Interview with Steve Turner

The Jack Bauer Exception

Most politicians would rather do anything than make a difficult choice, and it seems President Obama hasn't abandoned this Senatorial habit. To wit, yesterday's executive order on interrogation: It imposes broad limits on how aggressively U.S. intelligence officers can question terrorists, but it also keeps open the prospect of legal loopholes that would allow them to press harder in tough cases.

AP

While that kind of double standard may resolve a domestic political problem, it's no way to fight a war. The human-rights lobby and many Democrats are still experiencing hypochondria about the Bush Administration's supposed torture program, and their cheering about this "clean break" means they may be appeased. But the larger risk is that Mr. Obama's restrictions end up disabling an essential tool in the U.S. antiterror arsenal.

Effective immediately, the interrogation of anyone "in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government" will be conducted within the limits of the Army Field Manual. That includes special-ops and the Central Intelligence Agency, which will now be required to give prisoners gentler treatment than common criminals. The Field Manual's confines don't even allow the average good cop/bad cop routines common in most police precincts.

The Army Field Manual is already the operating guide for military interrogations. The crux of the "torture" debate has been that the Bush Administration permitted more coercive techniques in rare cases -- fewer than 100 detainees, according to CIA Director Michael Hayden. Yesterday Mr. Obama revoked the 2007 Presidential carve-out that protected this CIA flexibility.

The techniques that had been permissible until yesterday remain classified but were widely believed to include such things as stress positions, exposure to cold and sleep deprivation. Senior officials have said they stopped waterboarding in 2003 -- which in any case was only used against three senior al Qaeda operatives and succeeded in breaking these men to divulge information that foiled terror plots.

The unfine print of Mr. Obama's order is that he's allowed room for what might be called a Jack Bauer exception. It creates a committee to study whether the Field Manual techniques are too limiting "when employed by departments or agencies outside the military." The Attorney General, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Director of National Intelligence-designate Dennis Blair will report back and offer "additional or different guidance for other departments or agencies."

In other words, Mr. Obama's Inaugural line that "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals" was itself misrepresenting the choices his predecessor was forced to make. At least President Bush was candid about the practical realities of preventing mass casualties in the U.S.

The "special task force" may well grant the CIA more legal freedom to squeeze information out of terrorists when it could keep the country safe. An anecdote former Clinton counterterror czar Richard Clarke recounts in his memoir "Against All Enemies" is instructive. In 1993, White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler was horrified by Mr. Clarke's proposal for "extraordinary rendition," where our spooks turn over prisoners to foreign countries like Egypt so they can do the interrogating.

While Mr. Clinton was still chewing his fingernails and seemed to side with Mr. Cutler, Al Gore arrived late to the meeting. "Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides," Mr. Clarke writes. "Gore laughed and said, 'That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.'"

The wider danger Mr. Obama is inviting by claiming to draw a line while drawing no line at all is the message it sends to Langley. CIA interrogators are already buying legal insurance in the expectation that a Senator like Carl Levin or some prosecutor-on-the-make rings them up for war crimes. The executive order is bound to produce a more risk-averse CIA culture and over time less intelligence-gathering. No one may be willing to be Jack Bauer when Mr. Obama really needs him. This will have consequences for U.S. safety, and for the Obama Administration if there is another 9/11.

Conservatives Have Answered Obama's Call

"What is required of us now," President Barack Obama said in his inaugural address this week, "is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world." It is a message that nonprofit organizations would like our nation to take to heart, as 2009 fund-raising begins.

Unfortunately, we nonprofit leaders, like our for-profit counterparts, are laying awake nights. The end of 2008 was disappointing for philanthropy, and some believe that 2009 will be difficult as well. Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy publishes the Philanthropic Giving Index (PGI), which tracks the predictions of nonprofit leaders about charitable giving. Like the more-famous Consumer Confidence Index, it shows a level of gloom not seen in years, falling from 83 to 65 (on a 0-100 scale) in just six months.

The PGI is useful, but it is a blunt tool for predicting charitable giving by individuals or to specific charities. It does not tell us that all nonprofits will experience equal pain. Nor does it tell us that all givers will lower their giving by the same amount. In fact, there is good evidence that some Americans will maintain their giving levels far more than others in spite of the recession. One beleaguered group in particular promises to hold up their charitable end in spite of the sputtering economy: political conservatives.

Over the past several years, studies have consistently shown that people on the political right outperform those on the left when it comes to charity. This pattern appears to have held -- increased, even -- in 2008.

In May of last year, the Gallup polling organization asked 1,200 American adults about their giving patterns. People who called themselves "conservative" or "very conservative" made up 42% of the population surveyed, but gave 56% of the total charitable donations. In contrast, "liberal" or "very liberal" respondents were 29% of those polled but gave just 7% of donations.

These disparities were not due to differences in income. People who said they were "very conservative" gave 4.5% of their income to charity, on average; "conservatives" gave 3.6%; "moderates" gave 3%; "liberals" gave 1.5%; and "very liberal" folks gave 1.2%.

A common explanation for this pattern is that conservatives are more religious than liberals, and are simply giving to their churches. My own research in the past showed that religion was a major reason conservatives donated so much, and that secular conservatives gave even less than secular liberals.

It appears this is no longer the case, however: The 2008 data tell us that secular conservatives are now outperforming their secular liberal counterparts. Compare two people who attend religious services less than once per year (or never) and who are also identical in terms of income, education, sex, age and family status -- but one is on the political right while the other is on the left. The secular liberal will give, on average, $1,100 less to charity per year than the secular conservative. The conservative charity edge cannot be explained away by gifts to churches.

Perhaps you suspect that the vast political contributions given to the Obama campaign -- $742 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, versus $367 million for the McCain campaign -- were crowding out charitable giving by the left. But political donations, impressive as they were this year by historical standards, were still miniscule compared to the approximately $300 billion Americans gave charitably in 2008. Adding political and charitable gifts together would not change the overall giving patterns.

But here's where the charity gap really starts to make a difference for the recession of 2009: Conservatives don't just give more; they also decrease their giving less than liberals do in response to lousy economic conditions.

Economists measure the "income elasticity of giving" to predict how much people change their giving in response to a particular percentage change in their income. It turns out the response in 2008 was dramatically different for left and right. For instance, a 10% decrease in family income for a conservative was associated with a 10% decrease in giving. The same income decrease for a liberal family led to a 16% giving drop. In other words, if this relationship continues to hold, the recession will almost certainly exacerbate the giving differences between left and right.

All this is good news for the health and survival of explicitly conservative organizations, of course. But folks on the political right give to all types of nonprofits -- from soup kitchens to symphony orchestras -- not just conservative groups.

Ironically, few environments are less tolerant of conservatives and their ideas than the nonprofit world. The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported in October of 2008 that employees of major charities favored Democrats over Republicans in their private political contributions by a margin of 82% to 18%. Among the employees of major foundations, the difference was an astounding 98% to 2%.

Reasonable people can disagree on politics, but the numbers on giving speak for themselves. Nonprofit executives, disproportionately politically progressive, do well to remember that many of the folks they will count on in hard times are not necessarily those who share their political views. Understanding this might make for better fund raising in a scary year -- and help us all to give credit where it is due.

Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of "Who Really Cares" and "Gross National Happiness" (Basic Books).

NATIONAL SECURITY MEDAL AWARDED TO FORMER NCTC DIRECTOR

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 22, 2009

NATIONAL SECURITY MEDAL AWARDED TO FORMER NCTC DIRECTOR

President George W. Bush awarded the National Security Medal to retired Vice Adm. John “Scott” Redd at a White House Ceremony Jan. 16, 2009. Redd was recognized by the President for “his more than 40 years of exceptional service to the Nation strengthening its intelligence capabilities and improving national security.” The National Security Medal is America’s highest intelligence award reserved for those with distinguished achievements or outstanding contributions in the field.

Redd became the first Senate confirmed director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in August 2005 and served in that position until November 2007. NCTC leads the U.S. Government’s counterterrorism efforts by analyzing and sharing threat information and integrating all elements of national power to defeat terrorist threats at home and abroad.

In awarding the medal, the President called Redd “an innovator, a strategic thinker, an inspirational leader and a dedicated servant to the Nation, respected for his vision, courage and integrity.” During his remarks the President also thanked Redd’s wife Donna for her service over many years. The Redd’s daughter Anne Redd Chamberlin and sons Scott Redd Jr., and Adam Redd attended the White House ceremony.

Redd served 36 years in the Navy, commanded eight organizations and served in several senior policy positions in the Pentagon. His last active duty assignment was as Director of Strategic Plans and Policy on the Joint Staff. In 1995, he founded the first new US Navy Fleet in half a century, serving as the first Commander Fifth Fleet since the World War II era. Redd retired from active military service in 1998.

Following his military service he was the CEO of a high tech firm. He served briefly as the Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, Iraq before becoming the Executive Director of the President’s Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction in 2004.

An avid amateur radio operator, Redd was inducted into the CQ Amateur Radio Hall of Fame in May 2008. He has won numerous amateur radio operator awards including seven world championships.

A native of Sidney, Iowa, Redd graduated second in his class from the United States Naval Academy in 1966. He currently resides in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

NCTC Mission: Lead our nation’s effort to combat terrorism at home and abroad by analyzing the threat, sharing that information with our partners, and integrating all instruments of national power to ensure unity of effort.

The U2 Single

Is it a coincidence that the single was posted on the band’s site right after their appearance at the inauguration pre-game show?

You know who was really good at the pre-game show? JOHN MELLENCAMP!

Yes, I’m a fan John. Run that through your twisted little paranoid brain. To see you there with just an acoustic, albeit supported by a guitar player and a band in the pit featuring your one time drummer Kenny Aronoff, made me feel all warm and fuzzy. That a guy from the heartland with no connections singing what it’s like to be a real American can go all the way. Not only with a supermodel, but the American public. Still, no matter what stunts you pull, the mainstream no longer cares about you. If you want to grow your career, do it from the inside out, motivating the fans you do have, not inconsiderable in number, rather than putting out press releases trumpeting your political statements. Press releases are to be ignored.

And James Taylor… Liked that you played that crazy electric guitar. But John Legend is blander than you are. And don’t we all hate that girl from Sugarland for some reason we just can’t put our finger on? Great song choice, but the performance hit me more intellectually than emotionally, and that’s not the way you do it in rock and roll.

Bruce?

Utterly laughable. Sure, "The Rising" may be lyrically appropriate, but sometimes you’ve got to seize the moment. Which called for an acoustic version of "Born To Run", with the walls eventually opening to reveal the full E Street Band. As for "This Land Is Your Land"… Where was Arlo Guthrie?

Loved Stevie Wonder. He can still play that clavinet.

As for U2…

Another great song choice! They were doing it the way you’re supposed to, just the four of them, without backing tapes, Edge filling up the sound. It’s just that outside, it’s hard to feel the music, even the edgiest band usually sounds flat, and it’s even worse if you’re appearing in daylight. Still, gave me goosebumps. But I didn’t love Bono being all things to all people. Supporting both the Israelis and the Palestinians. It’s more complicated than that. Like how do we categorize Hamas, are they a terrorist group? Bono knows the answer, but he needs everyone to love him.

As for the second number… I was thinking for a minute it was going to be "I Will Follow". Alas, it was one of the substandard new numbers.

And speaking of substandard…

Famously, Ian Anderson and Chrysalis subjected Jethro Tull’s 1987 album "Crest Of A Knave" to focus groups. Listeners decided what songs ultimately appeared on the record, which turned out to be a huge success. (And won the heavy metal Grammy, beating out Metallica.)

Am I a believer in research? Not really, not in rock and roll. It’ll tell you where you’ve been, but not where you’re going. But if your goal is to have a hit and be famous…

"Beautiful Day" and "Vertigo" may have been cheap shots, playing to the last row, but at least they worked on that level. You got ‘em on one listen. Maybe didn’t love ‘em, but didn’t mind hearing them again. Whereas "Get On Your Boots"…

You’ve got to go back to "The Fly". The initial single off "Achtung Baby". Truly left field. But featuring crunchy, explosive guitar sounds. And possessing an anthemic feel. This was a track made for the darkness of a club. With sweetness in the middle for sex in the bathroom. It got better with every listen. And you wanted to hear it again. If for no reason than it sounded nothing quite like anything else you’d ever heard. They could have led with "Mysterious Ways", even "One", but U2 did not play it safe. But they led with a killer. God, catch Adam Clayton’s bass. And Bono’s vocal. That was one thing that was truly impressive yesterday, Bono Vox’s voice. In an era where no one can truly sing anymore, he can.

But "Get On Your Boots" sounds too garagey, without the soul that is evidenced in "The Fly". And the chorus would make George Martin laugh. There’s a bridge, but it’s not as catchy as the one in "I Want To Hold Your Hand".

But maybe this is just the cred track. The one for the fans. But how many people have actually heard this? That’s the problem with spending months in the studio, you lose your perspective. You hear tracks so many times you don’t realize that someone who’s not invested might be thrown off with one listen.

Maybe it’s the audio quality. Maybe if it were richer, on a big system…

But if more people were allowed to hear the track before release they’d bump up against the dreaded piracy issue. But maybe U2 could have taken a risk, a la Radiohead. Let the AUDIENCE pick the single! Truly go Web 2.0, getting people involved. They’ve already got their own iPod, never mind iTunes commercials. Isn’t it time to test the limits further?

You’ve got Perez Hilton trumpeting the success of Kelly Clarkson’s new cut, saying it’s already gone to #12 on iTunes, and calling "Put On Your Boots" CRAPTASTIC! Sure, who gives a shit about what Mario Lavendeira says? Oops, more music consumers than are paying attention to the "New York Times", "Rolling Stone" and so many of the usual suspects. Furthermore, Perez’s readers are ACTIVE! They forward his posts to others, they create buzz. And it’s hard to get the stink off something he condemns.

Which only matters if you need to be king of the world Perez inhabits.

Well, historically, in the twenty first century, U2 has. So, this is not good.

Bush Was Right When It Mattered Most

Its call sign has always been Air Force One. But on Tuesday, it was Special Air Mission 28000, as former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura returned home to Texas on a plane full of family, friends, former staff and memories of eight years in the White House.

AP

The former president and his wife thanked each passenger, showing the thoughtfulness and grace so characteristic of this wonderful American family.

A video tribute produced warm laughter and inevitable tears. There was no bitterness, but rather a sense of gratitude -- gratitude for the opportunity to serve, for able and loyal colleagues, and above all for our country and its people.

Yet, as Mr. Bush left Washington, in a last angry frenzy his critics again distorted his record, maligned his character and repeated untruths about his years in the Oval Office. Nothing they wrote or said changes the essential facts.

To start with, Mr. Bush was right about Iraq. The world is safer without Saddam Hussein in power. And the former president was right to change strategy and surge more U.S. troops.

A legion of critics (including President Barack Obama) claimed it couldn't work. They were wrong. Iraq is now on the mend, the war is on the path to victory, al Qaeda has been dealt a humiliating defeat, and a democracy in the heart of the Arab world is emerging. The success of Mr. Bush's surge made it possible for President Obama to warn terrorists on Tuesday "you cannot outlast us."

Mr. Bush was right to establish a doctrine that holds those who harbor, train and support terrorists as responsible as the terrorists themselves. He was right to take the war on terror abroad instead of waiting until dangers fully materialize here at home. He was right to strengthen the military and intelligence and to create the new tools to monitor the communications of terrorists, freeze their assets, foil their plots, and kill and capture their operators.

These tough decisions -- which became unpopular in certain quarters only when memories of 9/11 began to fade -- kept America safe for seven years and made it possible for Mr. Obama to tell the terrorists on Tuesday "we will defeat you."

Mr. Bush was right to be a unilateralist when it came to combating AIDS in Africa. While world leaders dithered, his President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief initiative brought lifesaving antiretroviral drugs to millions of Africans.

At home, Mr. Bush cut income taxes for every American who pays taxes. He also cut taxes on capital, investment and savings. The result was 52 months of growth and the strongest economy of any developed country.

Mr. Bush was right to match tax cuts with spending restraint. This is a source of dispute, especially among conservatives, but the record is there to see. Bill Clinton's last budget increased domestic nonsecurity discretionary spending by 16%. Mr. Bush cut that to 6.2% growth in his first budget, 5.5% in his second, 4.3% in his third, 2.2% in his fourth, and then below inflation, on average, since. That isn't the sum total of the fiscal record, of course -- but it's a key part of it.

He was right to have modernized Medicare with prescription drug benefits provided through competition, not delivered by government. The program is costing 40% less than projected because market forces dominate and people -- not government -- are making the decisions.

Mr. Bush was right to pass No Child Left Behind (NCLB), requiring states to set up tough accountability systems that measure every child's progress at school. As a result, reading and math scores have risen more in the last five years since NCLB than in the prior 28 years.

He was right to stand for a culture of life. And he was right to appoint conservative judges who strictly interpret the Constitution.

And Mr. Bush, a man of core decency and integrity, was right not to reply in kind when Democratic leaders called him a liar and a loser. The price of trying to change the tone in Washington was to be often pummeled by lesser men.

Few presidents had as many challenges arise during their eight years, had as many tough calls to make in such a partisan-charged environment, or had to act in the face of such hostile media and elite opinion.

On board Special Air Mission 28000, I remembered the picture I carried in my pocket on my first Air Force One flight eight years ago. It was an old black-and-white snapshot with scalloped edges. It showed Lyndon Johnson in the Cabinet Room, head in hand, weeping over a Vietnam casualty report. George Christian, LBJ's press secretary, gave it to me as a reminder that the job could break anyone, no matter how big and tough.

But despite facing challenges and crises few others have, the job did not break George W. Bush. Though older and grayer, his brows more furrowed, he is the same man he was, a person of integrity who did what he believed was right. And he exits knowing he summoned all of his energy and talents to defend America and advance its ideals at home and abroad. He didn't get everything right -- no president does -- but he got the most important things right. And that is enough.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

Intelligence & Security with James Woolsey

Chapter 1 of 5
Former CIA director James Woolsey discusses the failure of the intelligence community in the run-up to the Iraq war.
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Chapter 2 of 5
James Woolsey discusses Barack Obama’s selection of Leon Panetta to head the CIA, as well as the historical relationship between the president and the CIA director.
PERMALINK
Intelligence & Security with James Woolsey: Chapter 3 of 5
James Woolsey describes the current conflict, or World War IV, as a global battle against “theocratic totalitarian genocidal maniacs.”
PERMALINK

Bush Considered: America is a safer place thanks to his administration.

A disinterested appraisal of Bush administration foreign policy will take years. For millions on the Left, events in Iraq, Guantánamo, and New Orleans rendered the 43rd president an ill-omened phantasma—omnipotent, ubiquitous, and responsible for all mischief big and small. “Bush Did It” soon became a sort of ritual throat-clearing that critics evoked at each new Florida hurricane, Israeli-Palestinian mini-war, or serial “revelation” from a Paul O’Neill, Richard Clarke, or Scott McClellan.

The fact remains, though, that most of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives shared Bush’s desire to remove Saddam Hussein after 9/11. They patted the president on the back when he finally did so (after 16 months of acrimonious debate between the fall of the Taliban and the invasion of Iraq), abandoned him when the postbellum insurgency arose, opposed the surge when he nearly alone supported it, and gave him no credit for Iraq’s eventual success. Now, in a sort of theater-of-the-absurd fashion, they claim Iraq worked largely because they once declared it lost and thereby prompted the necessary changes. The congressional opposition’s record on Iraq is largely one of opportunism, his of principle—and that too will become part of the historical record.

Yet, strangest of all, well before even assuming office, the ever-flexible President-elect Obama has done much to prompt reassessment of Bush’s tenure. He apparently has chosen to drop most of his primary-election rhetoric and instead intends to continue nearly all of the sitting president’s anti-terrorism and foreign-policy initiatives—albeit cloaked in far-more-winning mantras of hope and change, energized by youthful charisma, and predicated on subtle appeals to multiracial fides.

The only discontinuity seems to be with the stance of the mainstream media. Without apology, journalists have already gone from the narrative of Bush, the destroyer of civil liberties, to Obama the continuer of “problematic” and “complex” measures. So just as Bush once eagerly licked his chops and salivated over Gulag Guantánamo, so Obama now with wrinkled brow and bitten lip is himself tortured that he has to sorta, kinda keep it open for a while longer.

Abroad, Bush has had three major successes.

We were not attacked after 9/11, despite serial warnings that such a comparable terrorist assault was inevitable. Bush created a new methodology of anti-terrorism. In magnitude and comprehensiveness (though unfortunately not in explication), it was analogous to Truman’s similarly controversial promotion of anti-Soviet containment that proved successful for the subsequent near half-century.

For all the rhetoric about Bush’s manufactured war on terror, today it is much more difficult—as the dozens of failed plots during the last seven years attest—to pull off a terrorist act inside the United States. War abroad and new anti-terrorism vigilance at home have decimated those who would wage such attacks.

Even Obama recognizes the success of these measures. We can see this well enough with the president-elect’s shifting positions on FISA, renditions, the Patriot Act, Guantánamo, and withdrawal from Iraq (once envisioned by Obama to be completed by March 2008). Bob Gates II won’t be that different from Bob Gates I at Defense; Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State will be far closer to Condoleezza Rice than to Howard Dean or Al Gore. Gen. James L. Jones could easily have served as national security adviser in the Bush administration. Hamas and other Palestinian groups will probably not get better actual treatment from Obama than they got from Bush—just some soothing rhetoric about dialogue and engagement rather than dead-or-alive, smoke-’em-out lingo. Add all the foreign-policy alignments up, and either Bush was right then, or Obama is wrong now.

The tired neocon slur has been that a secretive group of pro-Likud Jewish advisers of dual loyalties—Feith, Libby, Perle, Wolfowitz, Wurmser, etc.—convinced the clueless Bush to remove a largely harmless and irrelevant Saddam and, soon after, to consider further regime change for a host of other dictators (all to help Israel and steal the region’s oil resources, of course). The truth was far different. Bush undertook just two operations to remove the two worst regimes in the region and, in a departure from Cold War–era policies, to encourage constitutional governments, not oligarchies, in their places.

The Taliban was a nightmarish Murder Inc. masquerading as a fundamentalist theocracy that rented its soil to al-Qaeda and other global terrorism networks. Saddam Hussein had been at war, in various manifestations, with the United States since 1991, using his oil to fund terrorists, build an arsenal, and attack his neighbors. Accordingly, the Clinton administration, when it was not bombing Iraq or taking over its air space, had passed legislation calling for regime change. Congress passed decrees citing 23 reasons why the United States president should be authorized to remove Saddam by force.


After a brilliant three-week victory, subsequent mistakes—to my mind the worst was the obsessive focus on WMD at the expense of the other Congressional articles authorizing the war, the reprieve given the Fallujah terrorists in April 2004, and the stand down accorded a trapped Muqtada al-Sadr—turned a temporary occupation into a counter-insurgency. That said, despite the great cost in blood and treasure, Bush’s persistence, and the heroism and competence of the American soldier, finally ensured both the permanent end of a murderous tyranny and the survival of a constitutional government. The idea in 2001 that Sunni Iraqi Arabs in 2007–08 would have been fighting with Americans to destroy al-Qaeda terrorists would have seemed fantasy. By 2007, the popularity of both bin Laden and the tactic of suicide bombing had plummeted throughout the Arab Middle East.

The evacuation from Lebanon by the Syrian army, the surrender of Dr. A. Q. Khan’s Pakistani nuclear franchise, and the shutdown of Libya’s bomb-making program were results of the humiliation and fall of the Hussein dictatorship, and fears of a new no-nonsense American policy.

Aerial incursions into Pakistan have decimated al-Qaeda leaders—and Obama, who will largely continue existing policies in Afghanistan, won’t stop them. In fact, Bush’s support for democratization in the Middle East will allow Obama a far-wider range of choices than would have been the case if Bush had followed most conservative realists and simply extended blanket support for existing oligarchies. After Bush, there is no longer a simple calculus that liberals encourage democracy abroad, while conservatives don’t.

Bush, it was alleged, foolishly empowered Iran. But that too is a premature conjecture. Iran is at present nearly bankrupt from the crash of oil prices. Despite being an oil-exporter, it is dependent on foreigners for much of its own gasoline supply. Its terrorist clients—Hezbollah and Hamas—have bad habits of provoking Israel, suffering tremendous damage, declaring premature victory by virtue that they survived the IDF, and then needing even more billions from Iran to replace terrible losses in men and materiel.

Because Iranian agents once nearly destroyed Iraqi democracy, the example of a constitutional Iraq may prove in the long run destabilizing to theocratic Iran. And with the demise of Saddam’s lunatic regime, which once attacked both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the Sunni Arab nations can far more readily rally to isolate Iran. The truth is that, in the post-Saddam climate, a new reality is emerging in the Middle East, with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran isolated from, and hated and feared by, their Muslim brethren.

The media narrative is that President-elect Obama inherits a world turned upside down by George W. Bush. If so, where exactly will come the radical corrective changes, other than soaring (and let us hope effective) rhetoric about global hope and change? Will there be a new American relationship with China and India—both of which seem to appreciate the free-trade policies of the Bush administration?

Europe clearly favors Obama, but its two anti-Bush governments of Chirac and Schroeder are long gone, having given way to staunchly pro-American replacements. Apart from offering some soothing “We are the World” rhetoric of deference to the U.N. and multilateral dialogue, it is hard to determine exactly what the Europeans want Obama to do differently than Bush did. I doubt they look forward to true shoulder-to-shoulder, share-the-risk solidarity in Afghanistan. They talk grandly about Kyoto but have hardly reduced their own carbon footprints. If in times of crisis Obama invites them to multiparty talks with the Iranians or Russians, they will probably prefer old-style American leadership to “we are right behind you” assurances.

For all the talk about Guantánamo, European suspension of habeas corpus, summary deportations, and preventative detentions outstrip anything in Bush’s America. So far, despite a larger economy, the European Union has not matched Bush’s $15 billon commitment for HIV, and other infectious disease, relief in Africa.

There can be legitimate criticism of Bush’s first-term spending spree and rising deficits, and his unwillingness to veto Congressional pork. He naively thought hard-core Congressional ideologues and partisans were analogous to the conservative Democrats with whom he had worked in Texas, and often appeased them so they wouldn’t cut off support for the war.

Often, Bush’s unnecessarily bellicose rhetoric was not commensurate with his tentative action. Too many of his closest associates were less than competent—the abject embarrassment of Scott McClellan is perhaps the best example of the apparent cronyism that hurt Bush terribly. There were too few in his circle willing or able to articulate in steady fashion exactly what our war against radical Islam was about—and how we could win it.

All that said, these are the debates that take place in times of relative peace and security—they would be impossible had we suffered a series of 9/11s. And it is largely to the honest and steady Bush’s everlasting credit that we did not. The next president already appears to appreciate that as well as anyone.

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Cheney--the Exit Interview

When I showed up for my interview with Vice President Dick Cheney on January 6, he was standing behind his desk in the West Wing of the White House sipping, as he often does, from a can of Sprite Zero.

I told him that I hoped we could spend a little time working through his feelings about leaving the White House after eight years. I wanted to see the softer side of Dick Cheney.

"All warm and fuzzy?" he asked, laughing. "In the last two weeks of my time in active service?"

"Yeah, you could start getting all emotional," I suggested.

He paused.

"It ain't gonna happen."

If Cheney was reluctant to open up about his feelings, his talk on policies and politics was, as ever, revealing. He thinks Barack Obama is naïve about national security. He worries that the Bush administration's aggressive intervention in the free market will do long-term damage to conservative efforts to limit government. And though he tried mightily to avoid saying so, Cheney believes that the administration's North Korea policy has failed.

In 2005, a longtime Cheney friend and adviser told me the vice president believes that world leaders are best judged by what they've done, not what they say. The adviser explained that Cheney has few illusions about the possibilities of great change and offered an example: Kim Jong Il.

Cheney had warned in 1994 that North Korea posed the greatest potential threat to the United States and that the "Agreed Framework" struck by the Clinton administration was dangerously foolish in rewarding North Korea for its bad behavior. Ten years later, when Cheney met with top Chinese officials in Beijing, North Korea was his top priority. "Our concern is that time is not necessarily on our side, that North Korea may continue to use this technology to further develop their capabilities," Cheney told Jiang Zemin, according to two officials in the room. "One of the greatest threats we face is the proliferation of those technologies."

Cheney was right. Time was not on our side. And in the four years of diplomatic failure since those meetings, we have seen evidence of the dangers of proliferation. Yet in the 50-page brochure the White House just published--Highlights of Accomplishments and Results: The Administration of President George W. Bush, 2001-2009--we learn: "Through the Six-Party talks, the United States worked to secure a commitment from North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and its nuclear weapons program." That claim is literally true. The United States did work to secure such a commitment. But it failed. And in the process the Bush administration prostrated itself before a dictator whose rogue regime was not long ago considered evil.

I asked Cheney about it.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD: The administration is distributing a 50-page glossy blue brochure that you may have seen--

CHENEY: I know there's one around out there.

TWS:--listing accomplishments. And on page 40--I found this interesting--the accomplishment was: "Secured a commitment from North Korea to end its nuclear program."

Cheney did not need to hear the question. He dropped his chin to his chest, smiled broadly, and began shaking his head. "Is this an accomplishment that you celebrate?" I asked him.

Still looking at the floor, the vice president paused for several seconds before answering. He looked up and flashed a puckish grin.

CHENEY: I haven't read the report.

TWS: I assure you I'm quoting it accurately.

CHENEY: (laughing): I'm sure you are. I don't have any doubt about that. Well, I think I'm going to take a pass.

TWS: Let me ask it in a different way. Some of our common friends in recent days and weeks have called administration policy on North Korea "preemptive capitulation." Is that too strong a criticism?

CHENEY: Steve, you've put me in a difficult position here.

TWS: That's my job, that's my job.

CHENEY: That is your job. And I think--well, let me make a--without responding to that, let me make a statement on North Korea.

He stopped smiling.

CHENEY: I think the president has worked this one very hard, and properly so. But the Six-Party Talks constituted progress in the sense that we provided a mechanism by which you could get China actively involved, which is crucial because China has got more leverage over North Korea than anybody else. And--but we clearly have not achieved our objective with North Korea, primarily because the North Koreans have refused to keep the commitments they have made in connection with the negotiations that we've had--that they did not give us a full and complete disclosure of their nuclear program as they promised they would.

TWS: Did you expect that they would?

CHENEY: They tested a weapon, obviously, in '06. They have--they've failed to live up to the obligations that they agreed to in those earlier negotiations.

TWS: And yet we continue to provide concessions.

CHENEY: And they also built a reactor to produce plutonium and cerium. There's a major example of proliferation to a terrorist-sponsoring state. So, you know, we've worked very hard on North Korea, but we haven't solved the problem.

TWS: After all of those things--I think this is what I was getting at with my question--after all of those things--

CHENEY: I'm trying to avoid your question.

Cheney laughs.

TWS: Well, I'll try one more time.

CHENEY: All right.

TWS: After all of those things, we went to them and offered to take them off of the state sponsor of terror list, after they were caught red-handed building a reactor in Syria, which is, as we both know, a state sponsor of terror. Was it appropriate to go to them and say, hey, we'll take you off of this list, given the whole range of their activities that you just outlined?

CHENEY: Well--Lea Anne [Foster, the vice-presidential spokesman] is over there saying, what's he going to say? (Laughter.)

TWS: I'm just thinking of the history books here.

CHENEY: Yes. It's not a decision that I was enthusiastic about. I don't make those decisions. I've been involved, obviously, in that ongoing debate, but I think the North Koreans have not lived up to their obligations.

Cheney used similar language in discussing the Bush administration's efforts to prop up the U.S. automobile industry--"it's a decision the president made, and I work for the president"--and he is pessimistic about its future without dramatic change.

I do believe that the industry needs to undergo radical restructuring. And I don't think they're going to. I don't think they've got much prospect of being viable long-term until they do that, until they come to grips with the basic fundamental problems that are now built into their business, like for example, labor agreements and all those kinds of concerns.

Cheney said that the timing of the industry's trouble--coming in the midst of a major financial crisis and a global recession--left the administration with few options.

CHENEY: I think the package that the president came up with, which I supported, is about as good as you could do under the circumstances. And if you were in the beginning of an administration, or if you were operating on this issue at a time when we didn't have a major recession underway or a financial crisis in the markets, it might have been something else.

TWS: You'd just let them fail?

CHENEY: I'll leave it where it's at. I thought I stated it rather artfully.

The vice president is concerned that the Bush administration may have paved the way for a dramatic expansion of the federal government. "I worry a little bit that what we had to do in the financial area has provided cover for folks who want to vastly expand the size of the government. I think it's a problem," he says. "They've always wanted to do this, and now they think they've got a shot at it because they've got the House and the Senate and the White House, and a rationale." He adds: "They can say, 'well, you guys started it, but look what you did for the banks.' I think that's a poor analogy, but it might be a successful political argument."

Cheney is more optimistic about the long-term prospects for those Bush administration national security policies that have kept the country safe for more than seven years. He believes that the incoming president might quickly come to appreciate the value of the Terrorist Surveillance Program and the special interrogation program for high-value detainees--the two Cheney cites as most important.

CHENEY: I hope that what will happen is they sit down every day now and avail themselves of the same intelligence information the president and I have been looking at for eight years; that they will come to understand the enormous importance of continuing to collect that intelligence; and that they will resist the temptation to automatically take their campaign rhetoric and make that policy. Now, will they do that? I don't know.

TWS: Was the campaign rhetoric then something born of naïveté?

CHENEY: Absolutely--or, well, I can't say it was malicious; it was the stuff that a lot of Democrats and a lot of people in the press have hammered us with for years. And I think on the left wing of the Democratic party, there are some people who believe that we really tortured and--then in the course of the Democratic primary process, he rode that issue pretty hard.

He's now going to be President of the United States, and two weeks from today we swear him in. And it would be a tragedy if he let his policies be founded on nothing more than the rhetoric of his campaign. It's got to be based on knowledge and experience.

To that end, Cheney says he's heartened by Barack Obama's decision to retain Robert Gates. The vice president, who also said that Obama had assembled a "pretty good team" on national security, believes Gates will push the new president to continue the controversial programs.

I'm hopeful, for example, that his decision to keep a guy like Bob Gates means he's at least open-minded enough on these issues, to sit down and find out the facts, find out what we've really done, find out what we've learned from it, before he automatically closes down those operations, because there's--you know, as I say, if you believe, as I do, that those programs have been instrumental in keeping us safe, then the conclusion would be if you cancel those programs, you may well enhance the danger to the nation.

I asked Cheney for his thoughts on Obama's election. He recalled the racial tension in the country when he first arrived in Washington in 1968 and noted, with a bit of wonder, perhaps even emotion, in his voice:

Forty years later we're swearing in the first African-American president in our history. There are going to be millions of people down there on the Mall to celebrate. That's great and that's--talk about change.

But he went on,

I didn't support Barack Obama; I wouldn't vote for him. He and I have got pretty radically different views of the world. I'm a conservative Republican and nobody ever accused him of that.

Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (HarperCollins).

Changefest '09 maintains Obama's inaugural address was a new message, and in no way like any of Bush's speeches.

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U2 song is declaration of hope in face of adversity

Despite all of the hype, rockers fail to broaden horizons

A NEW lead single from U2, and the same old brouhaha.

The band have done much to talk up their forthcoming 12th studio album, 'No Line on the Horizon', and if you believe Bono and the Edge, they have rewritten the rulebook, torn up the template and turned the world on the axis.

The reality is a bit more mundane. The first taster from the album, 'Get on Your Boots', is unquestionably U2 -- but it's hardly the radically different U2 its members and associates have been promising us.

As usual, with a new U2 track, the first thing you notice is The Edge's guitar. It has always been the primary colour in the U2 spectrum, and that's certainly the case here.

It's meaty, aggressive and as heavy as any guitar part he has written.

It also boasts the sort of riffs to appeal to air-guitar aficionados everywhere.

The song benefits from a thunderous rhythm. It's quite conceivable that Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen swotted up on Led Zeppelin during the recording of the album.

Whatever their preparation, the pair are in fine form with Clayton's bass providing a strong undercurrent and Mullen's drumming giving the song a primal energy.

So far, so good. The lyrics don't stand up to the same sort of scrutiny, however.

In fact, Bono has rarely been on cheesier ground than the following verse which opens the song: "The future needs a big kiss/Winds blow with a twist/ Ever seen a moon like this/Can you see it too?"

Nonsensical

Other lines are similarly vague -- and nonsensical: "Night is falling everywhere/Rockets hit the fun fair/Satan loves the bomb scare/But he won't scare you." Quite what the refrain -- "Sexy boots -- get your boots on" -- has to do with images of rockets and the devil is anyone's guess.

Perhaps the band fused two songs together -- as has been their wont in the past. Or maybe, they used the cut-and-paste technique that their long-term producer Brian Eno devised -- with a little help from David Bowie -- in the 1970s.

Either way, lovers of the beautifully penned lyric will have to look elsewhere. Bono's debut column for the 'New York Times' displayed a much better facility with words. But then, the three-and-a-half minute song brings different demands.

This being Bono, he sings his words with conviction.

His urgent delivery suits the song's frantic tempo and in the final third he spits out his words in a staccato rap.

The final part of the song will remind many of their 'Achtung Baby/Zooropa' days -- and it works quite well.

Compared to strong opening tracks from previous albums, 'Get On Your Boots' falls some way short.

It isn't in the same league as previous lead singles such as 'Vertigo' from 'How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb', 'Discotheque' from 'Pop', or 'New Year's Day' from 'War'.

Still, if the euphoric online response to the song is anything to go by, the "four boys from the northside of Dublin", as Bono put it during Sunday's concert for Barack Obama, should have nothing to fear.

The single will be released as a digital download on February 15. The album is available in Ireland from Friday, February 27.

'No Line on the Horizon' is their first studio album since November 2004's 'How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb', and Universal Records' executives will be hoping it can match that album's nine million sales.

Worldwide Radio Goes Wild For New U2

U2

U2's new single, "Get on Your Boots," scored massive audience numbers throughout Europe and the United Kingdom on its debut day of radio airplay yesterday (Jan. 19), according to Nielsen Music Control.

Arriving on the second day of the airplay-monitoring week, the new single shot straight to No. 1 on Ireland's airplay chart and No. 4 in the U.K., with total audiences of two million and 12.5 million respectively.

The song also fared well in Germany (78 million), Italy (11 million) and Austria (10 million), despite arriving near the end of the European monitoring week. Belgium and Holland showed a promising start with respective audiences of 3.5 and 2.6 million.

In the United States, "Boots" received 529 total spins, according to Nielsen BDS. KYSR-Los Angeles played it 24 times, while KENZ-Salt Lake City was second with 18.

"Get on Your Boots" was unveiled simultaneously around the world at 8:15 a.m. GMT yesterday. Originally U2 had announced the song would not be available digitally until Feb. 15, but it went live yesterday via Apple's iTunes Music Store in the United States.

Bush Welcome Home Speech

George W. Bush

After Barack Obama's inauugration, former President Bush returned to Texas. He spoke to supporters after arriving in Midland, Texas. Here is a portion of his remarks.

Midland, Texas

GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want to thank the governor and the attorney general for joining us today and all the state officials. I thank Representative Tom Craddick for joining us and Nadine. I thank the mighty congressman from this district, Michael Conaway, for flying down from Washington.

I thank my friend, the Gatlin Boys, West Texas raised. Rodney Atkins. I appreciate Rodney coming, and Lee Greenwood. It's awfully kind of these entertainers to come and keep you busy while we were winging our way home.

Today was a great day for America, and a good man took the oath of office and we all offer our prayers for his success.

(APPLAUSE)

Today's also a great day for the Bush family. We are back in the state of Texas, and we are here to stay.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, I tell people the days have been long, but the years are short. It just seemed like yesterday that you honored us with a sendoff from this plaza to Washington, D.C. What has changed is the weather.

That day, I said that Laura and I were on a great journey, and now we're back. And what a trip it has been. We saw some of the most trying days in America's history, and some of the very best of our citizens.

This guy who went to Sam Houston Elementary School spent the night in Buckingham Palace.

(APPLAUSE) This (inaudible) product got to go all over the world with this Lee High School graduate.

(APPLAUSE)

We came face to face with kings, presidents, popes, and a son-in- law.

(APPLAUSE)

The presidency was a joyous experience, but as great as it was, nothing compares with Texas' sunset. And so tonight, I have the privilege of saying six words that I have been waiting to say for a while, "It is good to be home."

(APPLAUSE)

Being in Midland brings back a lot of memories. Over on Ohio Street there was picked out more than a half century ago a little house that was bought by George and Barbara Bush. It is incredible to think that that little house on Ohio Street was the home to two presidents of the United States and a governor of the state of Florida.

(APPLAUSE)

They told me the house is becoming a boyhood museum, a George W. Bush boyhood home. I've never quite figured why they didn't call it the George H. W. Bush home that George W. got to live in.

But mother, who just left us, along with dad--they're heading west--they were in Washington today for the inauguration and flew down on the airplane with us, she said when she heard about the museum, "You better go clean your room."

(APPLAUSE)

I will always be grateful for the unconditional love of my parents. There is no doubt that that unconditional love gave me the, I guess you would say "courage," to run for president of the United States. And to my mother and my father, I can't tell you how much I love you.

(APPLAUSE)

And Midland is also the site of the most important meeting of my life, far more meaningful than any meeting in the oval office. That happened in O'Neill's backyard at a barbecue, where I met a hometown girl named Laura Welch. I fell in love with her that day. I convinced her to marry me a couple of months later, and I have felt blessed ever since.

(APPLAUSE)

She filled the White House with warmth and my life with joy, and history will show that she was a fabulous first lady.

(APPLAUSE)

I had a lot of other sources of strength during my eight years. I am blessed with a great family. Little Barbara is traveling with us today, and little Jenna, they brought such joy and happiness to the White House, and I love them dearly as well.

(APPLAUSE)

My brothers and sisters--all three of my brothers were born here in Midland, Texas, by the way, and they were great pals during this experience.

I was blessed with a fantastic administration. I want to thank my friend Dick Cheney, who was a great vice president.

(APPLAUSE)

And those who served in my cabinet, some of whom honored me by flying down on the airplane today--Margaret Spelling, Secretary of Education, Alberto Gonzalez, Attorney General.

(APPLAUSE)

I want to thank a fabulous staff of people. I was truly blessed to have people work with me, people who came to Washington, D.C. not to serve George Bush, not to serve a political party, but they came because they wanted to serve the United States of America, and they did a fabulous job, and I will be forever grateful.

(APPLAUSE)

I am grateful to the prayers of the American people. I have been sustained and strengthened and comforted by an almighty god during eight years as your president.

(APPLAUSE)

And I was just saying to my buddies and my friends. A tell people all the time the great things about my Texas friends, that they were friends before politics, they were friends during politics, they will be my friends after politics, and most of them didn't care what happened during politics!

(APPLAUSE)

It brought us a lot of comfort to know we had support from people in a place we call home. It really did.

As a reminder of my feelings toward my friends, people I grew up with, I had four paintings in the oval office of the great state of Texas. They were there from day one. And the message was clear -- Laura and I may have left Texas, but Texas never left us. And we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

(APPLAUSE)

The values that Laura and I learned here in west Texas have guided us throughout our time and have guided us during our time in Washington. This is the place where people treat each other with decency and respect, where neighbors look out for neighbors, and where character counts an awful lot.

West Texas is a place of tremendous optimism, and you got to know that even during some of the most difficult days of my presidency, I was always optimistic about our future. I had great faith in the American people, and faith in some fundamental truths.

Every day, I followed a set of clear principles, principles that I learned from my family and principles I learned from growing up out here in west Texas and throughout this state.

Individuals must be responsible for the actions they take in life. Our nation thrives when government and trusts people with decision about their own decisions and their own lives.

The strong have an obligation to defend the weak. Freedom is a universal gift of an almighty god, and America should use its influence to be a force for good in the world.

Through it all, I stayed true to those convictions.

And we took on big issues. I always felt it was important to tackle the tough issues today and not try to pass them on to future presidents and future generations.

(APPLAUSE)

It never took an opinion poll to tell me what to think.

(APPLAUSE)

And I'm coming home with my head held high and a sense of accomplishment.

(APPLAUSE)

We lifted standards and achievements in public schools and the achievement gap between white student and minority students is closing for the good of the United States of America. Seniors now have a prescription drug benefit in Medicare.

We cut taxes for everybody who pays taxes in the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

We empowered armies of compassion to help citizens all across our country. We saved millions from HIV-AIDS and malaria. We appointed good judges like am Sam Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

(APPLAUSE)

And after our nation was attacked on September 11, 2001, a day that changed me forever, we took the fight to the terrorists around the world. We removed threatening regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and liberated 50 million people from the clutches of terrorism.

(APPLAUSE)

We worked to extend freedom and human liberty as the alternatives to tyranny and terror. No matter whether or not you agree with my decisions or not, one thing you have to agree with is that we have not been attacked in the last seven years.

(APPLAUSE)

This is a tribute to all who toil day and night to keep us safe, especially the men and women who wear our nation's uniform.

(APPLAUSE)

I can't tell you how great it has been to stand before our troops an meet their families, or to go to Walter Reed and have a soldier look you in the face and say "Mr. President, I would do it all over again. Let me get healed so I can go back and defend the United States of America."

(APPLAUSE)

There is nothing I will miss more than being the commander in chief of such an unbelievable group of men and women.

(APPLAUSE)

There were some good days, and there were some tough days. But every day it was an honor to be your president. I gave it my all. Listen- -sometimes what I did wasn't popular. But that's OK. I always did what I thought was right.

(APPLAUSE)

In my last commencement speech as the president, I went to Texas A&M University.

(APPLAUSE)

I said popularity is as fleeting as the Texas wind. Character and conscience are as sturdy as our oaks. History will be the judge of my decisions, but when I walked out of the Oval Office this morning, I left with the same values that I took to Washington eight years ago.

(APPLAUSE)

And when I get home tonight and look in the mirror, I am not going to regret what I see--except maybe some gray hair.

And now that we're back home, we have a few things to figure out, like what exactly we're going to do.

Fortunately, we got a place to live. I delegated that decision to Laura. She bought a fine place in Dallas, I think. I haven't seen it yet.

You might call that the first faith-based initiative of the post- presidency.

(LAUGHTER)

But to help me come up with ideas, I have been learning about what my predecessors have done after leaving office. Theodore Roosevelt took a safari to Africa and explored the Amazon. Dwight Eisenhower learned to place his own phone calls. And president number 41 decided he was going to jump out of an airplane -- twice.

My dad is America's only skydiving former president, and that's a title he's going to keep.

(LAUGHTER)

Tomorrow I'm planning on having a relaxing morning in Crawford.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You deserve it!

BUSH: I'm going to get up, and I'm going to make Laura coffee, skim the newspaper, call some friends, read a book, feed the dogs, go fishing, and take a walk.

By that time, I figure it will be eight in the morning. That's what happens when you're a Type A personality.

(LAUGHTER)

I told Laura I was excited about her cooking again -- kind of. She told me she was excited about me mowing the lawn and taking out the trash. It's my new domestic agenda.

(LAUGHTER)

We're going to spend some time catching up with our family. I want you to hear something interesting. I'm the first former president to be able to share the post-presidency with both my parents.

(APPLAUSE)

And I'm going to take advantage of every minute of it.

(APPLAUSE)

I've got some bigger ideas. I plan on keeping busy, and so does Laura. We may be retired, but we're not tired out.

I'm going to write a book. I want people to be able to understand what it was like in the Oval Office when I had to make some of the tough decisions that I was called upon to make.

History tends to take a little time for people to remember what happened and to have an objective accounting of what took place, and I would like to be a part of making that real history of this administration come to life.

(APPLAUSE)

I might even give a few speeches.

They are going to put a presidential center at Laura's alma mater, Southern Methodist University in Dallas. It is going to be a policy institute, a place to promote the ideals of freedom and personal responsibility.

You know, there hadn't been one of these places built in the heartland of America, and I'm glad to be putting mine right here in Texas.

(APPLAUSE)

I want you to know that I will forever be optimistic about our country. You see, I was privileged, privileged to see the character and the courage of the American people. You'd be amazed to see what I have seen.

You know, I will never forget going to a little town in Kansas that got destroyed by a tornado. And these people said "nothing's going to keep us down." I went back a year later to give a high school graduation speech, and these folks picked themselves up and rebuilt their community.

I told a story the other night when I gave my farewell address in the East Room of the White House about a guy I met named Bill Christoff (ph). I will share it right quick if you didn't hear the story.

One of the things I did was spend time meeting with the families of the fallen. I want you to know that the comforter in chief was always the person who got comforted in those meetings. The strength of the families of our troops is just unbelievable. They love of their children were great.

Thank You President Bush

Much in Obama stimulus bill won't hit economy soon

WASHINGTON (AP) — It will take years before an infrastructure spending program proposed by President-elect Barack Obama will boost the economy, according to congressional economists.

The findings, released to lawmakers Sunday, call into question the effectiveness of congressional Democrats' efforts to pump up the economy through old-fashioned public works projects like roads, bridges and repairs of public housing.

Less than half of the $30 billion in highway construction funds detailed by House Democrats would be released into the economy over the next four years, concludes the analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. Less than $4 billion in highway construction money would reach the economy by September 2010.

The economy has been in recession for more than a year, but many economists believe a recovery may begin by the end of 2009. That would mean that most of the infrastructure money wouldn't hit the economy until it's already on the mend.

The CBO analysis doesn't cover tax cuts or efforts by Democrats to provide relief to cash-strapped state governments to help with their Medicaid bills. But it illustrates just how difficult it can be to use public investment to rush money into the economy. It usually takes bids and contracts to announce such developments, which invariably take time.

Overall, only $26 billion out of $274 billion in infrastructure spending would be delivered into the economy by the Sept. 30 end of the budget year, just 7 percent. Just one in seven dollars of a huge $18.5 billion investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy programs would be spent within a year and a half.

And other pieces, such as efforts to bring broadband Internet service to rural and underserved areas won't get started in earnest for years, while just one-fourth of clean drinking water projects can be completed by October of next year.

Still, other elements of Obama's $825 billion economic recovery plan, such as $275 billion worth of tax cuts to 95 percent of filers and a huge infusion of help for state governments, will be distributed into the economy more quickly. But Republicans are poised to attack the bill for spending too much.

The Obama transition has stressed that a combination of old and new federal investments will help the economy recover, as well as tax cuts and other steps. Obama economic advisers and their allies on Capitol Hill have sought to identify federal programs that can deliver dollars fast, like food stamps and a boost in unemployment benefits.

At the same time, defenders of brick-and-mortar projects such as federal building and school construction are poised to reap benefits from the big recovery package.

Looking Back

After September 11, George W. Bush rightly conceived of his as a war presidency. We are now in a stronger position vis-à-vis our enemies than we were when he took office. Then they were gathering force. Now they are on the run. No further attacks on our soil have been made. We cannot say for sure whether we would have been as safe under another president, and we can point to Bush policies that contributed to our safety.

Bush’s decision to oust the Baathist regime in Iraq was the most controversial of his tenure and is now the most widely condemned. But Iraq now has a fighting chance to become a stable country that poses no threat to its neighbors or to us, and even an ally. If that happy prospect materializes, Bush will deserve credit for a major strategic advance. The cost has been dear: dearer than it would have been if Bush had changed his strategy in Iraq earlier, and that consideration too must be weighed in judging his record. He has nonetheless shown far better judgment and character than a political establishment that largely approved the initial invasion of Iraq and then sought to abandon it to terrorists.

Bush’s other foreign accomplishments include the disarming of Libya and the substantial strengthening of ties with India. Afghanistan is not as safe a haven for terrorists as it was at the start of Bush’s presidency, although we have much work left to do there and in Pakistan. Our capacity to defend ourselves from missiles has grown, and our military is—belatedly—growing. On the negative side of the ledger, Bush leaves unfinished and messy business in Iran and North Korea. China has grown richer without growing more pacific. Russia has backslid, as has Latin America.

We often disagreed with Bush on domestic policy, opposing him on education, immigration, spending, and much else. Even where we agreed on policy, we sometimes disagreed on strategy, as on Social Security. He leaves behind a government that has, since 2000, grown larger without being much reformed. He also leaves behind a tax code that is significantly more conducive to long-term growth than the one he found—if, that is, his most important tax cuts stay for the long term (see previous sentence).

Other than tax cuts, Bush’s chief contribution to the economy has come from blocking bad policies such as energy rationing. His administration pursued a short-sighted and inflationary weak-dollar policy. Bush recognized some of the danger that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac posed to the economy but failed to act forcefully enough; he led both parties in encouraging the credit-unworthy to become “homeowners,” with disastrous results.

Bush’s judicial appointments were stellar. John Roberts and Samuel Alito have already done a lot of good at the Supreme Court, and we hope they will continue to do so for decades. Bush at least ties with Ronald Reagan as the modern president most committed to the sanctity of human life—and on stem cells Bush faced more political pressure than Reagan ever did.

Liberals, including historians who ought to know better, have said that Bush might be the country’s worst president ever. That judgment reflects the partisan hysteria that gripped liberals throughout the Bush years. We would place him in the middle ranks of American presidents. It is a pity he did not do better; we are about to do worse.

Bush's Real Sin Was Winning in Iraq

In a few hours, George W. Bush will walk out of the Oval Office for the last time as president. As he leaves, he carries with him the near-universal opprobrium of the permanent class that inhabits our nation's capital. Yet perhaps the most important reason for this unpopularity is the one least commented on.

AP

Here's a hint: It's not because of his failures. To the contrary, Mr. Bush's disfavor in Washington owes more to his greatest success. Simply put, there are those who will never forgive Mr. Bush for not losing a war they had all declared unwinnable.

Here in the afterglow of the turnaround led by Gen. David Petraeus, it's easy to forget what the smart set was saying two years ago -- and how categorical they all were in their certainty. The president was a simpleton, it was agreed. Didn't he know that Iraq was a civil war, and the only answer was to get out as fast as we could?

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- the man who will be sworn in as vice president today -- didn't limit himself to his own opinion. Days before the president announced the surge, Joe Biden suggested to the Washington Post he knew the president's people had also concluded the war was lost. They were, he said, just trying to "keep it from totally collapsing" until they could "hand it off to the next guy."

For his part, on the night Mr. Bush announced the surge, Barack Obama said he was "not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq are going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse."

Three months after that, before the surge had even started, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pronounced the war in Iraq "lost." These and similar comments, moreover, were amplified by a media echo chamber even more absolute in its sense of hopelessness about Iraq and its contempt for the president.

For many of these critics, the template for understanding Iraq was Vietnam -- especially after things started to get tough. In terms of the wars themselves, of course, there is almost no parallel between Vietnam and Iraq: The enemies are different, the fighting on the ground is different, the involvement of other powers is different, and so on.

Still, the operating metaphor of Vietnam has never been military. For the most part, it is political. And in this realm, we saw history repeat itself: a failure of nerve among the same class that endorsed the original action.

As with Vietnam, with Iraq the failure of nerve was most clear in Congress. For example, of the five active Democratic senators who sought the nomination, four voted in favor of the Iraqi intervention before discovering their antiwar selves.

As in Vietnam too, rather than finding their judgment questioned, those who flip-flopped on the war were held up as voices of reason. In a memorable editorial advocating a pullout, the New York Times gave voice to the chilling possibilities that this new realism was willing to accept in the name of bringing our soldiers home.

"Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave," read the editorial. "There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide." Even genocide. With no hint of irony, the Times nevertheless went on to conclude that it would be even worse if we stayed.

This is Vietnam thinking. And the president never accepted it. That was why his critics went ape when, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he touched on the killing fields and exodus of boat people that followed America's humiliating exit off an embassy rooftop. As the Weekly Standard's Matthew Continetti noted, Mr. Bush had appropriated one of their most cherished analogies -- only he drew very different lessons from it.

Mr. Bush's success in Iraq is equally infuriating, because it showed he was right and they wrong. Many in Washington have not yet admitted that, even to themselves. Mr. Obama has. We know he has because he has elected to keep Mr. Bush's secretary of defense -- not something you do with a failure.

Mr. Obama seems aware that, at the end of the day, he will not be judged by his predecessor's approval ratings. Instead, he will soon find himself under pressure to measure up to two Bush achievements: a strategic victory in Iraq, and the prevention of another attack on America's home soil. As he rises to this challenge, our new president will learn that when you make a mistake, the keepers of the Beltway's received orthodoxies will make you pay dearly.

But it will not even be close to the price you pay for ignoring their advice and succeeding.

Write to MainStreet@wsj.com

History Will Remember Bush Well

In August 1951, with a little more than a year left to Harry S. Truman's presidency, historian Henry Steele Commager published an essay in Look magazine with this prediction: "By all normal standards, [Truman's] Administration has been one of almost . . . unparalleled success . . . the verdict of history will not be the same as the verdict of contemporary critics."

At the time, Truman's popularity hovered in the low 20s and most Americans considered his presidency a failure. Look's editors even published a note declaring "doubts" about "whether history will accord Harry S. Truman as generous a place as Professor Commager assigns him." History eventually sided with Commager.

Today, President George W. Bush leaves office with approval ratings only slightly higher than Truman's. And I will make this prediction: The verdict of history on the Bush presidency will not be the same as the verdict of contemporary critics.

While Mr. Bush made mistakes during his time in office, like Truman he racked up a record of unparalleled success that will be increasingly appreciated in the years to come.

Like Truman at the start of the Cold War, Mr. Bush set our nation's course at the start of a new and unprecedented war. And like Truman, he responded by laying out a clear doctrine to guide America through the conflict. Mr. Bush created the institutions necessary to prevail in this struggle. He created the Department of Homeland Security and a new director of national intelligence. He transformed the FBI and the Justice Department to fight terror. He established new military commands. And he transformed NATO from a defensive alliance into an expeditionary alliance that is now leading the fight in Afghanistan.

Mr. Bush signed the Patriot Act, breaking down the walls between intelligence and law enforcement. He created a terrorist surveillance program. He directed the CIA to detain and question captured terrorist leaders. He drove al Qaeda from its Afghan sanctuary and put America on the offensive. As a result, more than seven years have passed since 9/11 without another attack on our soil. That's an achievement few thought possible when the rubble of the World Trade Center was still burning.

Like Truman in Korea, Mr. Bush imperfectly fought an unpopular war in Iraq. Yet just as most Americans now see our success in Korea as essential to our victory in the Cold War, it will one day be clear that our success in Iraq was essential to our victory in the war on terror. And the success Mr. Bush delivered in Iraq is far more complete than the stalemate that endures on the Korean Peninsula.

As Mr. Bush leaves office, Iraq is a unified and free country, and our enemies there have suffered a devastating defeat. If his successor does not squander that victory, a free Iraq will one day be to the Middle East what a free South Korea has been to Asia.

Like Truman, Mr. Bush made a first, failed attempt to solve difficult domestic challenges. Truman failed to get Congress to approve national health insurance for the elderly. But two decades later, President Lyndon Johnson invited Truman to join him as he signed legislation creating Medicare.

Similarly, Mr. Bush failed to get Congress to pass immigration and Social Security reforms. But years from now, Congress will have to act on these issues. When it does, I predict a future president will invite Mr. Bush to watch as the reforms are signed into law.

When President Truman left office, his fellow liberals blamed him for handing the White House to the Republicans. Today, Truman is a liberal icon.

Similarly, many conservatives who are angry with Mr. Bush today will take a better view of his presidency with the passage of time. While he took actions that dispirited some conservatives -- from bailing out the auto industry to taking North Korea off of the list of state sponsors of terror -- Mr. Bush did more to advance conservative priorities than any other president.

Mr. Bush enacted sweeping tax cuts. And he has the best record on judges of any Republican president -- his appointments of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito will be judged favorably over time compared to Justices Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, David Souter and John Paul Stevens (all put on the high court by Republican presidents). Mr. Bush enacted free-trade agreements with 17 nations, more than any president in history. He created Health Savings Accounts -- the most important free-market health-care reform in a generation. And he defeated Democratic efforts to use the State Children's Health Insurance Program (Schip) to nationalize health care.

Mr. Bush won a Supreme Court ruling declaring school vouchers constitutional and enacted the nation's first school-choice program in the District of Columbia. He has been the most pro-life president in history, securing passage of the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, and the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. He refused to fund the destruction of human embryos for research -- and was vindicated by the scientific breakthroughs that followed.

Mr. Bush increased defense spending by nearly 73%, the largest increase since the Truman administration. He unsigned the International Criminal Court treaty, withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and fulfilled Ronald Reagan's promise to deploy defenses against ballistic missiles. This is a conservative record without parallel.

In his final months, Mr. Bush confronted a challenge Truman never faced -- a massive financial crisis. It is hard for many Americans to appreciate the magnitude of the economic collapse the president averted. But history will show that Mr. Bush's actions in the fall of 2008 rescued our economy and saved our financial system.

Mr. Bush often told his staff that a president's job is not to chase popularity, but to do what is right. His insistence in following this philosophy is why he has low approval ratings, and why he has been a great president. Mr. Bush has led a history-making presidency and, like Truman, history will be kinder to our 43rd president than the polls indicate as he leaves office.

Mr. Thiessen was chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

Farewell, Mr. President: Bush did what he thought was right—and on the biggest issues, what was right.

As George W. Bush prepares to leaves the White House after eight misunderestimated years, National Review Online asked a group of experts in policy and politics to assess his presidency.


JAY NORDLINGER
I appreciate President Bush for many things. He took great care with the issue of stem-cell research. He was steadfast on “life issues” in general. He withdrew the U.S. from the ABM Treaty, allowing for greater progress on missile defense (vitally important).

He chose Dick Cheney as his running mate, and he became vice president. He made some staffing mistakes, Bush did, but he also named some excellent people who were thought to be “untouchable,” because of their “hard-line” stances. I think particularly of Elliott Abrams, Otto Reich, and John Bolton. Two of those men required Senate confirmation. They didn’t get it, blocked by Democrats. Bush gave them recess appointments.

He defeated two men who would have been lamentable in the Oval Office: Al Gore and John Kerry.

In 2000, he grabbed “the third rail of American politics,” running on Social Security reform. He did so again four years later. He tried for this reform, but the country was not ready. It will be someday, when it has no choice. Bush tried to solve another big, stubborn issue: immigration. I was on the other side from him (i.e., I was anti-amnesty), but I admired his willingness to tackle the problem, rather than have it shoved under the rug for another chunk of years.

He nominated excellent judges, including his two on the Supreme Court. He was widely derided for his nomination of Harriet Miers (later withdrawn). He still insists she would have been an excellent justice. Who knows?

He looked the central evil of our time, Islamofascism, in the eye—and did not flinch. He knew we had to go beyond law enforcement and intelligence gathering: that we had to pursue what amounted to another cold war (which, as with the first, would of course include some hot ones). He removed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, effacing two of the worst dictatorships known to man.

And he did what was necessary in the area of “homeland security,” as it came to be called.

He was a friend of Israel, a nation that is virtually friendless, and that deserves friends. He realized that Arafat was a liar and a terrorist—and Arafat had been the most frequent foreign visitor to the White House during the previous eight years. He thought enough of Arabs and Muslims to think that even they deserved freedom and justice, instead of tyranny.

He was a friend to Cubans, who are often friendless—Cubans and Cuban Americans have called him “the first Cuban president”—and he did not forget Chinese political prisoners, even as he dealt with Beijing, as all presidents do.

He showed immense personal charm, ease, and sympathy. When talking to a New Orleanian who had fled to Utah after Hurricane Katrina, he said, “Were you the only black man in Salt Lake City?” When a citizen flipped him the middle finger, he turned to the man sitting next to him and said, “Not a fan.”

He took a tremendous amount of abuse, particularly from elite opinion, and did not buckle. Neither did he lash out. He showed tremendous personal grace, as during the recent shoe-throwing incident in Iraq. He could be a real cool cat, this president. He has his faults, as everyone knows: They have been well gone over. But what has not been well gone over is that he is kind, decent, honest, principled, devout—and full of love.

I’m very glad he was president.

— Jay Nordlinger is a senior editor of National Review and the author of Here, There & Everywhere.



ANDREW BREITBART
The demonization of President George W. Bush was a fait accompli before he was even inaugurated. The rage and hatred against Bush developed before his election and before his political enemies got to know him. The Democratic party facing the 2000 election was not just determined to get Democrats elected. It was also determined to rehabilitate the newly impeached Bill Clinton and to help create Hillary Clinton’s future. Part of the mandate was to send the message to Republicans that the Democrats could do to “their guy” what the Republicans had done to theirs—but on a much larger scale, with the majority of the media in tow. Given the circumstances of 9/11, one would think Americans would pull together in these trying times. But each election cycle the Democrats kept doubling down on the hate, and in 2006 they finally got their wish. They were now in power again. Still, their demand to pull out of Iraq was a weak cry. Because they know we won. Because they know Bush was right on the big issue of our time.

I felt Chris Matthews–like tingles throughout my body at every White House Correspondents’ Dinner as I witnessed Bush at the podium. I was always proud to have him as my president. And I believe honest historians will help redeem his artificially tainted image.

— Andrew Breitbart is the founder of Big Hollywood and Breitbart.com.


PETE HOEKSTRA
On September 11, 2001, just eight months into George W. Bush’s presidency, the United States of America witnessed the deadliest attack on its soil it had ever experienced from a foreign aggressor—in this case, radical jihadists. In the days and weeks following, Americans awoke every day to open their newspapers and turn on their televisions believing another attack was imminent. The policies of President Bush, however, prevented such an attack from occurring throughout his remaining time as commander-in-chief.

He helped to make America and the world better by advancing the cause of liberty and human rights. America liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban, removed a murderous dictator in Iraq, severely weakened terrorist organizations, and convinced a once very dangerous enemy in Libya to dismantle its nuclear-weapons program.

President Bush demonstrated the character and patriotism that define a true American leader despite unrelenting partisan criticism over his decisions.

I offer sincere thanks to the president for his ability to protect America as it faced and continues to face one of the gravest threats in history. A grateful nation wishes him well in his retirement and future endeavors.

— Pete Hoekstra is a Republican congressman from Michigan.


ROGER KIMBALL
When the United States was attacked by al-Qaeda on 9/11, every expert in Alpha Centauri solemnly announced that it was only a matter of time—and not much time, either—before the United States was attacked again. Well, here we are some seven and a half years later and, guess what, it hasn’t happened. I know people—you see what low company I keep—who will tell you with a straight face that President Bush had nothing to do with this run of good luck. “Post hoc,” they sniff, “doesn’t necessarily mean propter hoc, and if America has thus far escaped another terrorist attack, there is no reason to think that W had anything to do with it.” No sane person, I submit, really believes that. Deep down, we all know that the reason the United States has not suffered another terrorist attack is the policies formulated by the president in the aftermath of 9/11. Protecting the country from external enemies is the number-one priority of the commander-in-chief. It is for his tireless pursuit of that task that I am eternally grateful to George W. Bush. Thank you.

— Roger Kimball is editor of The New Criterion.

YUVAL LEVIN
At a meeting in May of 2005, President Bush, almost in passing, said to the assembled White House staffers that when historians look back at this period in our history, the two challenges that will stand out are the defense of America in the war on terror and the defense of human dignity in the age of biotechnology.


I am very grateful to George W. Bush for grasping these challenges and for acting on them. Awakened to the first by the attacks of September 11, 2001, he acted to keep America safe and weaken fundamentalist Muslim extremism—preventing further terrorist attacks at home, and replacing two state sponsors of terrorism with emerging if surely still struggling democracies. Awakened to the second by the controversy over embryonic-stem-cell research, he acted to demonstrate that science and ethics are not mutually exclusive, but could be championed together in a way that demonstrated our commitment to the value of every human life.

In both cases, his accomplishments could easily be reversed by his successor. But in both cases, President Bush offered an example of determined leadership in defense of American ideals—an example that we can only hope future presidents may follow.

— Yuval Levin is the Hertog fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and senior editor of The New Atlantis.


HEATHER MAC DONALD
President Bush ignored the usual diversity mandates and added two stellar jurists to the Supreme Court (only, however, after his preposterous attempt to put Harriet Miers on the bench failed). The Pentagon began a brilliant research project to mine commercial data bases for intelligence on terrorist activity; we can only hope that after the Senate killed the project, its component parts continued simmering on some back burner waiting for a Democratic president to revitalize the research. The National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities added to the nation’s store of beauty and learning, sending American opera singers to serenade military bases and schools, and putting the nation’s historical documents and literary works online. Bowing to the popular will, President Bush began enforcing the immigration laws for the first time in decades, thus providing indisputable empirical backing for the claim that immigration enforcement works—employers cut back on their use of illegal aliens, and illegal flows into the country dropped. Notwithstanding our current credit crisis, American technological innovation and entrepreneurship thrived during the last decade, aided in part by a saner regulatory and tax environment.

— Heather Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and co-author of The Immigration Solution.


WILLIAM MCGURN
As President Bush flies home to Texas today on an aircraft that will no longer carry the designation Air Force One, the commentaries and epitaphs and thumbsuckers will dwell on the low approval ratings that accompany his exit. At the same time, among those of us who served him, there is a palpable sense of gratitude. And there is a connection between the two.

Whatever his faults or his policy failures in other areas, George W. Bush promised in the wake of September 11, 2001, that he would do everything in his power to protect the American people from another attack. That he did, against all odds and all expectations. I went to Washington in 2005 never having served in government, and only because our nation was at war. My view was then and is now: If we fail in Iraq, nothing else will matter.

The president did not fail in Iraq. We are safer for it, and we are stronger for the fight ahead.

So on this bittersweet day, I give thanks for the president’s courage. I am forever indebted to him for the way he always made my wife and children feel special. Most of all, and this may be something that only the Irish can appreciate, I am grateful for having had the chance to be at his side when things were at their absolute worst—because it allowed me to see up close the rarest of political leaders: a man who chose what he believed right no matter how hard or what the cost to his approval ratings.

— William McGurn, formerly the chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush, is an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal.


DAVID B. RIVKIN JR.
George W. Bush’s greatest accomplishment is his recognition that the U.S. was at war with a ruthless and unlawful foe—al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups—and his resolute prosecution of this war. These are remarkable accomplishments, coming at a time when virtually all of our traditional allies have ceased to treat war as a legitimate tool of statecraft, with a distinctive legal architecture, and have evidenced a particular disinclination to respond vigorously to unlawful forms of combat by non-state entities.

Bush properly treated the 9/11 attacks as an enemy salvo in a legally cognizable armed conflict, and not a mere terrorist act, to be handled through law-enforcement techniques. Accordingly, he has deployed the traditional war-grounded legal paradigm in dealing with such issues as the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of captured unlawful enemy combatants, and the gathering of war-related intelligence.

He also grasped that this was a global war, to be waged in many theaters, and not just in Afghanistan. Last, but not least, he should be lauded for his willingness to buck the powerful political and bureaucratic winds and, instead of giving up, to change the strategy in Iraq. These are all the hallmarks of a strong and courageous wartime leader, who put the security of the American people above all else.

— David B. Rivkin Jr. is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of the law firm of Baker & Hostetler LLP and is a member of the U.N. Subcommittee on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. He served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.


GEORGE WEIGEL
I am of course most grateful to President Bush for his defense of America and for his defense of life, but as others will likely focus on those matters, let me try a different tack.

It probably didn’t help him in one of the weakest aspects of his presidency—namely, the use of the bully pulpit—but I am grateful to President Bush for ignoring the rants and raves of the establishment press (and a few uncomprehending National Review contributors who shall remain nameless), while persistently doing what he had determined was the right thing to do. It is simply pathetic to watch E. J. Dionne and other victims of Bush Derangement Syndrome miss this part of the man’s character to the bitter end. After the triangulation of the Clinton years, after 9/11, and in the face of the biotech challenge, America badly needed a president who didn’t govern by focus groups and polls. That so many people resented this says, I fear, more about our political culture than it does about George W. Bush.

— George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.