Sunday, June 22, 2008
Historical perspective
From The Telegraph:
As he leaves the White House at the end of his second term, the President has a poll rating of only 23 per cent, and is widely disliked and even despised. His foreign policy has been judged a failure, especially in view of the long, painful, costly war that he declared, which is still not over.
He doesn't get on with his own party's presidential candidate, who is clearly distancing himself, and had lost many of his closest friends and staff to scandals and forced resignations. The New Republic, a hugely influential political magazine, writes that his historical reputation will be as bad as that of President Harding...
I am writing, of course, about Harry S Truman, generally regarded today as one of the greatest of all the 43 presidents, and the man who set the United States on the course that ended decades later in the defeat of Communism....
Judging by the rise in the value of the Iraqi dinar, the huge drop in the number of Iraqi deaths in the insurgency, the number of provinces now cleansed of al-Qa'eda, and the level of arms confiscations by the Iraqi Army in Sadr City, the new American "clear and hold" tactics have succeeded far better than the cynics ever thought possible even 12 months ago.
Give Iraq five, ten or twenty years, and Bush's decision to undertake the surge - courageously taken in the face of all bien pensant and "expert" opinion on both sides of the Atlantic - will rank alongside some of Harry Truman's great decisions of 1945-53.
The point, of course, is that history remembers only a couple of things about a presidency. Fair or not, the legacy of George W. Bush will turn almost entirely on whether international Islamist terrorism peaked, or not, on September 11, 2001.
7 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun Jun 22, 02:20:00 PM:
For "Harry S Truman," substitute "Franklin Pierce."
By 
Sara (Pal2Pal), at
Sun Jun 22, 04:20:00 PM:
The way that I know how out of touch I am is that the two things that turned me around from voting for GWB just because he wasn't the coward snake in the grass Kerry was his "Bring it on," and "Wanted dead or alive." My reaction was finally a man who will be a man. I became an ardent supporter at that point and I haven't wavered.
I don't know where I'll put my strong loyalties after he leaves office. I find Barack Obama, the poster boy for Beta males, beneath contempt. I do not trust John McCain, who seems to be more interested in not having people mad at him than in actually standing up. I'll vote for him because the other guy is so repulsive, but I can't see myself feeling any great loyalty to him.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sun Jun 22, 04:44:00 PM:
"I find Barack Obama, the poster boy for Beta males..."
Love it.
By , at
Sun Jun 22, 05:38:00 PM:
Barack, don't let them get away with calling you that. Barack, do you hear me? Barack, Barack, are you listening to me?
Michelle
By , at
Sun Jun 22, 09:28:00 PM:
I have not agreed with much of W's agenda, although it is clear and will be clearer still that his domestic programs were long-sighted and effective in many ways. As far as his reaction to 9/11 and the strategy that has grown from it, I am inordinately fond of challenging random individuals to explain to me what they would have done differently and for what reasons. To date I have not heard a single cogent and well-represented argument on the topic. It's surprising what little can be said once you've taken away the liberal talking points.
W's not the conservative I would have wanted in the Oval Office (Harriet Meirs, Alberto Gonzales, Immigration, etc.), but he is a man in the end.
Sadly, because it is clear that Americans don't agree with this view, we will all find out through 2012 how much we miss steadfastness and personal integrity in our leaders. Very sadly.
By , at
Mon Jun 23, 04:04:00 PM:
I believe every Freshman Senator and Congressman should get the book "Truman" by David McCullough. It is an outstanding book about a simple man with a very clear creed and belief that America is the greatest country in the world. Whenever there was a tough decision, he always put his country before his party or other country's interests. Along with the book "Profiles in Courage" one would at least realize that some times doing the right thing not the easy thing will have its own rewards...
By , at
Tue Jun 24, 10:44:00 PM:
I have heard it said that GWB will be compared to Lincoln in 60 years or so. After reading the comments posted here, I believe this to be true. He is a man with Texas sized cojones although not the conservative I would prefer.
