Say Anything Blog

I certainly don’t think President Bush has been a great President, and I think it would be more fair to judge him from the perspective of history instead of now when emotions about his leadership still run high, but those things aside I can certainly say that he hasn’t been the worst President in 50 years.

But Bill Kristol, Karl Rove, Joe Weisberg (editor of Slate) and Sir Simon Jenkins (The Guardian) got together to debate that very topic.

Mr. Rove and Mr. Kristol were paired against Jacob Weisberg, editor in chief of the Slate Group, and British columnist Sir Simon Jenkins, of the Guardian….The most heated moments came during the debate over Mr. Bush’s biggest decision - the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The president himself said in an interview this week that his “biggest regret” is that the intelligence upon which the invasion was based wrongly concluded that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Even Mr. Kristol said that Mr. Bush has done “a horrible job of explaining what he’s done and what the choices were.” But he and Mr. Rove both maintained that while the initial occupation was mismanaged, the surge of troops begun in 2007 has placed the U.S. on the cusp of victory in Iraq. Former Bush adviser Karl Rove was greeted with hisses as he took the podium at a formal debate on New York’s Upper West Side, but he helped attract a sold-out crowd. “We’ve won the war,” Mr. Kristol said.

First, let’s look at some of the other Presidents from the past five decades: Nixon was a criminal who resigned in disgrace.  LBJ possibly started more failed government programs than anyone else in history and presided over the mishandling of the Vietnam war.  Jimmy Carter’s policies brought on a level of economic malaise not seen since the Great Depression and managed to embarrass himself while handling middle eastern politics.

I’d say that Bush ranks behind all three of those Presidents in terms of who was worse for this country.  Because while Iraq may not have been handled perfectly, we’ve still won the war.  And while Bush has signed into law massive entitlement expansions (Medicare prescription drugs), unnecessary new government agencies (Department of Homeland Security) and stupid laws (campaign finance reform) he also signed into law tax cuts that spurred economic growth in this country throughout most of his administration.

The Bush legacy will be a mixed bag, I think.  He deserves a tremendous amount of credit for somethings (Iraq, the war on terror and stewardship of the economy post-9/11) and slings and arrows for others (expansion of government and an utter inability to advance a cohesive conservative agenda).  Ultimately I think he’ll probably get more blame than he deserves from certain quarters, and more praise than he deserves from others.