Eight Long Years

We are nearing the end of eight long years. Very few people are excited with the entire Bush record and you can count me among that number.

It is safe to say, for this conservative at least, that what George Bush did well he did very well, and what he failed at he failed at spectacularly. There were very few areas of gray.

He responded to the threat of Islamism after 9/11 in a way that has provided us safety for more than seven years now. It is hard to believe this has been achieved given the difficulty of the task. Bush took many steps, even controversial ones, that have helped prevent several serious attacks against America. His character will be questioned mercilessly by critics for his wiretapping of international calls, his approval of aggressive questioning, data mining of phone records, and strengthened airport security. He will also be questioned by critics who aptly point out that patting down 80 year old ladies by the same percentages as middle eastern men is political correctness gone mad.

Overall there simply is no other way to judge the results of this portion of his presidency. In protecting American citizens from Islamic threats after 9/11, he succeeded.

Bush also left a conservative mark on the Supreme Court and other federal courts. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito will help to assure there remains some legal sanity on our highest court for many years to come. But for the efforts of milquetoast Senators like Lindsay Graham and John McCain, the Bush record on federal judgeships would have been even better.

The Bush tax cuts were important in an economic expansion that took place despite the devastation of 9/11 and the bursting of the tech bubble. There is, however, a big part of the tax/spend equation that Bush missed entirely...that of spending. George Bush was well into his 6th year of the presidency before he ever found his veto pen. Under his watch the federal government swelled like a bloated tick on the blood of the taxpayers. While the spending on the war was justified, there were few attempts even made to keep spending in line in any other part of the budget.

Not only was Bush hesitant to put the brakes on earmark spending, he was actually the High Priest of all things expensive, ramrodding through crippling government expansions in education, health care, transportation and who can even keep track of everything else. No Child Left Behind has done little to improve the overall success of education in America, but has done a great deal to remove control of education from local teachers and administrators. Through the magic of big government, little Johnny and little Sally are supposed to do better in school with their parents, teachers, and administrators being shoved farther away from the decision making process.

Expanded drug coverage for Medicaid/Medicare will cost trillions and will help to ultimately bankrupt the system. As big government politicians go, George Bush proved to be one of the biggest in American history.

Bush's failures did not end there.

The Bush administration was a poor communicating one. Some might say it was just an attempt to remain presidential while staying above the fray. That might have been the premise, but it failed miserably on any count. President Bush failed to defend his administration against a belligerently leftist press and it wasn't until the disgraced weasel Scott McClellan left the job of Press Secretary (voluntarily) that the White House ever began vigorous attempts to defend itself. Non scandals took on the appearance of scandals, near scandals became disasters, and general government incompetence became FRONT PAGE NEWS.

Hurricanes Katrina is a case in point. Should anyone have been surprised that a federal government agency located a thousand miles away, this time FEMA, would perform poorly and inefficiently in a role it was never intended to occupy? Government on its best day is a failure.

FEMA is specifically not chartered to provide first responder help in disaster zones, that responsibility falls, indisputably, on state and local agencies. With Katrina bearing down on the Mississippi/Louisiana coast, the Louisiana Governor and the Mayor of New Orleans fiddled, not even enacting many of their own mandated emergency plans. Then, after the hurricanes blasted the city, gross incompetence by local and state agencies exacerbated the mess. The coverage of Hurricane Katrina might well go down as one of the worst examples of American press coverage in history. George Bush said little other than congratulating "Brownie" on the good job he was doing. America seethed. (Actually, if Brownie had suggested Rep. William Jefferson hide $93,000 in the freezer of every constituent in the city, rescue efforts would have been carried out much more quickly. Who knows, maybe Bush and Jefferson both would have been heroes.)

Than, as the flood waters ebbed, the government botched rehousing and aid efforts designed to assist weather refugees, wasting billions of dollars on many feel good measures that were simply failures by any measurement. Fields of rotting manufactured houses still exist as a monument to the debacle. Meanwhile, the government is once again guaranteeing home owner's insurance for people who build houses in hurricane alley at elevations below sea level and protected by levees designed to fail if confronted with a category 4 or 5 hurricane. What could go wrong with that?

Another case is the current financial crisis. Nearly all economists and analysts agree that this is not the fault of anything that Bush did but instead trace the causes of the problem back to government regulations enacted to provide millions of loans to persons incapable of paying them back and a market flooded with cheap money. Bush, among others, adamantly warned that the financing regulations needed to be changed or there could be impending disaster. Barney Frank, Christopher Dodd, and Chuck Schumer, among others, demonized the naysayers as trying to stand in the way of progress for the little guy. Yet, when all was said and done, it was George Bush and the Republicans that took the blame, losing huge in the latest election while the sniveling Barney Frank coasted to reelection.

While there are many more items that could be easily be placed in the success/failure columns, the items above represent the most colossal in the mind of this conservative.

As with all presidents it will be the historians, perhaps decades hence, that finally will offer objective analysis of the Bush Presidency and whether it was a success or failure when all things are considered.

However any of that turns out, today I'm happy to say "thanks" to George Bush. I'm also happy to see him saunter on back to Dallas.