I have been tough on President Bush for a number of reasons during his second term: his appointments of Texas cronies with dubious qualifications (i.e., Alberto Gonzales to Attorney General; Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court); his unwillingness to enforce fiscal discipline; his mismanagement and slowness in changing strategy during the Iraq occupation; his delayed proactive response to the crisis of broken levees in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; his botched opening gambit of private accounts for social security which underestimated resistance from the powerful status quo (e.g., AARP), which made social security reform dead on arrival; and the initial outline of a financial bailout, which deeply violated conservative principles (including the fact that Bush did not negotiate with House Republicans before publishing the plans). On the topic of the recent financial tsunami, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on a late October ABC-TV's This Week with George Stephanopoulos wryly observed that the reason he had voted against 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry was because of a fear Kerry might (paraphrased) "do away with our capitalist system and nationalize the mortgage industry, the banks and Wall Street". [The point being, George W. Bush, a self-professed conservative Republican, has overseen the largest scale market intervention in decades.]
But whereas I've been critical of Bush, I recognize the fundamental success he has achieved (at least to present) in preventing a second major terrorist attack on American soil, the successful change in Iraq tactics (fought vociferously by Democrats demanding unconditional retreat, regardless of conditions on the ground), his negotiations of free trade treaties with South Korea and Colombia, his lifting an executive order against drilling offshore, and his valiant attempts to secure comprehensive immigration reform.
However, Bush bashing has been ongoing since even before Bush took office, with Gore refusing to accept the Bush win, as confirmed by two machine counts of statewide ballots. The Clinton Administration refused to work with the Bush transition team until after the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the Florida Supreme Court's method for recounting ballots was unconstitutional and 5-4 that there wasn't enough time for yet another, lawful recount. (It should be known independent media recounts authorized by the Freedom of Information Act also confirmed the Bush victory.) The point of recounting this is not to reargue Gore's unprecedented challenge to national election results. Rather, it was the reported sophomoric behavior that the Clinton team left to Bush personnel, including trashing of facilities and the letter "W" (George Bush's famous middle initial) removed from many keyboards.
The barrage has been nonstop. Even as Bush inherited a recession led by the Nasdaq meltdown starting in year 2000, we saw the 9/11 attacks and the corporate scandals (Enron et al.); the Fed Reserve pushed interest rates down to near zero. We were teetering on the edge of a global economic recession. We conservatives feel the tax cuts and the ability of homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages under more favorable interest terms freed up enough consumer discretionary income to provide a spark for an American-led global recovery. Yet Bush had to withstand more personal attacks as many protestors around the globe disagreed with the decision to liberate Iraq, despite the fact that the original ceasefire terms of the first Gulf War had been repeatedly violated, Hussein had attempted to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush during a visit to Kuwait, and Iraq had violated some 17 UN resolutions. Many countries criticizing Bush (e.g., Russia, China, Germany, and France) had sweetheart deals with Iraq, not to mention UN corruption itself in the Oil-for-Food program.
To be honest, I found it ironic that George W. Bush, who had criticized Clinton for nation-building during the tragic years of ethnic cleansing of the Yugoslav wars, would have immersed himself in precisely the kind of sectarian issues his father sought to avoid at the end of the first Gulf War. I myself did not see how Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States, but I knew Iraq had WMD knowledge and training, access to black-market oil revenues, and an anti-American motive. I also knew that the US and Britain were absorbing high ongoing costs for maintaining no-fly zones and that Hussein had unilaterally kicked out UN WMD inspectors with existing chemical agent stocks still intact. As I understand it, there were international intelligence assessments, which corroborated American ones. I do believe that Bush was cognizant of the sectarian implications of a liberated Iraq. I trusted him to make a judgment on the liberation of Iraq. I do not believe that the decision to overthrow a rogue war criminal whom, without provocation, twice invaded neighboring countries, was a bad one. I'm less convinced about the stabilization footprint and various military, civilian and political miscues during the occupation itself.
Nevertheless, the left has gone after Bush in very personally abusive manner, not just the tiresome pronunciation foibles, the constant ridicule of his intelligence (despite his two Ivy League degrees), and other obnoxious insults. For example, some 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition to name a local sewage plant after him. There have been constant threats to impeach Bush over political differences, to indict him for "war crimes", etc. I remember Al Gore sighing audibly and contemptuously and directly approaching him at the podium in an intimidating manner during the 2000 debates, and I recall John Kerry droning on about Bush's "stubborn incompetence" and "colossal failures of judgment" (and this is after he said he wasn't going to let a couple of "draft dodgers" question his patriotism--less than 10 years after he argued military service wasn't a prerequisite for Clinton's credential as Commander in Chief over war hero Bob Dole). It seemed every other sentence out of Hillary Clinton's mouth was to make some putdown or slam of President Bush, and Obama ran the entire general campaign on Bush's "failed" economic and foreign policies (in particular, Iraq) and trying to link McCain to them. Despite a difficult start including an inherited recession, 9/11, and the corporate financial scandals, the Bush tax cut years saw lower unemployment, higher economic growth, and lower inflation. The Fed did need to raise interest rates as commodity prices climbed, and the related burst in the housing bubble, as home prices appreciated beyond what the typical household could afford, did serious damage.
Notably Obama took no responsibility for his party's disincentives for domestic energy exploration, i.e., energy price inflation as international customers competed for available oil supplies, his own support for inefficient corn ethanol which helped ignite food inflation, and despite alleging McCain's deregulation stance caused the economic crisis, his and his own party's failure to regulate and reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to limit their related government exposure to a disproportionate share of the US mortgage market and their purchasing and bundling of high-risk mortgages which has a lot to do with the ongoing economic crisis.
President Bush would have every right to treat Obama, the hypocritical exponent of post-partisan rhetoric whom made exceptions in his own stump speeches for Bush and McCain, with similar behavior and/or lack of professionalism of the departing Clinton Administration. However, George Bush, who, to the best of my knowledge, has always been friendly and graceful with respect to his political opponents, once again demonstrated his fundamental decency in his post-election public statement:
Last night, I had a warm conversation with President-elect Barack Obama. I congratulated him and Senator Biden on their impressive victory. I told the president-elect he can count on complete cooperation from my administration as he makes the transition to the White House....all Americans can be proud of the history that was made yesterday...They chose a president whose journey represents a triumph of the American story...Many of our citizens thought they would never live to see that day. This moment is especially uplifting for a generation of Americans who witnessed the struggle for civil rights with their own eyes and four decades later see a dream fulfilled...During this time of transition, I will keep the president-elect fully informed on important decisions...It'll be a stirring sight to watch President Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their beautiful girls step through the doorsof the White House. I know millions of Americans will be overcome with pride at this inspiring moment that so many have waited so long...I know Senator Obama's beloved mother and grandparents would've been thrilled to watch the child they raised ascend the steps of the Capitol and take his oath...Last night I extended an invitation to President-elect and Mrs. Obama to come to the White House...
