A little trip down memory lane on this election day:
Watch him – in a foreign and hostile land – go rescue the Secret Service agent who was being detained and kept from protecting him. See him shoot his cuffs, afterwards, and greet his host.
I don’t care what anyone says – Bush is one cool customer; This guy is due some serious appreciation, even if you feel “betrayed” by him. Name the president who got it all right, all the time. This is a repost from May 22, 2006:
THE ESSENTIAL PRESIDENT BUSH
A much-esteemed, long-neglected friend sent an email this morning, which was delightful to recieve. At one point he mentioned this post from yesterday and wrote:
I think (President Bush) has lost his bearings. but then, so did Moses from time to time, it’s quite understandable.
That made me wonder a little – has President Bush lost his bearings, or have we? Is it President Bush who has broken faith with “his base” or have they?
When I read my friend’s line, I thought of a line from Pride and Prejudice, in which Elizabeth Bennett says in new appreciation of Mr. Darcy,
“In essentials, I believe, he is very much what he ever was.”
Perhaps I am a dim bulb, but President Bush has never surprised me, and that is probably why I have never felt let down or “betrayed” by him. He is, in essentials, precisely who he has ever been. He did not surprise me when he managed, in August of 2001, to find a morally workable solution in the matter of Embryonic Stem Cells. He did not surprise me when, a month later, he stood on a pile of rubble and lifted a broken city from its knees. When my FDNY friends told me of the enormous consolation and strength he brought to his meetings with grieving families, I was not surprised. When the World Series opened in New York City and the President was invited to throw the first pitch, there was no surprise in his throwing (while wearing body armor) a perfect strike.
He did not surprise me when he spoke eloquently from the National Cathedral, or again before the Joint Houses of Congress, when he laid out the Bush Doctrine. He did not surprise me when he did it again at West Point, or when he went visionary at Whitehall
There were no surprises in President Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan to battle AlQaeda. There were no surprises when he went after an Iraq which everyone – even Bill Clinton – believed had WMD, an Iraq that had tried to assassinate an American President, an Iraq whose NYC consul did not lower its flag to half-mast after 9/11.
Actually, there was one surprise. He did surprise me by going back to the UN, and back to the UN, in that mythical “rush to war” we heard so much about. But then again, the effort in Iraq was never as “unilateral” as it had been painted.
President Bush did not surprise me when, faced with the scorn of “the world community” and those ever-ready A.N.S.W.E.R. marches which sprang up condemning him and Tony Blair, he stood firm. A lesser man, a mere politician, would have folded under such enormous pressure. I was not surprised when Bush did not. (Aside – it’s funny how they just can’t get a good-sized crowd together for those protests these days, innit? Everything about Iraq was “wrong” and everything about Iraq is “failure and quagmire” and yet, somehow, we all breathe a sigh of relief that the job is done, that Saddam is out of power and that Iraq, save a very small piece of troubled land, is – in remarkably short order (and despite the wild pronouncements of John Murtha) – tasting its first morsels of democracy and liberty, and showing promise.)
It never surprised me that Yassar Arafat, formerly the “most welcomed” foreign “Head of State” in the Clinton White House was not welcomed – ever – to the Bush White House.
I wasn’t surprised by the, not one, but two tax cuts he got passed through congress, or the roaring economy – and jobs – those tax cuts created. I wasn’t surprised when he killed the unending farce that is the Kyoto treaty (remember, the thing Al Gore and the Senate unanimously voted down under Clinton?), or when he killed U.S. involvement in the International Criminal Court, or when he told the UN they risked becoming irrelevent, or when he told the Congress and the world, “America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.” Not surprising.
I wasn’t surprised at all to watch him – in a foreign and hostile land – go rescue the Secret Service agent who was being detained and kept from protecting him. Or to see him shoot his cuffs, afterwards, and greet his host with a smile.
I was never surprised that he tried to “change the tone” or tried reaching across the aisle to invite onesuch as Ted Kennedy to help draft education reform, something none of his predecessors dared touch. Just as they never dared to try to reform social security or our energy policies. The feckless ones in Congress wouldn’t get the jobs done, unfortunately, but he is a president who at least tried to get something going on those “dangerous” issues. His senior prescription plan was unsurprising and it is helping lots of people.
I was not at all to surprised to see President Bush forego the “trembling lip photo-op” moment in which most world-leaders indulged after the Christmas Tsunami of 2004 in order to get real work done, to bring immediate help to that area by co-ordinating our own military (particularly our Naval support) with Australia and Japan. Stupid, stingy American.
I was surprised, actually, to see him dance with free Georgians. I didn’t think he danced.
Let me tell you what has surprised me about George W. Bush. I have been surprised by his ability to keep from attacking-in-kind the “public servants” in Washington who – for five years – have not been able to speak of the American President with the respect he is due, by virtue of both his office and his humanity, because they are entralled with hate and owned by opportunism. I have been surprised that he has kept his commitment to “changing the tone” even when it has long been clear that the only way the tone in Washington will ever change is if everyone named Bush or Clinton or Kennedy is cleared out and “career politicians” are shown the door and – it must be said – every university “School of Journalism” is converted to a daisy garden, maaaan. We are stardust. We are golden.
I wasn’t surprised when President Bush thought that New Orleans had dodged a bullet after Hurricane Katrina, and therefore let down his guard. After all, we all thought NOLA had done so. I wasn’t surprised that he had – similarly to his actions the year before, re Hurricane Charlie – asked the Democrat Governor of Louisiana (and the Mayor) to order evacuations and suggested to her that she put the issue under Fed control to speed up processes (she did not, btw for a long while). But I was surprised that, when the press “picked and choosed” their stories while launching an unprecedented, emotion-charged, often completely inaccurate (10,000 bodies!) attack on the President – the rising waters were all his fault and he was suddenly “the uncaring racist attempting genocide by indifference” – the President did not fight back against the sea of made-up news and boilerplate, fantastic charges against him.
I was surprised, and what surprised me was the sense I had that Bush’s heart was broken. That he had done everything he could to keep faith with the nation, and that he could not believe that in a time of such terrible need, all some people could think of was, “how do we use this politically, how do we break Bush with this?” It can’t have helped that some of the hysteria was coming from the right as well as the left. Things changed after that, didn’t they? The press and the left doubled up their attacks, the far-right went very smug, and President Bush never has seemed to have regrouped his spirit.
A month later, I wasn’t surprised (although some – mostly the hard-right “I’m a Conservative before I’m anything and he’d better serve me” types – clearly were) when he nominated Harriett Miers to the SCOTUS. In fact, I’d predicted it. Up until that moment, every person President Bush had nominated to pretty much any position had won accolades from the beamish far-right, but Miers did not. She wasn’t one of their guys or gals. She wasn’t Luttig, she wasn’t Rogers-Brown. Harriet Miers? Damn that Bush! The denouncements came fast and furious and suddenly “the base” with which George W. Bush had not broken faith…broke faith with him. Suddenly they were as willing to call him a moron and an idiot as any KozKid.
Imagine that. Imagine being the guy who has given his base one splendid nominee after another, in all manner of posts, make a nomination he thinks appropriate only to find that “base” coming out with both guns, defaming his nominee and directing all manner of insult at himself. President Bush is nothing if not loyal; his loyalty is often his downfall. When he asked for a little trust (which he had surely earned) a little loyalty and a little faith, from “the base,” he got kicked in the groin, over and over again, for daring to think differently, for falling out of lockstep with his policy-wonk “betters.”
That had to be bitter, for him. At that point Bush, unchanged in essentials, might have wondered if his conservative “base” had become a bit over-confident and loose-hipped, so cock-sure of their majority (not that congress used it) so certain of their own brilliance that they were beginning to believe they didn’t need him; that he wasn’t conservative enough, after all, and that the next president was going to be the solid, “uncompassionate” conservative they’d really wanted all along.
The president who had delivered one gift after another to his base asked them to trust him, and his base sneered.
Then of course, the DPW debacle was launched and once again the far-right, his “base” went beserk, again, for very dubious reasons. Buster was the one who pointed out to me, then, that in this matter President Bush was being entirely consistent with who he had always been and that his defense of the sale was not unsound, nor unprecedented. The right didn’t care! They stomped their feet and went DU again. Even Rush Limbaugh couldn’t control them. The left, on the other hand, which should have supported the president – they would have had he been anyone else – simply exploited what they could of it.
And now, the Great Big Immigration Imbroglio of ‘06 has turned “the base” quite vicious. President Bush is no longer simply a moron or an idiot to his base, he is a bad man. He is a bad American. He is a bad president. Everything he does now, is wrong. As yesterday’s WSJ pointed out, Bush is closer to the deified Ronald Reagan on this issue than anyone on the right wants to admit. And they’d never do to Reagan what they are doing to Bush. Let’s look at a few Reagan quotes on the nature of those “far-right” conservatives, mmkay?
‘When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn’t like it.
‘Compromise was a dirty word to them and they wouldn’t face the fact that we couldn’t get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don’t get it all, some said, don’t take anything.
‘I’d learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: ‘I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.’
‘If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that’s what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.’
Mr. Reagan, I salute you. I did not vote for you. Twice. I came too late to appreciation of you. But sir, some of us have been saying the same thing to “the base” for a few weeks now. They’re still not listening. They won’t, I imagine, until they absolutely must. And perhaps it will take a staggering defeat for that to happen.
President Bush’s immigration policies have not changed materially since he was Governor of Texas. You folks knew that when you elected him, twice. He has not changed, cannot change, because his policies arise not from his poll numbers but from his convictions and his conscience. You used to love that about him. Can everything, everything that needs to be done BE done, and all as you would have it done, in the real world, a world of bitter partisanship and a corrupted press?
Some say that the GOP should consider “losing in ‘06 to win in ‘08.” Some conservatives say that they’re going to not vote – to sit out an election or vote for a third party candidate to “teach the GOP a lesson.”
The far-right gwwwwarks like a cracker-obsessed parrot: Bush has abandoned the base, he’s abandoned the base, he’s abandoned the base.
Ever stop to think maybe the president feels his base has abandoned him, that uncontent with 75%, they’ve simply moved beyond reason? Ever stop to think that while you’re calling the president every despicable name in the book and demanding his fealty or you’ll “teach him a lesson,” that perhaps there is a lesson you need to learn? That a good man, disinterested in merely laughing or crying for the camera for 8 years and looking to do a difficult job in the face of unprecedented hate, unprecedent speed of communication, unprecedented global instability, unprecedented backstabbing from within his own CIA, deserves some loyalty and the benefit of a doubt as he tries to bring you the 75% you so callously spit back at him as insufficient?
We do not know everything we think we know. Nothing is static; everything is in flux, and it is very likely that more is at work here, on many levels, than any of us can dream. There are things seen and unseen. Think about it.
Here is a question, and I’ll be writing on it some more during the week, but start thinking about it, now: HOW DO YOU RECEIVE A GOOD?
How you receive a good has a lot to do with whether any more “good” comes your way. The Conservatives got a “good” in 2000 and 2004; they’re receiving it very badly, indeed. I think the throwing-under-the-bus-of-George-W-Bush by “the base” is one of the most shameful things I have ever witnessed in all my years of watching politics, from both sides of the political spectrum. How do you receive a good?
President Bush has never surprised me. He is, in essentials, the man he ever was. It does not surprise me that he is a Christian man living a creed before he is a President, that he is a President before he is a Conservative. It seems to me precisely the right order of things.
You don’t have to agree with everything President Bush does; I don’t. But he deserves a lot better than he’s getting from his own side. He deserves, dare I say it, a spirit of compromise and workability, as opposed to the hard-line demand for a “perfect” solution (one which will never pass congress) to a problem no one else in government has even dared to address.
You “base” have received a great good. You’ve forgotten it. Continue to do so at your – at all our – great peril.
Related: Attn GOP, Meet the Woodshed
Did Bush Kill the GOP?
Thompson, Reagan and Goldilocks Republicans
Bush, Betrayal & the Nation’s Soul
Harriet, Bring the Cannoli
Cowboys, Wormwood, Big Pictures
Newsweek’s Glimpse of Bush W/ War Families
WELCOME: Pajamas Media Readers! While you’re here, please look around. I am inviting an answer (100 words or less) to the question What’s Wrong With the World?. Tonight we’re also talking about the Florida primary and the likelihood of a brokered convention, the good economic news you’re not seeing covered, my impressions of Nancy Pelosi’s wandering mind at the SOTU address, and there is always time for opera.
January 29th, 2008 | 2:21 pm | #1
Anchoress: Thanks for this post on Bush. I’m proud to have him as our president. A few years ago when he was in Minnesota, he made an unplanned stop at an ice cream stand my family and I like to frequent. We weren’t there for his visit. I really wish I had been. I would have bought him some ice cream. It would have been the least I could do for this man who has served so valiantly during the 9/11 years.
January 29th, 2008 | 2:32 pm | #2
Anchoress, thank you so much for this post. I have certainly had my disagreements with President Bush on several issues, but there has never been a doubt in my mind that he is an unfailingly decent man. That is one of the reasons Bush Derangement Syndrome is so infuriating for me… it is willful blindness to the man’s character. Policy differences exist, of course, but painting him as a bad person is simply ludicrous.
January 29th, 2008 | 2:38 pm | #3
I couldn’t agree more. I am tired of the Right deriding this man, who has led in exactly the manner he said and who has been forthwright and dignified in the office. If the Right goes down to defeat this year, they will try and blame President Bush.
January 29th, 2008 | 2:39 pm | #4
I have read this post a couple of time and each time I am grateful that someone else gets it. Pre. Bush may not be perfect and I have arguments with some of his policies, but I admire him and pray for him and feel each attack on him myself. I found it interesting that all those congress folks turn all atwitter as he walks by. They want autographs for heavens sake, and photo ops. I agree that he is one strong dude. (Yeah–he’s a dude)
January 29th, 2008 | 2:40 pm | #5
I’ve been horrified by the behavior of too many of my fellow hard-right conservatives since the Miers nomination. I did not, and do not, understand the bloody-minded eagerness to go on the attack; it was like they’d been lying in wait. People with whom I agree on nearly everything else have become as irrational on the subject of President Bush as any Democratic Underground nutjob.
Yes, I differ with the President on a number of things, and I was gravely disappointed when he signed the disastrous McCain-Feingold into law. But he’s an honest and honorable man — a rare thing anywhere, and all but extinct in his line of work.
While Bush is under the perpetual scrutiny of a brutally biased and often hateful press, no reporter has yet come up with anything that gives serious people reason to doubt his character or his courage. There is no candidate for either party now who comes close.
January 29th, 2008 | 2:47 pm | #6
Anchoress,
Thanks for the good words and good reminders.
As one who’s experienced some of that disappointment with Bush, my frustration with the Harriet Miers debacle had nothing to do with the people I felt he should have appointed, or with the suggestions of wonks. It was simply that she was unqualified for the job. One of Bush’s strengths is his loyalty to those who work for him. In Miers’ case (as in others), we saw how that loyalty could become a stubbornness and inability to admit what others could see.
My other frustration with Bush is his willingness to expand significantly the size and scope of federal government and to go along with a spendthrift Congress. Bush never met a pork-laden spending bill he didn’t like, until the Democrats took over. You may say that’s been a consistent part of his political makeup, but America needs a small-government, fiscally-responsible alternative to the Democratic party.
I don’t agree with everything he’s done or proposed, but I do think he’s a good man, and I am still fundamentally thankful for his Presidency.
January 29th, 2008 | 3:02 pm | #7
Thank you for reminding us, Anchoress.
I have felt increasingly frustrated with the conservative base because they’ve become as deranged as the leftists and traitors because Bush isn’t their ideal of a perfect conservative.
If they don’t wake up, we’ll either have Hillary or Obama as president, or a total disaster of a republican as president because certain checkpoints are not met.
I could go on, but I won’t.
January 29th, 2008 | 3:02 pm | #8
Bridey mentions McCain-Feingold.
That was very hard to swallow, too — not so much because of the content of the bill, but because Bush said he believed it to be unconstitutional, yet signed it anyway. I simply could not and do not understand that. I don’t like to think of Bush not taking his oath of office seriously, but if he truly believed the bill was unconstitutional he had a duty to veto it. You’re not allowed to wash your hands of it and hope the Supreme Court will make things right.
January 29th, 2008 | 3:07 pm | #9
McCain-Feingold is to me his biggest misstep – relying on the SCOTUS to get it right. That was a biggie.
As to Harriet Miers, how do you know she wasn’t qualified – because the ivy leaguers said so? I’ve never bought that, and I think many on the right utterly disgraced themselves in the manner in which they treated that nomination. Bush deserved much better from “the base” on that one.
January 29th, 2008 | 3:32 pm | #10
Bush stated that Meirs was the “best-qualified person in the United States” for the Supreme Court — yet she had no judicial experience, no background in Constitutional law, and outside her work as Bush’s counsel, her legal experience was almost totally administrative. That Harry Reid suggested her didn’t help, either.
Her only real qualification was Bush’s recommendation of her character. For a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land, I’d like a little more to go on. Yes, it was indeed shameful the way many on the right displayed adolescent spite, selfish motives, and shallow egos, but I think it’s possible to have opposed Miers simply for the thinness of her resume.
January 29th, 2008 | 3:37 pm | #11
In praise of Bush, I deeply admired his thoughtful compromise on embryonic stem cell research. I know people in the pro-life movement who criticized him for it, but I think his position was intelligent, compassionate, and reasonable. The media, of course, misrepresented what he was trying to do and lambasted him, but I think he carved out a policy which recognized the reality of unfortunate facts (already existing stem cell lines developed from the destruction of embryos) while drawing a sound moral line. That he did so under severe criticism and in defense of human beings who could not vote for him is to his eternal credit.
January 29th, 2008 | 3:41 pm | #12
I’m not going to get into a long discourse on Harriet Miers again – it’s unproductive and you can read my archives – but my feeling was that the East Coast Right had their list of who they wanted to see in that post (”the best person in the country for the job” was a list of many) and Harriet was not it, and therefore they had a really ugly tantrum. Silly me, I actually had believed these very same people when they had declared earlier – when Bush nominated Roberts – that “the president is entitled to his nominees; the nominee is entitled to make his/her case.” Suddenly, that didn’t matter.
Bush’s own character and his previous nominations on federal judge seats indicated to me that he had earned the right to be trusted – at least through hearings – on that nominee. Resume’s don’t always tell the story. If you looked at Clinton’s you’d think he was the best guy in the world, wouldn’t you? I trusted the president to know who he was nominating, there, and wondered if he was attempting a rope-a-dope of the Democrats that the right – in their fits – would not let him play.
The president was entitled to his nominee. He was entitled to a hearing and he didn’t get it, because the right kicked and screamed until it became stupid. The Democrats on their worst day couldn’t have vilified the president and his nominee more than some members on the right did, and that was shameful. And – as Forrest Gump said – that’s all I have to say about that.
January 29th, 2008 | 4:45 pm | #13
On the morning of November 5, 2008, whomever we end up electing, Democrat or Republican, at least half of this country is going to start missing George W. and they will rue the day that they ever had a negative word to say about him.
The morning after the election, we will look at the newspaper with dread, saying to ourselves, “my God, what have we done?” President Hillary . . . President Obama . . . President Romney . . . President McCain . . . President Guiliani . . . President Huckabee — the very thought gives you a stomachache – each and every one of these causes a fair amount of unease and distrust.
But it is the sad history of mankind that we turn on the good and decent in preference to the evil and mediocre. You reap what you sow.
January 29th, 2008 | 5:19 pm | #14
There are many of us who, like you, view the President’s convictions and yes, his flaws, with admiration and respect. He truly governs from his heart, and demonstrates an unusual strength to weather such assault from his own countrymen and elected peers.
Yes, Anchoress. Many of us do share your honest assessment of this CIC. But few of us can express this with your eloquence.
Thank you
January 29th, 2008 | 5:43 pm | #15
Anchoress:
That was a great post. I have decided that I will simply have to settle for being a center right Independent. After watching conservative Republicans eviscerate their own president I simply have lost any desire to be one of them.
I agree on Miers also. Time and again these hypocrites said that Bush had a right to his nominee and the nominee had a right to an up or down vote. That lasted until the nominee he wanted was not on their short list. Then they took it upon themselves to decide that she was unqualified and make complete idiots of themselves and a mockery of the process. I am so tired of hearing know it alls state emphatically that the woman was not qualified when the truth is they can not possibly know that.
As for immigration, Bush has been consistent about his feelings on this issue for years, if it was so important to people that they think it is ok to call for his impeachment or change his name to Jorge, then perhaps they should have paid more attention in the first place.
All in all Bush’s base stabbed him in the back, not the other way around.
As for Reagan, if he were around today these people would be calling him Ronaldo and demanding his impeachment.
January 29th, 2008 | 6:16 pm | #16
Excellent. You have really nailed what politics (and Bush) is and can reasonably be expected to do. Politics is a tool that can be used for good; it is intrinsically imperfect. If you want to bring about the ideal world and union with the One, look to religion. If you want to ameliorate the condition of individuals in a nation and society, look to politics. These two entities are not mutually exclusive, and should be mutually enriching, but they are not the same. I think that’s the liberals’ essential error.
January 29th, 2008 | 6:46 pm | #17
A Little Trip Down Memory Lane……
I think The Anchoress has it right in this post……
January 29th, 2008 | 7:26 pm | #18
Thank you for this post about President Bush. I enjoyed being reminded of a couple of my favorite Bush episodes – the World Series first pitch and the grab of the secret service agent. He is a good and descent man, whose intentions seem to be misunderstood by so many.
January 29th, 2008 | 10:21 pm | #19
Thank you so much for writing this farewell to President Bush.
I really think he is a good and kind man who, in time, will be seen as one of the strongest presidents of all time as he never quit, he never got down to the level of some and he will not change in order to pacify the enemy.
I think I am feeling grief because he is going away but I want to see him leaving so he and his wonderful wife laura can laugh more and do as they want. I wonder how Laura is as I am sure she has been hurt more times than can be counted when the slurs were done everyday. Well, they have a great wedding coming up and I am sure all the Bushes will be having a great time.
I feel quite afraid of the future if a strong man, a very strong man does not get elected. It is the entire world they are responsible for and not one of them look as good as the present president.
Thanks for the wonderful comments as well, it is so nice when I find good words for the president. I am sure there are more good people out there who feel the same.
January 30th, 2008 | 6:08 am | #20
Harriet Miers seemed horribly unqualified for the position of supreme court justice. She would have made a good federal circuit judge, but I agree with Pastor Jeff on the highest court in the land. Bush is a man of uncompromising loyalty – a quality I respect greatly. It can lead to mistakes, however.
Immigration becoming a snafu was partly Bush’s fault. He tried a hard sell for the bill, but his base didn’t buy it. He completely misread the base, who had bad memories of the last immigration bill. His allies implied criticism of the bill was tantamount to racism. I’m use to that kind of garbage from the left, but not from the GOP leadership. I felt completely disgusted with the bill and the La Raza posturing surrounding it.
Bush is much smarter than people give him credit for, and at least as charitable as people claim. He is beyond all doubt a decent individual, the kind of guy you invite back. Were he more articulate, he could have defined an era of conservative thought. He can “settle” for leading the nation to edge of victory in the War on Terror.
January 30th, 2008 | 1:43 pm | #21
Thanks Anchoress. I’m a member of the 30% Club, as I like to refer to myself.
Personally, I’ll be happy to have my fellow Texan back home. I’ve grown weary from watching him become the favored punching bag for so called ‘conservatives’. As you say, he is the same man he was when he was elected in 2000. The only thing that has changed is his no nation-building foreign policy, but 9/11 changed him. It changed me too. Actually, I changed with him.
As far as the turning of the other 70% against him, I likened it the other day to group of blog associates to a woman who marries a man who she thinks she can change to be what she wants him to be only to find out she can’t. She faults him for being the person she knew he was all along.
And you’re right about some of this hurting his heart, I’ve had similar experiences in my professional life and I truly do recognize how much he has been hurt, not by disloyalty, but by the doubt of his character.
We’ll be so glad to have him back.
January 30th, 2008 | 4:57 pm | #22
Bush: A Retrospective…
While many conservatives are down on Bush and haven’t been true supporters for some time, The Anchoress reminds us of his many virtues and accomplishments in a long, thoughtful essay. It’s fair to note the many ways in which he’s……
January 30th, 2008 | 5:51 pm | #23
Great Post, Lets also not forget all of Pres. Bush’s work with Africa. How many lives have been saved with his policies over there. Count me in the 30%.
January 30th, 2008 | 7:59 pm | #24
Thank you for this. Too often lately, I have found myself at a loss for words (an otherwise highly uncommon experience for me) when people I know and trust shock me with how down on the President they are. They question me on why I am not. And all too often, I am unable to reply in a cogent manner. This post really helps. I wish I had read it back then, but I missed it when you first posted it.
At any rate, you capture what I most admire about Mr. Bush. It is a characteristic that I was not anticipating when he was first elected. But how little it is recognized and appreciated by nearly everyone is evidence of how debased our political discourse has become in this country. He is utterly consistent. Especially in the War of Terror, he told the world exactly what he was going to do in two speeches in Mid-September, 2001. And everything he proposed, he did, everything he predicted, came to pass. Where he failed, if anywhere, was in underestimating how much those whose real self-interest was with him would misguidedly, irrationally, oppose him.
Thanks again. Some thoughts obviously are true when they still ring so strongly after two years!
January 30th, 2008 | 11:12 pm | #25
I can’t find the “visionary at Whitehall” video at the link you give. Where is it?
January 30th, 2008 | 11:47 pm | #26
That was really beautiful, Anchoress, and I’m going to send it to some friends of mine whom I know will also really appreciate it like I did. By the way, I disagree with people who say Harriet Myers was “unqualified”. Frankly, I don’t think the Constitution is all that complicated. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW is extremely complicated, but all that is legal gobbledegook that, if anything, is wrangling to DISTORT the basic and very clear meanings of the Constitution to squeeze it into somebody else’s idea of what they want, not what was intended. What was needed to fill that seat was not another tricky and over-cerebral lawyer, but an honest, clear-thinking, moral, principled human being, a person of character perhaps much like the character of President George W. Bush that you have shown here.
January 31st, 2008 | 12:31 am | #27
Rex, go to the WH Site and hit the real video button. You might have to install a plug in.
January 31st, 2008 | 2:43 am | #28
Wow, that was really something Anchoress, and I’m sorry that you’re getting such bilious responses in the comments at Ace’s blog.
George W. Bush, for all his faults, is clearly an extraordinary man of great character, and after reading this post I’m a little ashamed of how easily I’ve dismissed that on too many occasions.
I truly think that Mr. Bush, a man of inherent decency, was never quite prepared for the reflexive indecency of those never willing to give him a chance. It must be bewildering
January 31st, 2008 | 4:08 am | #29
Thanks for reminding me of the goodness of GWB. That was very classy. Thank You
January 31st, 2008 | 8:56 am | #30
[...] The real litmus test is which one, out of all these bozos, is worthy to lick this man’s boots? [...]
January 31st, 2008 | 10:57 am | #31
I’m a few days late to the “Dubya party”, but I want to thank you for the beautiful portrayal of this dear President. He will be greatly missed when he’s not at the helm of the country next year. It’s become great sport to see how badly someone can bad-mouth “W”, but I am most grateful for his leadership over the past seven years.
January 31st, 2008 | 7:12 pm | #32
[...] hate President Bush or love him–or are somewhere in between, I really think you should read this blog post by The Anchoress. [Hat Tip to American [...]
February 1st, 2008 | 7:24 am | #33
A tribute to Bush…
I see the man as a very solid, decent human being and as a good but flawed president. I wasn’t going to write anything about this, but recently, Ace linked to a post by The Anchoress making a similar case for Bush. She starts by revisiting Bush’s cal…
February 1st, 2008 | 10:25 am | #34
McCain wins… Giuliani likely out……
… and I’m trying hard to give a rat’s patoot… It’s tough for me to get excited about the Republican field… Mitt Romney seems to me to be slicker than a used car salesman. John McCain, let’s face it, is…
February 1st, 2008 | 3:43 pm | #35
Stuff from my desktop – Feb. 1, 2008…
Jeff Stark at StarkTruth.com has coined the term electile dysfunction: the inability to become aroused over any of the choices for president put forth by either party in the 2008 election year. For me, perhaps the most unpalatable aspects of…
February 3rd, 2008 | 9:45 am | #36
Thank you for a beautiful post. Tears are running down my face.
February 8th, 2008 | 10:03 am | #37
Mitt! Mitt! Where Art Thou???…
Having shuffled off to elysium last night in a deep state of Romney-induced funk, the Blog Princess sprang from betwixt the sadly vacant marital sheets this morning grimly determined to find something to be cheerful about. Thus, when the alarm……
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