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Primus' Articles
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Norman Vincent Peale
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Why George W. Bush was a Good President |
Why George W. Bush was a Good President
In spite of hysteria and lies from many in and out of the United States, particularly the liberal media establishment that despises all Republicans and calls them stupid from the day they become serious candidates, George W. Bush was one of our better Presidents. In fact, historians will no doubt rate him a near great President, and on my own list of the Presidential performances, he is rated eighth, just below McKinley and above Eisenhower. While there are many great things about the Bush Administration and it was indeed, after Reagan's, the greatest of my lifetime, I will focus on three issues here, fighting the war on terrorism, setting a moral tone as an example of a man of decency, good conduct, and morality showing a man of faith and family values in the White House after it was seriously lacking, and punishing corporate criminals.
First I will digress a little to talk about his upbringing and success in winning the White House. In 2000 George Walker Bush emerged as the front runner to challenge the Democrats for the role of forty-third President. The heir apparent Al Gore, had been a longsuffering assistant to Bill Clinton, the most evil man to hold the White House, and along with his good-hearted wife “Tipper,” had been tainted by a brush of guilt by association. In fact Al Gore had been a conservative Tennessee senator who had first tried to run for President in 1988 (which at age thirty-eight would have made him the youngest to secure a major party nomination) running the most conservative campaign of the Democrats, in fact it would probably be the most conservative Democratic one since Gary Udall in 1976 tried to become the first L.D.S. President. Over the previous years, Gore was tainted by his involvement with the Clinton Administration and his neurotic tendency to lie and quote the most outrageous claims touted by left wing “experts.” In spite of the realities, the economy was doing well and Gore was expected to win. The Republicans on the other hand, mounted great offense convincing the voters that it was necessary to see the Clinton-Gore team go. As Bush emerged as the candidate who would get the nomination and challenger after challenger dropped out of the race, he went head-to-head with Gore. It was also a time that the left-wing media had a field day, calling Bush a legacy, saying he was only in his position because he was the son of a President, that he was a trust-fund baby who never had to work, and that he was downright dumb. In fact, George W. Bush had followed separate paths, notwithstanding an early run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, his whole life had been an exercise in distancing himself from his father's career and policies, though the two were very close personally. In regards to being dumb, the fact remains George W. Bush scored in the top five percent on his verbal scores when taking intelligence requirements to get into Yale, and his math score was even higher meaning he is more proficient in the English language than over 95% of Americans and more intelligent in math than all but the most ingenious ones. He got into Yale, not as a legacy, because very few people outside of Texas had heard of his father in 1965 and he graduated from Yale and went on to Harvard business school, becoming the first President with an MBA from Harvard. He was also the first President to fly jet planes in the National Guard. After losing his first race for the House he took a different path, committed himself fully to Christianity and the sober lifestyle, and became a devoted husband and father. Within a few years he was in charge of a Major League baseball team and ready to run successful campaigns. When the media could not as easily downplay his intelligence they turned to an alleged past involving drugs and a D.U.I. charge he had over twenty years before the election. Bush indeed admitted he had done things he was not proud of but wisely declined making them, or his one hundred eighty degree turn campaign issues, especially when these were the same liberal media who said Bill Clinton's admitted affairs in the Oval Office and alleged harassment of women were irrelevant to his performance as President. Though Bush won an impressive twenty-nine state victory, the media downplayed that because he failed to win the popular vote, in spite of a hysterical campaign to recount Florida's votes, even the most liberal sources showed he won decisively in Florida, and may have own the popular vote if more military ballots had been counted in time.
By the time he became President it was clear he was modeling his career more after Ronald Reagan than any single person we have seen in our lifetime and it was a good thing. In addition to Reagan being almost universally loved by conservatives he waste man who saved the face of Western civilization and with it Christian culture as we know it. Since Bush was modeling a more Christian faith-based version of the Republican Party than any of his predecessors in a long time, it was fitting that he was taking examples out of Reagan's book. But those who think this is somehow un-American or theocratic have about as much to learn about our national faith as most fanatical Muslims who think acts of terrorism brings honor to their countries. In fact, the foundations of our country started with acknowledging God, and George W. Bush talking about his faith and making it an active part of his campaign was clearly an American exercise of Constitutional democracy in action.
George W. Bush had run a campaign that showed both his idealistic and modern pragmatic forms. Like anyone desiring a great task like the Presidency, Bush was hoping for the continuation of peace and freedom and heading a government that could set some laws in place and continue enforcing our standard for fair law and foreigner relations well, without great active activism at the Presidential level. Instead within less than nine months of his taking office our country was hit by the worst terrorist attack to brutalize a Western nation in history.
Within hours of the attack on the Twin Towers, George W. Bush was addressing the nation and even sending loving and hopeful messages to ambassadors and heads of state from other countries. The Queen of England was the first to announce solidarity with us and along with Prime Minister Tony Blair, she declared unity with America saying grief is the price we pay for love. The next twenty or so weeks involved the greatest military undertaking of a U.S. President, in fact the greatest of any democracy in over half a century. First responding to the need to eliminate a criminal government in Afghanistan that was terrorizing its people and harboring the confessed terrorists who bombed our country, Bush sent weapons and Special Forces to the Northern Alliance that was fighting the Taliban there. Within a matter of two months, tens of thousands of American and NATO forces were fighting in Afghanistan and retook the government from the Taliban in Kabul by early December.
What will arguably be George W. Bush's greatest legacy and which many in the mainstream media and even some in conservative circles have refused to recognize is not the overthrow of the Taliban, or the Iraq regime, or the greatest coalition of forces to fight for freedom since World War II as remarkable as all of these are. Though I'm (as you know) a staunch Republican and one of my few chances to be really happy about politics were the two times George W. Bush was elected to the office, I studied the opposition fairly well and know in spite of rhetoric, what the Democratic Party is good at, in spite of their rhetoric is doing what their constituents really want. Some of this in turn results in genuine interest in what is best for our country, as, though she is one of my least political people ever, (and I regard her with other wicked people of my lifetime), Hillary Clinton voted the right way in everything in the war on terror and has center/right positions where it comes to defending our homeland and fighting terrorists wherever they may strike. All I know of politics tells me most of the top Democratic candidates including Al Gore would have done the same in Bush's position. IF (God forbid) Al Gore had won the White House in 2000, he too would have gone into Afghanistan and taken out the criminal government with help from NATO and our allies. And despite what he has said, the chubby treehugger would also have gone into Iraq to remove a criminal controlling a major region where the U.S. had interests and where terrorists determine to undermine the U.S. and our allies continued to roam freely, often with power. And for all their rhetoric, Bill Clinton, Bill Bradley, and even Pat Buchanan, if they sat in the Oval Office, would have likely done the same things Bush did to protect our international interests and stop terror from ever striking the homeland again. Only Ralph Nader would still be stuck with his head between his legs, wondering, first how on earth did I get here! And Second how could we counteract this without the military blowing anyone up or damaging the environment. Indeed anyone in my lifetime with a serious chance of being elected President would fight terrorism in similar fashion. What George W. Bush did that was most impressive in the war for continued democracy against Fascist, particularly Islamic, aggression was getting Pakistan, the world's largest Muslim country, and the one bordering the worst enclaves of terror, on our side. Though they had previously sympathized with the Taliban, believing they were bringing order to Afghanistan, one of the most difficult places in the world to bring order, by 2003 there were five thousand special forces from the Pakistani military helping us secure Afghan border and helping us locate and arrest terrorists and suspects. The smooth, Machiavellian, forceful, loving, but democratic kick in the butt given to Pakistan to make those potential enemies some of our best potential allies, could only have been done by someone like the macho Texan, or the gentlemanly but omnivorous tough studied Midwesterner turned Californian who brought down the Berlin Wall. The wining Baby Boomer from Arkansas, the lying legacy from Tennessee, the New Jersey basketball player, and especially the waffling hippie mediocre bureaucrat from Massachusetts, John Kerry, would never have been swift enough to deal with Pakistan in a way that saved tens of thousands of American lives and set the world on a straight path to democracy.
In fact while President Bush's greatest victory was specifically to get Pakistan as a key ally, his more wide reaching and permanent victory (in spite of being branded by the Left as his failure) was the grand coalition he put together to fight the war on terrorism and specifically serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom. About a year after 9/11 Bush had so much popularity even in the Middle East alone, by the time he talked about expanding the war on terror, four countries in the Middle East were already on board with us, and supporting the overthrow of the criminal regime in Iraq. Afghanistan was a willing partner as was Kuwait the country for whom we had done battle in 1991. While the United Kingdom was of course, our ever present ally and staunchest supporter, Tony Blair showed a side never thought of him before, and the liberal Labor cub, roared in Churchillian fashion to raise cubs from Poland to Guatemala and even give the seeds for a free world of Iraqi jungle cubs. While Tony Blair rose to the challenge in the mold of Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, other stalwart leaders for democracy, John Howard in Australia and our fledgling democratic allies, especially Alexander Kwansiuieski and his government in Poland heard the call and supplied troops to fight the ground war in Iraq. And while NATO forces were already serving in Afghanistan the countries in the historic alliance chose sides that showed us who were our true friends (and by extension the nations ready to swim rather than sink) in the Twenty-First Century. Good democracies in the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and the new and tenacious democracies in the Czech Republic and Hungary came to our aid, while other NATO democracies tried to tell us we were making a mistake and should never “invade” Iraq. And while not able to send ground troops, Azerbaijan Bahrain, Bulgaria Chile, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Guatemala, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, South Korea, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates immediately announced solidarity with our cause for a free Iraq. Eventually Japan sent ground forces to help police the areas where Americans and British troops had been holding down the fort, their stalwart, then prime minister Takenor Karikaze made that bold move, while troops from Spain, El Salvador, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Norway Togo, Morocco, and the UAE provided technical and medical support working as our allies with all but ground troops. And though they had originally opposed the war, forces from New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa eventually came in to help keep the region from chaos while American and other Coalition forces accomplished the mission of securing the streets and cities of Iraq to hand back to the Iraqis. For some reason, the hostility of France, Germany, Belgium and Russia was a major deterrent for American liberals who never wanted to go in, while in fact, these countries have not been central to the overall picture of freedom in many years, and President Bush formed the greatest historic coalition of freedom since World War II. As the French themselves can tell you they stay out of anything they cannot dominate. The Russians don't really value freedom much to begin with. While Germany does have troops in Afghanistan and is essentially a stable democracy it is still a country with various opinions that always gives its liberal minority over-representation. And as Dennis Miller pointed out, a small country like Belgium with so many cultures is sure to waffle.
In fact the President who built a coalition that came to include thirty-seven countries, the greatest alliance since World War II, got branded a lone cowboy, “going it alone” in a new world of diplomacy and “scoffed at the semi-formal “rules of engagement.” In fact it was the naysayers, the French, Russians, Belgians, the U.N. (and occasionally Germany, Canada, and the Vatican) who tried to prevent the right opinion, and that shared by over ninety percent of the major contributors to the U.N. From prevailing. Remember the good cowboys were always the ones who could take lots with them. If anything the French and Russians took an isolated position to try to alienate the U.S. and our allies and keep them from being leaders of the world. And while Turkey, a country with whom we have good relations for over fifty years (and to talk about all their positions leading up to and during the war would take a whole other article) ended up coming to our side, three countries that we had previously saved from Fascism, defied whatever semblance of international community there may be by thumbing their nose at us. The idea of allowing a U.N. full of despots and criminal governments to make such a critical decision is an insult to our intelligence and sense of justice for our right to freedom from fear. The thought of allowing weapons inspectors and alleged “human rights watchers” from Syria, Libya, Iran, and Mauritania to have a say in our national policy is a bad joke too serious to be laughed at.. Thank God President Bush stood his ground and thank Him that allies like Tony Blair, John Howard, and wise leaders in Poland, Spain, Japan, Italy, Portugal, etc. rose up to do the right thing. After having violated fifteen U.N. Resolutions the U.S. and Coalition forces had every right to remove Saddam Hussein's criminal government. Far from what his enemies said about him “going right in and doing whatever he wanted despite what everybody thought,” he waited over a year to try to let sanctions and the combined effort of Iraqi dissidents and the international community depose Hussein. When all else failed, war was resorted to, and it is in the best interest of both the Iraqis and the rest of the world. We can thank God our efforts succeeded and the bureaucrats from France and Russia and the U.N. were ignored. The educated observer will ask why these U.N. Diplomats from Third World countries favor despots over democrats when most of the people in their countries are always wanting to rid themselves of tyrants. The only answer is that when someone like Kofi Annan becomes a millionaire hotshot in the U.S. he turns his back on his own people (to whom he should be devoting the bulk of his support and dedication) and backs bad guys because it is easier to have them watch his back then rouse their anger and trust the good guys (who do fight fair) to protect him.
We should also wonder why there has not been a major attack on American soil since 9-/11/ 2001. While if it were up to Al-Queda and their sympathizers, they would be bombing the U.S. and killing large numbers of Americans every day, in fact it is only the systems of defense set in place by President Bush and his Administration that have protected us from further terror. Again we can thank God that George W. Bush, not Al Gore, a Clinton, or Barak Obama was in office after the terrorists struck.
Bush's second great accomplishment to set the U.S. back on a clear path was his affirming of faith and values. While not the center of his Administration, since security issues needed to be front and center, having an honest, trustworthy, humble. loving, good-hearted man of faith and moral courage at the helm for eight years gave us back much of our dignity and confidence that were lost after Clinton and 9-11. Sadly many people of my generation (and I extend the net here, to catch mostly people who were in high school when I was in college and the five years after, I would be one of the older members of the generation while the classes of 1995, 1998, and 2000 were the younger) grew up thinking that is okay to lie because “even the President does it.” America has been sadly lacking in moral virtue especially among our youth for the last fifteen years or so. When the hippie philosophy was in vogue they told us never to trust anyone under thirty, today it is harder to trust anyone under sixty. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and his Administration proved that a national leader, a President indeed the leaders of the free world can be honest, trustworthy, and lead the world for morality and justice without sacrificing our security but instead protecting it like no one since Reagan had before.
His third main achievement and the only one that came in the department of legislation, from people often ambivalent or hostile to our President's success was punishing corporate criminals. While the President is the leader of the executive branch and his job is therefore to enforce laws, provide for our security, and set a tone as leader and representative of our nation, many Presidents, particularly Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt are known for changes to our laws. Very little in the way of domestic legislation came during eight years of the Bush Administration (except in regards to fighting terrorism like the Patriot Act which is also a discussion for a separate article) but one thing he reformed was the punishment of corporate criminals. Such so called white-collar crimes steal millions of dollars from Americans and confuse the entire economy including the concept of pensions, annuities, savings accounts, and family funds. Early in his Administration Bush got involved in the perspective ambivalence when some of our nation's top corporate leaders were accused of crimes and the talk of the liberal media and the “barber shop and water cooler and taxicab” said these were the same people who put Bush in office to begin with. Immediately the President made it clear which side he was taking, that he was the leader of the good and honest Americans, the many who try to enter the workforce, buy a house, provide for their families, raise their kids and send them to school, live and hopefully retire comfortably, and not with the few who steal. He signed groundbreaking legislation providing for mandatory sentences for federal criminals who steal corporate money. As soon as the law was in effect, the scams of the eighties, nineties, and early 2000s would no longer be possible without the perpetrators being punished with mandatory ten, twenty, and in extreme cases even twenty-five year sentences. While as a general rule nobody but violent criminals need be punished so harshly, when corporate criminals deliberately steal and in doing so destroy the careers and livelihoods of many innocent people, in some cases taking away their retirement, their college funds, and even their ability to provide necessities; such people, like drug dealers have committed a violent crime and are just as deserving of long prison sentences as any violent criminal.
More than any of his domestic work, this cemented his legacy as a President for good, a man who took power out of the hands of Washington, the U.N., and the corporate world, and put it back in the hands of decent citizens.
Primus S. Butler
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