President Bush's Legacy: One of Our Greatest Presidents

As I recently predicted, in few months, with the benefit of hindsight, historians will look back on the Bush presidency as an unalloyed success and consider President Bush to be one of our greatest presidents. Although the White House has sent around its own talking points highlighting the President's accomplishments, I don't think they go far enough. So I have put together my own list of talking points, which should convince anyone why George W. Bush belongs on Mount Rushmore, along with Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and the other guy.

After Hurricane Katrina President Bush kept our cities safe.

In the three years and a half years since Hurricane Katrina not a single American city has been destroyed or partially destroyed. There are more than 10,000 cities in the United States and because of George Bush every single one of them, except for New Orleans, is still largely intact. Of course, no one could have predicted Hurricane Katrina, and if President Clinton had not left us so woefully unprepared, New Orleans would probably be in a lot better shape than it is now. But since Katrina, there have been numerous hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, blizzards, fires and earthquakes and none of them has gotten out of hand and wiped out an entire city because of the disaster preparedness policies President Bush put in place. For national security reasons we may not know until records are declassified how many other potential disasters, like epidemics or nuclear power plant meltdowns or alien invasions, were averted because of the work that government agencies did behind the scenes. Unfortunately, Presidents don't usually get credit for all the disasters that don't happen. But I think we should congratulate the President for doing a heckuva job on keeping America safe in the years since Katrina.

After the October 2008 stock market correction there have been no Great Depressions.

Although the excesses of the Clinton administration's failed economic policies finally caught up with us in October 2008, in the seven years before this economic downturn the economy was doing really well. Not every President can boast of seven years of prosperity. What's more, even since October there have been no Great Depressions, which means President Bush has given us eight completely depressionless years. Although some credit Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's swift and bold moves after the market tanked for staving off a depression, I think most economists will come to agree that it was Bush's 2001 tax cuts that really kept the economy afloat. Bush's prescient tax cuts lifted up the economy to such a level that any economic downfall just brought us back to where we were before instead plunging us into depression. Meanwhile, because of easy credit during the Bush years, more people had the opportunity to buy the homes of their dreams and live in them for a few years before they had to give them back. If Obama's economic policies do plunge us into a Great Depression, Americans will look back on the relative economic prosperity of the Bush years wistfully and have only themselves to blame.

After Iraq and Afghanistan took a turn for the worse, President Bush kept us from losing any wars.

Although some presidents can claim that they did not lose a war during their administrations, not many presidents can claim that they did not lose two wars. President Bush is leaving office with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still going strong and not lost. In 2007 Iraq almost broke out into civil war because we did not have enough troops in there. Another President might have decided that the War in Iraq was lost and pulled American troops out of there. Not President Bush. By instituting the surge he prevented Iraq from breaking out into civil war and scoring a loss for the U.S. for the first time in our history. What is even more remarkable was that he was able to stave off defeat in Iraq and at the same time keep just enough troops in Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban from completely retaking the entire country. Quibblers might say that he didn't actually win either conflict outright or that Afghanistan would be in better shape if we had kept more troops there and not invaded Iraq or offer all sorts of other coulda shoulda woulda arguments but the fact is that we didn't lose any wars and Bush deserves credit for that.

After the District Attorney firing scandal, the outing of Valerie Plame and other scandals, President Bush restored integrity to government.

After a few overzealous Justice Department officials trying to restore balance to our justice system, which had been tainted by the partisanship of the Clinton years, went a little overboard in trying to clean house, President Bush immediately took action and patiently convinced those who were responsible to resign eventually. Since that time no district attorneys have been fired for political reasons. In 2003 when CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity was compromised, President Bush vowed to get to the bottom of it and eventually Scooter Libby was prosecuted and threatened with jail time until President Bush mercifully decided he had suffered enough and commuted his sentence. Everyone else who was involved was either persuaded to resign or given a very severe talking to. Because of President Bush's bold stand against compromising the identities of members of our intelligence community, for the last five years not a single undercover CIA agent has been outted. There were a number of other scandals, too numerous to mention here, that President Bush took strong and immediate measures to clean up, such as the level of care veterans were receiving at Walter Reed Hospital. As soon as President Bush found out about it, he fixed it and now veterans receive better care there than they have in years. But perhaps President Bush's most remarkable achievement when it comes to restoring honor and dignity to his office is something he didn't do. Many Americans were understandably disillusioned with government after President Clinton violated the sacred trust that had existed for more than 200 years between presidents and their interns. But in the entire eight years President Bush has been in office he did not have sex with a single intern that we know about, which is an extraordinary accomplishment considering how young and pretty and undoubtedly tempting some of those interns are. It is a testament to President Bush's discipline and character that he did not succumb to temptation and history will certainly remember him for that.

After divisive elections President Bush united our country.

When President Bush took office we were a nation starkly divided between blue states and red states, Vice President Al Gore's attempt to steal the election had left many Democrats bitter and unable to get over it and Washington was a city riven by the political partisanship fostered by Clinton's divisive leadership. But by the end of Bush's first year in office this country was united as it never had been before and the President had a 90% approval rating. Although Democrats continued to try to divide this country and exploit every issue for partisan gain, President Bush continued to rise above the fray and worked with Democrats like Sen. Ted Kennedy to pass No Child Left Behind and probably some other bills, too, though I can't think of any off the top of my head. He encouraged Democrats to join him in fighting terrorism although some continued to resist and preferred instead to coddle the terrorists. And yet President Bush was able to persuade the American people to elect him to office again over an elitist, French, latte-swilling, wind-surfing, traitorous, terrorist coddling, Iraq War-losing, Genghis Khan-mispronouncing, lesbian-outting, gay marriage-loving, Anti-American liberal. And when Democrats took over both houses of Congress in 2006, he even won them over to his side with his gentle powers of persuasion. In the end Democrats didn't have the heart to really oppose Bush on anything significant at all, going along with him on such issues as whether to end the war in Iraq and whether to allow the NSA to wiretap our phones. It was hard, apparently, for the Democratic leadership to resist President Bush's charms. And so Obama will take office with the country a lot less divided than it was when Bush came in and divisions between red and blue states much less stark than they once were. President Bush promised that he would be a uniter instead of a divider and if you look at the polls, which show Americans more united than they have been in many years, it is clear that President Bush kept his promise.

After Abu Ghraib, President Bush reaffirmed America's adherence to the Geneva Conventions and against torture.

After Abu Ghraib, some America haters used the photographs that soldiers stupidly took of harsh interrogations of prisoners as evidence in their propaganda that the Bush Administration did not care about upholding the Geneva Conventions. But President Bush took decisive action to prosecute the bad apples, mostly soldiers and low-level commanders, who were solely responsible for what went on there to show the world that we take the Geneva Conventions very seriously even though it is just a treaty and not technically binding especially when we are trying to fight an enemy that does not follow its rules. In the wake of 9/11 some presidents might have been tempted to ignore the Geneva Conventions completely and do whatever was necessary to protect us, but President Bush knew that we couldn't totally abandon all of our ideals in the War on Terror and so he followed the Geneva Conventions to the letter, applying its rules to every soldier who was not an enemy combatant outside the treaty's jurisdiction. And he strongly reaffirmed this nation's stance against torture, preferring instead to waterboard suspected terrorists instead of torturing them, and sending particularly difficult cases to countries where they unfortunately don't have our strong ideals. And even at Guantanamo, which technically is outside the jurisdiction of our laws, President Bush made sure that every prisoner was given due process even if it is understandably taking a while to decide what process they are due. During his entire term of office President Bush never wavered once in maintaining publicly that America does not torture. In fact, I think President Bush may have said, "We do not torture" more than any President in American history.

After 9/11 President Bush kept America safe from terrorist attacks on American soil.

Surely, President Bush's greatest accomplishment, and the one achievement he will most be remembered for in history, was that he kept America safe from terrorist attacks after 9/11. Seven years without a single terrorist attack on American soil is certainly a remarkable accomplishment. The fact that the Clinton Administration's foreign policy blunders left America vulnerable to the worst terrorist act in our nation's history will always be a black mark against President Clinton in the history books, while President Bush's quick and decisive action to correct those mistakes after 9/11 is what he will always be remembered for. And we will probably not know for many years until records are declassified how many shoe bombers and wannabe jihadists were stopped in their tracks. Unfortunately, seven years was just not enough time to capture those responsible for the attacks, but he certainly has Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda on the run. I'm sure Obama will try to take credit if he does capture Bin Laden, but no one can take away from President Bush the credit he is due for keeping America completely safe from terrorist attacks for seven years, eight if you don't count 9/11, which wasn't really his fault. Based on that accomplishment alone, can anyone doubt that George W. Bush was one of our greatest presidents?

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Debate Shows Obama Not Crotchety Enough To Be President

The next President will face a number of challenges at home and abroad. We are going to need a President who will not be afraid to tell Americans to eat their vegetables or to yell at our enemies to get off our lawn. In last night’s debate John McCain won by proving that he is the only candidate who is crotchety enough to lead this country for the next four years, while Barack Obama offered only youthful ideals and unrealistic hopes untempered by grim experience.

As America faces what Sarah Palin discreetly admitted could be another Great Depression, we are going to need a President who will be able to level with Americans that they are going to have to get used to the idea of losing their homes and not being able to get health care instead of filling their heads with false hopes and impossible dreams. We are going to need a President who can tell the American people that they are just going to have to learn to live with crumbling roads and bridges and to just suck it up when their jobs move overseas. John McCain proved last night that he is the man for the job.

As McCain said twice yesterday, apparently because it slipped his mind that he had already said it, which happens sometimes when you get older, he has never won the Miss Congeniality award in the Senate, which is why we need him as President. Who better to berate Americans for the next four years to stop living in a dream world and face the facts? Only John McCain will be able to lecture Americans, based on his own experience, that life isn’t fair and we should stop whining, as his economic adviser Phil Gramm put it.

And as the world gets more and more dangerous, I know I would feel a lot safer with John McCain defending this country from our enemies by cruelly mispronouncing their names and giving them the silent treatment. Let’s just see how President Whatshisname of Iran likes that! The last thing we need is a President who can pronounce "Pakistan" and "Taliban" correctly, as Obama did last night, which has certainly made a number of my friends in the conservative blogosphere suspicious that he is not one of us. Where did Obama learn how to pronounce foreign words correctly? Was it at one of the elite Ivy League schools he attended or in a terrorist training camp?

Last night’s debate gave us a telling insight into how McCain deals with opponents. He never made the mistake a less seasoned man might have made of looking Obama in the eye or even vaguely in his direction. Looking at your opponents gives them the opportunity to give you the evil eye, which unfortunately, may have been what happened to President Bush when he looked Vladimir Putin in the eye and thought he saw his soul. That is not a mistake John McCain will make. Even when he shook hands with Obama at the end of the debate, McCain looked away, refusing to let Obama hypnotize him with his Voodoo magic. That is the kind of strength and steely resolve we need in our next President.

And even if by some miracle our enemies (or even our friends, like Spain) agree to all of our preconditions and McCain condescends to meet with them, McCain will surely treat them with the contempt they deserve, just as he did with Obama last night. Obama was lucky that McCain even deigned to show up to debate him at all, as he made clear time and time again. The way McCain patiently castigated Obama for his naiveté and lectured him time and time again that he just doesn’t understand gave us some insight into McCain’s diplomatic skills, which will also prove useful in his dealings with Congress.

Let’s face it. The future looks bleak. We don’t need a President who is going to run around trying to fix things, falsely reassuring us that the situation isn’t as bad as it seems. We need a crotchety old man who knows what it is like to be trapped in a hopeless situation with little chance of escape, and who won’t be afraid to tell us that we are doomed and if we had only listened to him before he might have been able to do something but now it is too late.

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Castro Resigns! Sanctions Work!

In a letter published in Cuba's state-run newspaper Granma Fidel Castro announced that he is resigning as President of Cuba, finally succumbing to the sanctions that have crippled Cuba's economy and steadily weakened his rule for the last 50 years. Although Castro tried to save face by claiming that he was quitting because of his "critical health condition," it is clear that half a century of U.S. pressure has just worn him down. Like Roberto Duran after being pummeled in his second fight with Sugar Ray Leonard, Castro has finally cried out, "No más!"

Let this be a lesson to other dictators around the world, from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran to Kim Jong-il in North Korea, that the United States is a very patient country and if it takes us 50 years to get them out of power, we will not waver. In fact, as John McCain as made it clear to the insurgents in Iraq, we don't mind sticking around there for a 100 years if it takes that long.

All of those liberals who complained that sanctions were not working and said Castro was thumbing his nose at the United States should apologize to the ten Presidents who have methodically plotted Castro's downfall since 1959 now that Castro has finally said, "Tio." While it may have appeared to some that Castro emerged unscathed from the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 638 attempts by the CIA to assassinate him using poison cigars and exploding, mollusks, the embargo, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Mariel Boat Lift, which deprived the country of some of its finest criminals and mental patients, we can now see that each of these incidents chipped away at Castro's power little by little until he had no choice but to surrender.

And let us not forget the hard work of the Cuban exiles in Florida, who resolutely resisted any "reasonable" approach to loosening Castro's grip on power, for all of the hard work they have done in finally forcing him to resign. The pressure they exerted on every Presidential candidate who hoped to win Florida's electoral votes to keep sanctions in place made it unlikely that any President would change the policy without suffering the consequences as Al Gore learned to his dismay. And they stuck to their principles despite the great pain it must have caused them to amass great wealth for themselves while their countrymen in Cuba wallowed in wretched poverty. Finally, their sacrifice has been vindicated.

Unfortunately, the Cuban people won't be able to trade in their classic American cars for shiny new gas-guzzling SUVs just yet. Certainly, no Presidential candidate will dare angering the Cuba lobby and risk those precious Florida votes just yet, at least not while Castro is still breathing. No one wants to do anything that will raise the standard of living for average Cubans and allow Castro to claim credit. Although Barack Obama has hinted that he might consider lifting the travel ban to Cuba and Hillary Clinton has promised a "full policy review" if the situation changed there, I'm sure they will be convinced by their Florida campaign advisors that now is not the time to back away when Castro is on the ropes. His brother Raul is only 76 and who knows what other tricks Castro has up his sleeve? What if he lives another 80 years? And even if Castro dies, we still may need to maintain the embargo. What if Castro has his body cryogenically frozen in hopes of making a comeback and returning to lead Cuba again? We may need to maintain sanctions another 50 years or even 100 years just to make sure he is really dead. So the Cuban people will just have to be patient and endure their poverty a little longer. It may take ten more Presidents before we can say "Hasta la vista, Castro!" with certainty but ultimately the U.S. will be victorious.

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