All Posts Tagged With: "Legacy"

Dick Morris:

Will Obama govern from the left? He doesn’t have to. George W. Bush has done all the heavy lifting for him. It was under Bush that the government basically took over as the chief stockholder of our financial institutions and under Bush that we ceded our financial controls to the European Union. In doing so, he has done nothing to preserve what differentiates the vibrant American economy from those dying economies in Europe. Why have 80 percent of the jobs that have been created since 1980 in the industrialized world been created in the United States? How has America managed to retain its leading 24 percent share of global manufacturing even in the face of the Chinese surge? How has the U.S. GDP risen so high that it essentially equals that of the European Union, which has 50 percent more population? It has done so by an absence of stifling regulation, a liberation of capital to flow to innovative businesses, low taxes, and by a low level of unionization that has given business the flexibility to grow and prosper. Europe, stagnated by taxation and regulation, has grown by a pittance while we have roared ahead. But now Bush — not Obama — Bush has given that all up and caved in to European socialists.

The Bush legacy? European socialism. Who needs enemies with friends like Bush?

George W. Bush has certainly made his mark on history. His legacy is now cemented as “the most unpopular president since approval ratings were first sought more than six decades ago.”

Seventy-six percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday disapprove of how President Bush is handling his job.

That’s an all-time high in CNN polling and in Gallup polling dating back to World War II.

“No other president’s disapproval rating has gone higher than 70 percent. Bush has managed to do that three times so far this year,” says CNN polling director Keating Holland. “That means that Bush is now more unpopular than Richard Nixon was when he resigned from office during Watergate with a 66 percent disapproval rating.”

Before Bush, the record holder for presidential disapproval was Harry Truman, with a 67 percent disapproval rating in January of 1952, his last full year in office.

That’s a heckava job, Bushie.

Michael Gerson, former speechwriter and policy advisor to President Bush, writes a fantastical — as in “imaginary or groundless in not being based on reality; foolish or irrational” — puff piece about his former boss and that boss’ legacy. He lauds the “great,” yet under-appreciated, achievements of the outgoing president that demonstrate his humanity.

These achievements, it is true, have limited constituencies to praise them. Many conservatives view Medicare, education reform and foreign assistance as heresies. Many liberals refuse to concede Bush’s humanity, much less his achievements.

But that humanity is precisely what I will remember. I have seen President Bush show more loyalty than he has been given, more generosity than he has received. I have seen his buoyancy under the weight of malice and his forgiveness of faithless friends. Again and again, I have seen the natural tug of his pride swiftly overcome by a deeper decency — a decency that is privately engaging and publicly consequential.

Perhaps this “humanity” and “decency” is lost on those who more clearly remember his administration’s more glaring inhumane and indecent policies, as Andrew Sullivan rightly points out.

Michael Gerson manages to write a column about George W. Bush’s humane side without noting that this president subjected, by lawless fiat, countless individuals to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, tortured at least two dozen individuals to death, and launched a war where hundreds of thousands of innocents died because of his negligence and hubris. Yes, PEPFAR is an achievement. But set against the legacy of the first American president to authorize torture against mere suspects, to adopt the techniques of the Khmer Rouge and the Gestapo for the US, PEPFAR is sadly overwhelmed.

No president’s record - in its treatment of helpless prisoners under his total control - has ever been as indecent as this president’s. Gerson was an integral part of the administration that brought torture into the American system of government. He has yet to address this - and the challenge it presents for Christians in particular.

What I also find indecent is Bush’s legions of blindly loyal disciples continuing to whitewash the record of what this administration has done and what it has done to this nation’s fundamental principles of humanity and decency.

The Legacy has a clubhouse that seems similar to what you might find a nicer hotel, with a grand lobby, conference/meeting/banquet rooms and other nice amenities. Continued