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.

U2's Rather Brilliant If Grammatically Questionable Single, Get On Your Boots

U2's new single: Is 'Get on Your Boots' any good?

Over the past 20 years, U2's lead-off singles have been an odd lot. There's been one flat-out pop masterpiece, "Beautiful Day." There's been one total miss, "Discotheque." There have been a couple of curiosities that worked on their albums but made for odd first-single picks ("The Fly" and "Numb"). And then there was "Vertigo," the so-so riff-fest that launched their last album, How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

So it was with somewhat low expectations that I sat down to check out their newest single, "Get on Your Boots," the first track from the upcoming album No Line on the Horizon. (You can hear the song here.) Sure enough, things start unpromisingly: a generic heavy metal guitar riff quickly gives way to a shameless rip-off of "Subterranean Homesick Blues," with Bono chanting about "love and community" and "candy floss ice cream."

But just as I was about to shut down the computer and go back to the amazing new Animal Collective album (see Leah Greenblatt's review), a funny thing happened: the bridge kicked in, and "Boots" suddenly took off. A wash of vocal harmony sets things up nicely, and then Bono comes soaring in, insisting (to whom? who knows?) that "you don't know/you don't get it do you/you don't know how beautiful you are." It's one of those great U2 moments, the kind of thing that has kept fans on board for more than 30 years now. The song then takes a few more twists and turns, eventually landing back on that original guitar riff, which, by the end of the song, has gone from annoying to insistent and memorable (somehow the "get on your boots" chorus that lays on top totally transforms it).

After just a few listens, "Get on Your Boots" doesn't seem like one of U2's all-time great songs, but it's still interesting -- and different -- enough to make me pretty excited to hear the whole album.

Why I'm not sorry that George W. Bush beat Al Gore and John Kerry.

Yes, yes, I was on the downtown streets of Washington bright and early, mingling with the bright-eyed and the wide-eyed. Yes, by all means I was there on the Mall Sunday afternoon, feeling no more moist than the next person but not much less moist, either (and getting a strange lump in the throat at the rendition of—funny how these things work—"American Pie"). And yes, that was me at the ball given by The Root, making a mild fool of myself as I boogied chubbily on down to the strains of Biz Markie, DJ to the capital's black elite.

I wouldn't reconsider my vote for Barack Hussein Obama, in other words, and when he takes the oath, I hope to have a ringside seat. I already know something about "the speech" and its Lincolnian tropes. (If you want your own understated preview, take a look at what he said to the crowd in Baltimore Saturday, as his whistle-stop train made its way from Philadelphia to D.C.'s Union Station.) But, on the last day of his presidency, I want to say why I still do not wish that Al Gore had beaten George W. Bush in 2000 or that John Kerry had emerged the victor in 2004.

In Oliver Stone's not very good but surprisingly well-received film W., there is an unnoticed omission, or rather there is an event that does not occur on-screen. The crashing of two airliners into two large skyscrapers isn't shown (and is only once and very indirectly referred to). This cannot be because it wouldn't have been of any help in making Bush look bad; it's pretty generally agreed that he acted erratically that day and made the worst speech of his presidency in the evening, and why would Stone miss the chance of restaging My Pet Goat?

The answer, I am reasonably certain, is that it is the events of Sept. 11, 2001, that explain the transformation of George Bush from a rather lazy small-government conservative into an interventionist, in almost every sense, politician. The unfortunate thing about this analysis, from the liberal point of view, is that it leaves such little room for speculation about his Oedipal relationship with his father, his thwarted revenge fantasies about Saddam Hussein, his dry-drunk alcoholism, and all the rest of it. (And, since Laura Bush in the film is even more desirable than the lovely first lady in person, we are left yet again to wonder how such a dolt was able to woo and to win such a honey.)

We are never invited to ask ourselves what would have happened if the Democrats had been in power that fall. But it might be worth speculating for a second. The Effective Death Penalty and Anti-Terrorism Act, rushed through both Houses by Bill Clinton after the relative pin prick of the Oklahoma City bombing, was correctly described by the American Civil Liberties Union as the worst possible setback for the cause of citizens' rights. Given that precedent and multiplying it for the sake of proportion, I think we can be pretty sure that wiretapping and water-boarding would have become household words, perhaps even more quickly than they did, and that we might even have heard a few more liberal defenses of the practice. I don't know if Gore-Lieberman would have thought of using Guantanamo Bay, but that, of course, raises the interesting question—now to be faced by a new administration—of where exactly you do keep such actually or potentially dangerous customers, especially since you are not supposed to "rendition" them. There would have been a nasty prison somewhere or a lot of prisoners un-taken on the battlefield, you can depend on that.

We might have avoided the Iraq war, even though both Bill Clinton and Al Gore had repeatedly and publicly said that another and conclusive round with Saddam Hussein was, given his flagrant defiance of all the relevant U.N. resolutions, unavoidably in our future. And the inconvenient downside to avoiding the Iraq intervention is that a choke point of the world economy would still be controlled by a psychopathic crime family that kept a staff of WMD experts on hand and that paid for jihadist suicide bombers around the region. In his farewell interviews, President Bush hasn't been able to find much to say for himself on this point, but I think it's a certainty that historians will not conclude that the removal of Saddam Hussein was something that the international community ought to have postponed any further. (Indeed, if there is a disgrace, it is that previous administrations left the responsibility undischarged.)

The obvious failures—in particular the increasing arrogance and insanity of the dictatorships of Iran and North Korea—are at least failures in their own terms: failure to live up to the original rhetoric and failure to mesh human rights imperatives with geo-strategic and security ones. Again, it's not clear to me how any alternative administration would have behaved. And the collapse of our financial system has its roots in a long-ago attempt, not disgraceful in and of itself, to put home ownership within reach even of the least affluent. So the old question "compared to what?" does not allow too much glibness.

Inescapable as it is, "compared to what?" isn't much of a defense. And nor has this column been intended exactly as a defense, either. It's just that there's an element of hubris in all this current hope-mongering and that I am beginning to be a little bit afraid to think of what Wednesday morning will feel like.

Snap Judgment: U2's new single, 'Get on Your Boots'

We're into growing up - GOYB review by U2Sermons

The Bush Record

A Charge Kept: The Record of the Bush Presidency, 2001-2009

Highlights of Accomplishments and Results of the Administration of George W. Bush

100 Things Americans Don't Know About The Bush Administration Record

Selected Speeches of George W. Bush, 2001-2008

Bruce Anderson: History will vindicate George Bush

It is not difficult to make the case against George Bush. There have been mistakes. But in their abuse of him, many of his liberal critics demonstrate their own weak hold on reality. In trying to belittle him, they merely reveal their own littleness. George Bush is a much more considerable figure than the caricature version. As he has set great events in motion, it will be impossible to judge his Presidency for many years. It is not impossible that history will offer a partial vindication.

The outgoing President did have one problem, especially in Europe. He may have finished off his father's war against Saddam Hussein. He was not able to avenge his father's defeat at the hands of the English language. Although some of George Bush junior's speeches will rank high in the annals of political oratory, once he was without a text, he often went adrift. But this was not due to lack of ability.

Early on, a friend of mine on the National Security Council went to a Bush Cabinet meeting. He had heard the reports that George Bush was a constitutional monarch with Dick Cheney as his prime minister, so he was interested to see what would happen. He watched as Mr Bush ran proceedings like a strong chief executive, while Mr Cheney did not say a word.

But it all comes back to the Iraq War, which was a tragedy, for a reason worthy of a great tragedian. It was fought in a spirit of excessive idealism. After 11 September, the US Administration asked itself one repeated and agonised question. Why do these people hate us? The Bush team came up with their answer: because they live in failed states, which offer their young no hope in this world and thus leave them open to the temptations of fanaticism and a better deal in another world.

Baghdad was one of the foremost cities in the Muslim world. Iraq was a rich country with a large educated middle class. Yet it had become a police state and many of its ablest people had fled into exile. Moreover, Saddam had been trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. We could not be certain that his quest had failed. So should we wait until the certainty of a mushroom cloud? It seemed that all the routes to progress in the Middle East and safety in the West led to Iraq.

There was one problem. Largely because of the malign influence of that fraud and tautology, international law, we have grown squeamish about regime change. As a result, the overwhelming desirability of regime change in Iraq had to be downplayed, and there was a further difficulty: the most unfortunate un-meeting of minds in recent public policy. After 2001, in both Washington and London, there was a split between those who knew Iraq, who were generally hostile to the War, and those who wanted war but usually knew nothing about Iraq. George Bush had little confidence in his Secretary of State, Colin Powell. Unable to sack Mr Powell, he made up for it by not listening to the State Department. Tony Blair never took much notice of his foreign secretaries.

As a result, the Arabists' expertise was disregarded and two vital conversations never took place. I will give the London version. Foreign Secretary: "There is no point in continuing this discussion. The PM has decided to go to war alongside the Americans, and that is that". Permanent Secretary: "All right, Foreign Secretary, but in order to give yourself any chance of success, you have got to do the following..." Foreign Secretary: "Now you're talking. I want a paper explaining all that on my desk by close of play tomorrow, and I will stand over the PM till he's read every word."

That never happened. Instead, the direction of events was left to the neo-conservatives, most of whom were dangerous idealists who believed that democracy was an infallible political antibiotic.

In that onrush of naivety, two crazy decisions were taken: to abolish the Iraqi army and to de-Baathise the civil service. In 1945, the allies were content to employ large numbers of former Nazi party members in the new West German bureaucracy. The practical arguments were equally strong in Iraq. There would have been one problem which had not been present in Germany; the army and civil service were Sunni power-centres, and the Shia would have demanded changes. But that could have been manageable. In a sullen and far from idealistic spirit, large parts of Iraq are now sort of working. But that could have happened much earlier had the mistakes not been made. If so, George Bush's ratings would be much higher.

His critics also insist that he should not have used the phrase "war on terror". That tells us a lot about their unwillingness to face up to a dangerous world. George Bush meant that America could not afford to relax until all terrorist organisations with a global reach had been defeated. That is not inflated rhetoric. It is common sense.

There was one unfortunate side effect of the war on terror: Guantanamo. At the time, it seemed a good idea: a cunning means of preventing American lawyers from undermining America's security. But the US prides itself on being a nation founded upon laws. It follows that a legal vacuum is only tolerable for a brief period. It has now dragged on for far too long. That said, anyone who denies that there are some exceedingly dangerous men in Guantanamo should be forced to live among them.

On the economy, and like Gordon Brown, George Bush could be accused of failing to fix the roof while the sun was shining. But two years' ago, it all seemed to be working. Growth was strong. Even after the Bush tax cuts, tax receipts were at record levels. A country with a young population, America did not have Europe's demographic weaknesses: too few earners and too many pensioners. Back in the days when sub-prime mortgage holders were just ordinary Americans trying to climb the ladder, there were grounds for hoping that the US could grow its way out of deficits and back to fiscal prudence. George Bush did not foresee the crisis. Who did?

It now looks as if there will be many more continuities between the Bush Administration and the Obama one than many of the new President's supporters had hoped. That is a tribute to George Bush. It will not be the last.

what does Dave Fanning think of the new U2 single

'A big song with lots of layers...' He'll be the first to play it on Monday, so what does Dave Fanning think of the new single ?

On Monday morning, the world finally gets to hear Get On Your Boots. As usual, the person to premiere the track will be Irish TV and radio presenter Dave Fanning, someone who's been championing the band since he first started playing their demos on pirate radio more than three decades ago. Ever since, Dave's got the first play of a new U2 single. We tracked him down at 2FM in Dublin.

So you’ve heard the single, which the rest of the world will hear on Monday - first impressions?

First impressions is that there’s eleven tracks on the album and ‘Get On Your Boots’ is the one you’d instantly say is the single. It’s the ‘Vertigo’ of the album - although a completely different kind of song. That was a new song which was an instant hit night after night on the last tour and this song will be the same on the next tour. People will be impressed, it’s very U2 and there’ s nothing wrong with that, a big song with lots of layers but not overproduced. Great track.

Sounds like you’ve heard the album too?

I have, just a few times though and it’s hard to give you first impressions because I need to hear it in the car and in the bath. But certainly you know in hearing it that they remain a great creative force as a band, what I’m not sure of yet is whether it is the beginning of a new sequence of albums or the third in a series that began with All That You Can’t Leave Behind.
It’s a big record though and I was struck by the running order, that tracks 2 (Magnificent), 3 (Moment of Surrender), and 4 (Unknown Caller) alone are almost twenty minutes of music. Normally you find longer songs at the end of a record, but these come before you even reach Get On Your Boots. Some of the lyric writing seemed more personal than usual to me, and there’s lots of buried songs on there too, songs that will grow on you – like if you ask your average U2 fan to sing ‘A Man and A Woman’ or ‘Crumbs Under your Table’ from How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb they might not be able to, but they were gems. The album has plenty of songs like that, songs to return to.

There was a time when they let you choose the single release.

Yes, it’s hard to believe that thirty years ago they came into my show, all four of them every night for a week, and we played three of their songs a night and asked the audience to decide what the single should be. Out of Control got it, with Stories for Boys as a b-side and we threw in Boy-Girl too. I remember a thousand copies of the single were pressed and we launched it at Windmill Lane and about 15 people turned up.
I’d been playing their demo tapes since being on pirate stations in 1978, I just got behind them, I never even knew they would get as far as another demo. I’m not brilliant, I couldn’t predict anything, I was more into The Undertones at the time but U2 just seemed to be going along the same lines as me and I liked them.

Ever since you’ve always had the world premiere of a new U2 single from a new album.

I’ve had the world exclusive ever since, Paul McGuinness always likes to start a new campaign with me. I asked him about it this morning, he said he thought I was a good luck charm. But my feeling on this album is that while it’s been a really long wait, it is worth the wait. They were the biggest band of the eighties, then they dominated the nineties and now they’re writing a whole new chapter in another decade - not young anymore but still looking very cool. I think of all the 17 year olds who are going to buy this record and it will only be the third or fourth record they have bought - they’re still right up there.

One other song that really stood out for you ?

Stand Up Comedy – the nearest thing they’ve ever done to Led Zeppelin. But I could change my mind, wait till I’ve heard it in the bath a few times. One - from Achtung Baby - never hit me for months.

Exit Bush

This time next week, we'll have a new U.S. president (perhaps you've heard).
The inauguration parties will be breaking up, and we'll be in a new
political era. I shan't be celebrating much myself: a quick toast to old
Bush, and good luck to the new Obama (there seems to be a new one every
day). Then back to reading Ausonius.

No predictions today; I intend to look only backwards.

I was young and callow then (now, at least, I'm no longer young), when
Pierre Trudeau was installed as Canada's 15th prime minister. I was, well,
15 myself, and already beginning to recover from Trudeaumania. I'd worked my
little behind off for the Liberals (can you believe it?) and had had the
honour of meeting the Great Man. I think it was in the moment I looked into
his icy blue eyes that my enthusiasm began to relax.

Still vaguely remember: the attitudes among such of my elders as did not
like or trust him, in the moments immediately before the Great Man took
power, and the foreseeable catastrophe began. People think, "Nah, this isn't
going to be so bad. In fact he's going to be like every other prime
minister." And anyway, the whole thing happens in slow motion.

Let us complete the highly unoriginal observation. The lobster hardly
notices the temperature rising in his pot. Time passes. And what has
changed, after all? Before he was green, afterwards orange. But it's the
same lobster!

Not everyone agrees that the Trudeau years were a disaster for Canada. My
own view is based on a candid assessment of the before and after, and it is
the view of a lobster. From the point of view of the diner, in our Nanny
State, much was improved by expending the country's moral capital.

But you know me, gentle reader: I tend to disregard received opinion, itself
a transient product of passing history. This includes, to return briefly to
the present, the view that George W. Bush was, if not the worst president
the United States ever had, at least the worst in living memory.

He has been demonized, in the progressive media and among the progressive
classes -- to the point where even those who are inclined to defend him,
instinctively flinch. Which is to say: he has been demonized by people who
do not concern themselves overmuch with the question, "What would you have
done in his position, instead," given each successive crisis he faced. Or,
when asked that question, they reply in some rhetorical way that betrays no
serious interest in the likely consequences of the alternative course.

I have found that one cannot argue with history: things happened just as
they did. But also, one cannot argue with people who are not anchored in
prudential reasoning.

After eight years of him, I would say, that of all the U.S. presidents in my
life (from Eisenhower forward), Mr. Bush has been the most impressive,
except Reagan. This is mostly a judgment on his foreign policy, in which --
instant history requires cliches -- he has taken various bulls by their
horns, and has not been flipped by them.

I think it will be seen more clearly, as hindsight develops, that the stand
he took in Afghanistan, then Iraq, prevented the exponential growth of
Islamism. Ditto: his refusal to be horse-whipped by international public
opinion very far along the ridiculous "roadmap to peace" between Israel and
her fanatic adversaries. His confrontational attitudes toward other rogue
regimes held the line -- against Libya, Syria, North Korea, and even Iran.
We would be in a far worse position if such regimes had been persuaded that
America really was a "paper tiger."

Mr. Bush, as the saying goes, "kept America safe," and in so doing, defended
universal Western interests. We are all indebted not only to him, but to the
American taxpayer, and American soldiers, for missions to which we did not
contribute adequately. Forward positions were taken and maintained. It
remains to be seen whether Mr. Obama will give all these positions away.

In domestic policy, as Mr. Bush has himself been confessing in final
interviews and a rather moving final press conference, he very likely
sacrificed too much. His own free-market instincts, and his sense of the
limitations of the U.S. federal government, were overcome in the course of
various tax-and-spend responses to domestic problems over-magnified in the
media. More precisely, spend alone, for he did fight taxes, and thereby left
(as Reagan before him) a legacy of public indebtedness. At least this will
crimp his successor.

No matter how he is depicted, the man himself has been honest, thoughtful,
courageous, modest -- and remarkably free of personal vindictiveness. He has
done consistently what he thought right under the circumstances, from a far
broader view of those circumstances than his vindictive enemies have
acknowledged, or would be able to acknowledge.

David Warren

Download "Get On Your Boots" from iTunes

There’s been some error at iTunes because you can buy the single today, even thought it’s not supposed to be out until Feb. 15.

click this link to access it.

U2.com -- Get On Your Boots, the first single from U2's new album No Line On The Horizon, will be released as a digital download on February 15th with a physical format to follow on February 16 through Mercury/Universal (UK).

Bush Got the Big Things Right

"Especially as a Social Democrat," said German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier a few days after the U.S. elections, "I am glad that Barack Obama won. All night I sat in front of my TV and was enthusiastic and elated." The minister's merriment reflects the mood all over Old Europe: anticipation of the end of the Bush nightmare and hope for change under St Obama, the lightworker. It's a wonder there were no parades--yet.

While such views are not new among Europeans and the American left, it was astounding to witness the sheer number of conservatives jumping ship and bashing Bush. With even erstwhile staunch Bush supporters such as John Bolton attesting the Bush administration's "total intellectual collapse" (on occasion of the North Korea deal), the verdict is in: President Bush, especially because of his foreign policy, has been an utter failure.

Contesting this judgment is not a popular pastime these days, not even among Republicans. Given the glum political atmosphere in a year of dismal election results, this might be understandable. And true enough, many of the Bush administration's key foreign policy decisions have turned out more difficult than anticipated--most notably the prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the long run, however, the Bush legacy will most certainly receive a fair treatment, emphasizing those achievements now buried under partisan politics and veiled by the inevitable problems that accompany the implementation of every groundbreaking policy. In fact, future U.S. administrations will be well-advised to build on the core ideas formulated and realized by the Bush administration. After all, there are at least three reasons to applaud the Bush foreign policy.

1. The Bush administration developed the first coherent vision for an American role in the post-Cold War world.

Victory in the Cold War led to years of confusion in American politics. Bush senior, troubled by the "vision thing," was the steward of stability whose "New World Order" never had any meaning until Hulk Hogan introduced the concept to World Championship Wrestling in 1996. After the realist stasis, the liberal internationalist Bill Clinton embraced the buzz word of the decade, "globalization," and cast an ever-more intricate web of international treaties and institutions, designed to create an interdependent world of peace and prosperity--under the headline of "engagement and enlargement." Well, this tumescent globaloney was too much to take even for Clinton's own Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, who deemed the whole visionary strategy "a trade policy masquerading as foreign policy."

On 9/11, it became obvious that foreign policy needs to be about more than making money. The twin challenges of (mostly Islamist) anti-modern backlash and failing states breeding instability had been rising all throughout the 1990s, but it was due to the catalytic attacks of 9/11 and the Bush administration's leadership that the U.S. finally came up with a viable approach to post-Cold War foreign policy. The new doctrine identified the main threats to a liberal world order: terrorism, states sponsoring terrorism, and the nexus between weapons of mass destruction, irresponsible regimes, and terrorist organizations. It also outlined a strategy of forward deterrence to counter these threats: combat al-Qaeda militarily and destroy the structures which made its rise possible by stabilizing failed states and democratizing the Broader Middle East.

Granted, despite considerable progress in some areas, none of these ambitious goals has been fulfilled yet. Still, Bush has given the unfolding global conflict a name, identified the enemy, developed a doctrine to fight and win this struggle, and has begun to implement a strategy based on this doctrine. That is, in historic terms, not a small achievement.

What most contemporary critics fail to recognize is that at its most basic, this "Bush Doctrine," just as the war on terror, is less about preemption and regime change than about the understanding that the liberal international system is in peril and that the United States is the only capable custodian of this system. Even without a Cold War substitute, the free world depends on U.S. leadership and assertiveness--this is the lesson his successors should learn from Bush.

2. The Bush administration fought the right wars and laid the groundwork for winning them.

There can be no doubt that the war in Afghanistan was a war of necessity. The regime of the Taliban provided safe havens and training camps for al-Qaeda. After 9/11, there was not a single serious politician in the civilized world who did not call for an eradication of this manifest threat. Moreover, the wounded superpower needed to demonstrate that such a violation of the rules of the international system as committed on 9/11 comes at a huge price. Add the moral obligation of the mighty to assist the brutalized people of Afghanistan and you have a powerful case for a lasting commitment to OEF and ISAF.

For the usual reasons--domestic inhibitions, strategies of free-riding etc.--not all NATO allies and partner countries put their full weight behind the effort in Afghanistan. Even the United States has not always directed the necessary attention at the complex task of simultaneously liberating, pacifying, and rebuilding the country. Considering the history of tribalism and the intrinsic opposition to outside interference, it is no surprise that progress in Afghanistan can only happen incrementally. The real story, however, is that there is any progress at all. The United States and its allies traveled an uneven learning curve, but with the comprehensive approach of combined security and state-building measures taking ever more hold there is much reason to be optimistic.

In 2003, Iraq was a war of necessity as well, and despite a disastrous post-war policy it remains exactly that. Although no WMD could be found in the country after the removal of Saddam Hussein, this does not alter the fact that Saddam had been prepared to build just such weapons within ten years had the United States not intervened. His record of acquiring and using WMD, of betraying and ridiculing the UN inspections and sanctions regimes as well as his many proven connections to Islamist terrorist organizations thus turned Iraq into a manifest and urgent threat to U.S., regional, and world security.

In addition, Iraq has always played a key role in the war on terror. The root cause of Islamist terrorism, according to the Bush analysis, is not poverty or Western policy but political disenfranchisement. The vast majority of the people in Islamic dictatorships have no access to education, no opportunity to pursue independent economic success, no say in the political process, and no investment in their individual future. Especially under conditions of demographic and economic pressure--as is the case virtually everywhere in the Middle East--they therefore fall easy prey to those who instrumentalize Islam to further their own personal or ideological goals. In order to achieve sustained success in fighting terrorism, Bush had to change the political dynamics in the Middle East, and Iraq was the most plausible point to start.

Again, as in Afghanistan, implementation proved tricky. But with the tangible success of the surge--less violence, uprooting of Al Qaeda in Iraq, spread of thriving, pacified areas of civil society etc.--there is plenty of reason to be optimistic. Iraq in, say, 2040 might quite possibly be the showcase for a modern, liberal, Islamic democracy in the Middle East Bush had envisioned. One thing is certain: This would not have happened without the forceful change of regime. Indeed, thanks to the initiative of President Bush, both the people of Afghanistan and the people of Iraq are better off already than they were in September 2001--and the same holds true for the world's liberal democracies.

3. The Bush administration implemented a constructive, principled, and interest-oriented Pacific policy.

The focus on the Middle East and the war on terror leads many observers to overlook one of the crucial achievements of the Bush foreign policy: The American position in the Pacific area is stronger than it has been in decades. U.S. China policy, defined by a delicate balance of engagement and pressure, is the envy of realist and idealist policy-makers alike and led to the most constructive relationship both nations have enjoyed since the days of Nixon. American-Japanese relations since 2000, particularly under Prime Ministers Koizumi and Abe, have never been better. This is underlined not just by the photogenic and good-natured celebrations of friendship during state visits but, more importantly, in Japan's significant and increasing contributions to global security as in the cooperation with NATO in Afghanistan. With India, the third major power in the region, Bush's courageous and far-sighted stance on the nuclear issue helped establish another strategic partnership. It is remarkable that the administration managed to escape the rivalries between all three of these states and shaped efficient bilateral relations with all of them. Especially with regard to the longstanding power competition between Beijing and New Delhi, Washington embarked on a course that will impress historians as a modern version of the British divide and rule method: embrace and govern.

Moreover, Bush strengthened ties with Australia which as a principal ally in the war on terror became a more important actor in the Pacific sphere. The U.S. also maintained strong commitments to traditional partners such as South Korea and Taiwan while also expanding its influence among the former Soviet Republics in Asia.

Taken together, these efforts signify a subtle preparation for an ongoing shift in international power from the Atlantic to the Pacific region. Bush made sure that despite this development the United States will not lose its strategic focus and will be well positioned to take on the power struggles of the future. Therefore, in the long run, Bush's foreign policy in the Pacific will be lauded as his coup de main.

Great modern presidents were hardly ever considered such at the end of their time in office. Harry Truman for instance could never quite shake the image of the bumbling simpleton, and in his final months as president his low approval ratings helped Republicans reclaim the White House for the first time in twenty years. It took more historical distance to appreciate Truman as the architect of an American foreign policy for a new age. Similarly, when Ronald Reagan left office shaken by the Iran Contra Affair, his public approval was at a low point, his derisive opponents numerous. Today, he is not only credited with restoring American strength and winning the Cold War but he is idolized by conservatives everywhere. On the other hand, achievements of presidents such as Bill Clinton who most probably would have been popular enough to win a third term often fade with time.

In that sense it is plausible to assume that history will be kind to the Bush presidency. Bush never flinched in the face of public disapproval or resistance in the international arena. He has protected the United States--and the free world--from the threats of global terror networks. He began to implement a strategy for winning the global war on terror and created a vision of a world worth fighting for. While George W. Bush certainly was not the greatest president in American history, he was a principled leader and more successful than most observers acknowledge. Once the heated debates of the day give way to the somber retrospective of historians, the administration of George W. Bush will finally receive a fair assessment--and it is going to be a good one.

Dr. Patrick Keller is the Coordinator of Foreign and Security Policy at the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Berlin, Germany. Dustin Dehez is a historian and Lecturer in International Relations at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

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