President George W Bush's place in history

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And two more people weigh in:

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/ (Jan 18 2009)

OBAMA SAYS Bush is a “Good Guy.” “I think personally he is a good man who loves his family and loves his country. And I think he made the best decisions that he could at times under some very difficult circumstances.” Once again, I agree with Barack Obama.

And so does the Dalai Lama! Though I, personally, wouldn’t go so far as to say that “I love President George W Bush.” But then, the Dalai Lama is a lot more spiritual and loving than me.

 

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Reality vs mythology:

http://volokh.com/posts/1232335004.shtml

Bush is Indeed Like Herbert Hoover - But Not in the Way You Think:

In the course of a New Republic article analogizing George W. Bush to Herbert Hoover, historian Alan Brinkley perpetuates the long-discredited myth that Hoover failed to stop the Great Depression because he pursued laissez-faire policies:

    Herbert Hoover . . . exemplifies the dangers of sticking to one's principles. One of the ablest and most widely admired men in America when he was elected president in 1928, Hoover left office four years later discredited and reviled--a victim of a Depression that he had not created, to be sure, but also a victim of his choice of conviction over pragmatism. Unwilling to challenge the pillars of free-market capitalism, strongly committed to balanced budgets and fiscal prudence, convinced that the natural laws of economics would bring the Depression to a close, he responded to the Depression with such restraint and timidity that had his administration not ended when it did, the entire financial system of the United States might have collapsed.

Far from being "unwilling to challenge the pillars of free-market capitalism," Hoover reacted to the Depression by promoting extensive government intervention. For example, he established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a new federal agency that gave massive loans and grants to banks, failing businesses and state and local governments - a policy similar to today's bailouts. He also supported (albeit reluctantly) the enactment of the Smoot-Hawley tariff, a protectionist measure intended to strengthen American businesses by shielding them from foreign competition. Furthermore, he sponsored a massive increase in federal spending on a variety of relief programs. Similar to today's Democratic Congress, Hoover sought to stimulate the economy by increasing federal funding for public works through the Emergency Relief and Construction Act.

Speaking before the 1932 Republican Convention, Hoover boasted that he had rejected the "disastrous" option of doing "nothing" and instead had "met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic." In that same 1932 campaign, FDR even denounced Hoover for overspending and promised to enact a balanced budget.

Nor were Hoover's interventionist policies a sudden change of heart caused by the Great Depression. He had advocated extensive increases in government spending and regulation for years, especially during his time as Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s. Even before the Depression began, the Hoover Administration promoted federal intervention in labor relations and massive farm subsidies.

None of this is news to economic historians. By the 1960s and 70s, research by a variety of scholars had shown that Hoover was anything but a laissez faire advocate. Liberal historian Joan Hoff Wilson's 1975 book Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive is a good summary of the evidence. It is surprising that an outstanding historian like Brinkley would ignore this body of research.

Brinkley is right, however, to suggest that Hoover's policies were similar to Bush's. Like Hoover, the Bush administration responded to an economic crisis with a policy of bailouts. Also like Hoover, Bush sought to push the GOP towards big government policies long before any economic crisis had occurred. Under Bush, the GOP massively increased domestic spending and federal regulation. Bush also, in his own words,"use[d] the mighty muscle of the federal government" to incentivize financial institutions to issue mortgages to borrowers with dubious credit qualifications - an interventionist policy that helped cause the current crisis.

After Hoover left office, New Dealers used the myth of his supposed adherence to laissez-faire as a justification for discrediting free market policies. Today, we are seeing the creation of a similar myth about Bush. The truth, however, is almost the exact opposite of the myth.

The fact that Hoover and Bush pursued interventionist policies doesn't in and of itself prove that free markets are the way to go. Perhaps Hoover and Bush simply chose the wrong kinds of interventions. Nonetheless, the myth of Hoover as laissez-faire advocate was an important rhetorical prop for supporters of big government policies in the 1930s. Hopefully, it is not too late to forestall the creation of a similar convenient myth about Bush today.

 

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And further from CBC.ca:

http://www.damianpenny.com/archived/012551.html

The Bush legacies

A somewhat surprising piece at CBC.ca:

    A snapshot of the world on September 12, 2001, would have revealed the following: an Iraq led by a brutal dictator defying UN inspectors and seeming to be on the verge of recreating a military program involving weapons of mass destruction; a strong and thriving terrorist network, supported by a Taliban-governing Afghanistan, celebrating the launch of the deadliest attack on U.S. soil; and Americans bracing for what most believed would be an inevitable second strike.

    Taking that same snapshot more than seven years later, the world's landscape has changed dramatically. Iraq and Afghanistan have become burgeoning, albeit troubled, democracies and strategic allies of the United States.

    [...]

    As al-Qaeda's host, Afghanistan was the natural first target. NATO forces were able to overthrow the regime within months and put in place a Western-friendly leader, who eventually became the first democratically elected president of the country.

    That means little to those who look at Afghanistan today and see a country still riddled with poverty, corruption, rising opium production, a presidency with little power and a resurgent Taliban.

    Yet there have been important, if fragile, achievements in Afghanistan over the past few years — more widespread schooling, regional government, a more professional army — that hold out at least some hope for the future.

    [...]

    Today, Iraq has a badly-functioning but still democratically-elected government and GDP per capita higher than it was before the war. According to the Brookings Institute, Iraqis now have more cars and better access to phones, internet service and media outlets than before.

    All achievements to be sure, although little comfort to the families of the tens of thousands killed and injured in the violence.

If Iraq and Afghanistan can become stable, functioning democracies, the 43rd President's foreign-policy legacy might be salvaged. It's his economic legacy from which his reputation - and his country - may never recover:

    President Bush has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an analysis of key data, and economists across the ideological spectrum increasingly view his two terms as a time of little progress on the nation's thorniest fiscal challenges.

    The number of jobs in the nation increased by about 2 percent during Bush's tenure, the most tepid growth over any eight-year span since data collection began seven decades ago. Gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic output, grew at the slowest pace for a period of that length since the Truman administration. And Americans' incomes grew more slowly than in any presidency since the 1960s, other than that of Bush's father.

    Bush and his aides are quick to point out that they oversaw 52 straight months of job growth in the middle of this decade, and that the economy expanded at a steady clip from 2003 to 2007. But economists, including some former advisers to Bush, say it increasingly looks as if the nation's economic expansion was driven to a large degree by the interrelated booms in the housing market, consumer spending and financial markets. Those booms, which the Bush administration encouraged with the idea of an "ownership society," have proved unsustainable.

    [...]

    Even excluding the 2008 recession, however, Bush presided over a weak period for the U.S. economy. For example, for the first seven years of the Bush administration, gross domestic product grew at a paltry 2.1 percent annual rate.

    The administration also failed to gain traction on some of the fundamental economic and fiscal issues facing the nation -- including solidifying the finances of Medicare and Social Security, simplifying the tax code, or making health care more affordable. Resolution of those issues might have left the government more flexibility to respond to the current crisis by lowering the nation's future budget deficits. (Interpolation: we have a Democrat Congress and House to thank for that)

    The federal government had a modest budget surplus when Bush took office in 2001, but ran a deficit -- funding itself to a significant degree with borrowed money -- of 4.9 percent of gross domestic product in 2004 and 4 percent in 2005, even as the economy was growing at a healthy pace.

There was a time, not too long ago, when the Republican Party was considered the "fiscally responsible" one. Not anymore.

 

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From the DC Examiner:

http://www.dcexaminer.com/opinion/Bush_legacy_is_hidden_here_in_plain_sight_012109.html

Bush legacy is hidden here in plain sight
By Noemie Emery, Examiner Columnist
- 1/21/09

Legacies are funny things, and the first read is often the worst one, as it is seen from too narrow a range. From up close, all you can see is the short space around you, filled with weeds, brush, and clutter; from afar, the lay of the land becomes evident.
Under your feet, ground tends to seem level; only later can you look back and realize you have been walking down into a hollow, or conversely, been climbing a hill.  In history, the story of the Cold War is of long clean lines running from Truman to Reagan; in reality, the lines were submerged in distractions and scandals.

In the accounts of their time, Truman , Eisenhower and Kennedy seemed drastically different;  yet their similarity on basic matters of Cold War deterrence make them seem now like three-of-a-kind.

When Reagan left office, many thought him a failure, who  left a mixed foreign policy legacy along with astonishing deficits. A few years later, he was the author of a booming economy, and the man who finished what Truman began.

Like Reagan, Eisenhower was seen by his critics as a smile with nothing behind it. Only later, when their writings were published was it really discovered how much they both thought, knew, and did.

Like theirs, Bush’s reputation is likely rise, and for three major reasons: 1) the story of exactly what he put in place to fight terror is almost completely submerged  at this moment; 2) the reality of the menace Saddam was is being overlooked at this moment;  and 3) the belief of the press and the left that the war in Iraq is still a debacle is likely to alter when a Democrat brings  it to a more or less satisfactory close.

Obama’s swing to the right on Iraq and on terror began when he started to read the daily threat assessments as a president reads them, and to look at events through the eyes of a president. When the world and the public see things as he did, their minds will change, as did his.

Bush in fact is a great deal like Truman; not wholly a complement, as they also share much the same flaws. They presided over times of partisan rancor they were unable to moderate.

They were too indulgent of mediocre old friends from the neighborhood. . Truman ‘lost’ China, and Bush ‘lost’ New Orleans; (though China was lost by Chaing Kai Shek and New Orleans was lost by its mayor and governor).

They had negative talents at communication,  and thus were unable to carry the country along when Iraq and Korea turned difficult.  As a result, Adlai Stevenson shunned Truman’s embrace when he ran for president, and Bush was not urged to come to St. Paul.

And yet Bush and Truman got all of the big issues right.  Truman saved Western Europe with the Marshall Plan, saved Greece (and perhaps Italy) with the Truman Doctrine, limited the Communist thrust to the areas already held down by the Red Army, and halted the military advance in Korea, with a difficult and sometimes mishandled war.

Bush defined the attacks as a war, not a crime, and took steps to safeguard the American people; liberated Afghanistan, liberated Iraq (in a difficult and sometimes mishandled occupation), that saw the Iraqis turn on both al Qaeda and jihad, and align themselves with the west.

All people remember now of Truman are the  Marshall Plan and containment. Soon,  all people will remember of Bush will be  the ouster of Saddam and the rout of Al Qaeda, and the suitcase bombs that never went off in Manhattan, or in Farragut Square.

Washington was terrorized, but by two deranged snipers. London was hit, and India, and Indonesia, but not Bush’s America. On Meet The Press Sunday, Rahm Emanuel waxed rhapsodic over Bush’s security team’s dedication and competence. History will likely agree.

Before the sprawling and silly FDR theme park, Roosevelt’s sole memorial in the national capital was the small bloc at the Navy Memorial, which was all that  he wanted. But his real memorial, as someone said, was the city around it, which, with its culture, survived World War II.

In New York, the towers are gone, but there has been no more damage. In Washington, Barack Omaba took the oath taken by Bush, Truman and Roosevelt in the same ceremony, in a city that looks much as it did on September 12, 2001. This in effect is the Bush Legacy - hidden right there in plain sight.

Examiner columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”