Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Dubya? Too soon to judge

Theo Caldwell, National Post - November 24, 2008

This article is the closest to positive press I could find on President Bush. Caldwell discusses the fact that Bush's legacy, like many former U.S Presidents, will most likely be determined years after he has left his office.
Some interesting quotes from the article:

"So simple and widespread is condemnation of the man that, when one hears some concerned citizen spouting the usual lines about "lies," "war for oil" and the like, one wonders what that person thinks he or she is adding to the public discourse. It has all been said before, and it was dopey the first time.

What is far more difficult -- harder, even, than finding someone to sing Bush's praises --is to find intelligent analysis of Bush's successes and failures as leader of the free world. His foreign policy forays, like the Iraq war, and his domestic policies, like the prescription drug benefit, bear serious scrutiny. But since folks start hyperventilating at the mere mention of Bush's name, it seems sober discussion must wait until at least the end of his term.

It is often noted that while presidents Lincoln and Truman were both reviled in their times, history has judged them to be among the strongest leaders in American history. This simply proves Fred Barnes's formulation that in politics, as in life, the future is never a straight-line projection from the present. Also, it is fair to say that just because people hate you, that doesn't make you Abraham Lincoln."

"Domestically, while Bush's growth-inducing tax cuts added hundreds of billions of dollars to the Treasury and increased the share of taxes paid by the highest earners, the nation is in the grips of its worst financial crisis in decades. In truth, the current debacle finds its roots in the misbegotten mortgages mandated by president Carter's Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, if not president Roosevelt's creation of Fannie Mae as part of the New Deal. But as the man at the top when the bad news came down, Bush bears much of the burden."

http://www.lexisnexis.com.ezproxy.bu.edu/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T5284450513&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T5284450526&cisb=22_T5284450525&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=10882&docNo=10

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