Judging George W. Bush

Michael Medved has a good piece over at Townhall in which he discusses the standards by which President Bush will be judged – and notes that this standard kept changing throughout his entire presidency.

The conventional wisdom [after 9/11] declared that his presidency would rise or fall based on his ability to keep the nation safe. If the United States sustained a series of crippling new attacks the world understood that history would judge Bush as a failure. If, against all odds, he succeeded in turning the tide against our terrorist adversaries and managed to keep the nation secure from homeland assaults, then the president would emerge from his terms of office as a successful, and probably heroic, chief executive.

Then…

For better or for worse, the American people identified the [Iraq War] as the defining gamble of the Bush administration and leading commentators declared that the president would provoke either contempt or gratitude based on the outcome of that war. If the United States failed in its mission of establishing a durable, pro-western government in Iraq, Mr. Bush stood no more chance of a favorable judgment by history than did Johnson or Nixon after the collapse of the U.S. investment in Vietnam.

With the United States attack free for eight years, and the progress in Iraq undeniable, the new “proof” that the emperor is naked is the current economic crisis.

With near-universal agreement that we face greatest financial crisis since the great Depression (another misleading and exaggerated evaluation, by the way) the President inevitably takes the blame.

Medved doesn’t say Bush isn’t without blame however, by no stretch of the imagination, is this problem entirely his fault.  Indeed, his warning of coming economic problem because of the housing market were virtually ignored if not derided as racist.  But the current economic woes certainly is just the latest Reason of the Day to hate Bush.

But while 2008 certainly witnessed an avalanche of bad economic news for President Bush, it’s worth nothing that pronouncements that he represented the nadir of incompetence and wrong-headedness, and “the worst president in American history,” long preceded the current economic crisis. Impassioned Bush-bashing reached feverish levels even during the President’s most successful years (including his solid re-election victory in 2004). In fact, tracing the sorry history of “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” it actually began before he even took the oath of office, and stemmed from indignation of the purportedly “stolen” election of 2000. For his most determined critics, George W. Bush always represented the “Commander in Thief” and an unworthy occupant of the nation’s highest office.

And this is why I subscribe to the idea that history, and not the op-ed pages of the New York Times, will ultimately pen George W. Bush’s legacy.  And whatever its judgment is, I’m confident it will be predominantly positive.  Missteps occurred, mistakes were made, but overwhelmingly the presidency of George W. Bush was a positive gain for both the people of the United States and Iraq.  And, in the end, that’s all I really care about.