stock price growth were based on unsustainable prices in the technology sector. We had companies with stock prices in the tripple digits and no earnings. Unlike today there are no recriminations like the housing bubble. This affected our economic growth for a period of the most of the first term of President Bush. Due to the job losses in the tech industry we had near zero job growth in the economy. The Bush economic team dealt with this in a very conservative way and they cut the heck out of taxes. This is what finally got our economy moving and it took the cuts 2001 and 2003 to get us out of this mess but in the end there were millions of jobs created.

9/11:

This is what the Bush Presidency was made for. The several previous attacks on our interests in the world were treated as a simple nuisance and a job for law enforcement. The second that 2nd plane hit the President's own words were "we are at war." The major question had there been a Gore Presidency would we have gone after the perpetrators and let that be it. The left, including Obama, hate the term "war on terror". We can not answer such a hypothetical but the words of the left in the post 9/11 era certainly are indicators on what their approach would be. The President did something that Alexander "The Great", the British, and the Soviet Union could not do and that is he over threw the sitting government in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is not a finished project but mostly due to our success in other regions are the enemy reconstituting themselves there.

IRAQ:

Most people view this a a "war of choice" and maybe it was. It is important to recall what was going on before we went ahead with this war. Saddam Hussein was financially supporting terrorists throughout the middle east. Iraq was shooting down our planes in the so called "no fly zone" which in itself is an act of war. The largest outrage is the "Oil for Food" scandal. This was the U.N. sanctioned bribary scam.

The decision was made and the invasion was planned by General Franks and executed flawlessly. On the other hand the post invasion was a disaster and unlike Vietnam Bush listened too intently to the Generals on the ground. It was evident for a couple of years that he needed more troops on the ground and it was not until late in the war that in a very stern meeting where General Sanchez could not answer appropriately why we did not need more troops that President Bush decided to make a change in leadership to General Petreus. At this writing this appears to have worked as long as President Obama does not screw it up.


CREDIT CRISIS:

This was a long running crisis that has many fathers but the question was is how the Bush team handled it. History will have to bear this out but in the short run it appears we as a nation have made the same mistakes that F.D.R. made in the New Deal but not the same mistakes that the Hoover Administration made in raising taxes. From a purely ideological stand point having the government so entwined with industry is a failure for the long run. So now as Republican's we have set a path for the Democrat Administration. This is the biggest disappointment I see with the Team Bush. Mistakes like this have happened in our history before and have been corrected so let's all hope this one will as well.

Even though the Bush Administration ended on a sour note he will be missed by me. I like the man's integrity and style. I like the confidence he has in our way of life as American's. One area he has taught me greatly on and that is his experiment as a big government Republican. In the beginning I thought wrongly it was worth a try to give a little on the government side to woo supporters but in the end that never worked and we sold out our ideals as a party.

I hope that President Bush has a wonderful Post Presidency and he is remembered for the difficulties he faced while in office. Who knows he may be remembered kindly when the historical record is examined with an unbiased eye.