The Bush Legacy

As much as he can do so during his time as lame duck, the president seems to be making the most of his attenuated term to justify the events of all the years he served. In so doing, he has demonstrated a tendency to revise the actual events he brought into play. The war in Iraq was a sham of ignoring what poor intelligence was brought to him, then going on as if his suspicion of WMD were in fact true. He started a pre-emptive conflict and then allowed the sorry affair to be mismanaged, even by his generals, the CIA and the Secretary of Defense, to say nothing of Paul Bremer, whose oversight in civilian and governmental matters there was a dismal failure. All of these were given promotions or the Medal of Freedom for their work. "Democracy" was his term for the kind of government the Iraqis formed, along with much hullabaloo and pictures of purple-stained fingers showing they had voted. (A recent analysis by an unbiased group lists Iraq as the third most corrupt in the world.) Now that they have a comfortable surplus from oil revenues, we are still wasting lives and treasure while a sizeable army of troops occupies an unstable country given to internal civil strife.

We have under his management built up greatest debt in the history of the republic. (He started with a surplus.) He has presided over the deepest and most prolonged recession in history, reminding us of the months preceding the Great Depression of the Thirties. He has refrained from applying corrective supervision over those on Wall Street who let the love of money produce the evil of unemployment, credit crunch impaired, trade, and a ruined housing market. We have seen our fellow citizens suffer from actual want and privation. Even the army we have called for blessings upon the troops, is tired and must soon come home. What does Mr. Bush do? He calls it a victory and will bring the soldiers home. But only after the Iraqi premier says we must leave by 2010. Another failing has been his highly-touted "War" on "terrorism" worldwide. A flop!

George W. Bush has not shown us the leadership we have looked for in a president. He has been so arrogant that he declines to admit to even a forgivable error under a misguided premise that his actions have resulted from a direct suggestion by the Deity. We would rather trust the seasoned input from a history expert and allow that expertise to define an honest legacy. This observer with a reasonably good grasp of American history would place the incumbent Chief Executive in a ranking somewhere between Hoover and Buchanan. Time will tell the whole story.