Jules Crittenden is the Boston Herald city editor and columnist. He has reported on politics, crime, science, maritime matters, foreign affairs and conflict in the United States, Asia, the Balkans and the Middle East.
"The incoming Obama administration is showing some astonishing signs of good sense as it prepares its ground in war and foreign policy. The change mantra appears to be giving way to a practical, stay-the-course approach."
"As the transition progresses and Barack Obama's inauguration draws closer, it's a good moment to mull the gifts George W. Bush has left for the incoming president.
Bush has made the world a better place, and if Obama wants to do the same, he will take the good things Bush has done and move forward with them."
We say thank you to Pres. Bush for making all of those tough calls.
What would the Middle East look like today if Saddam Hussein was still in power? My guess is that the Dems, like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, would've criticized Bush for leaving Hussein in power!
Again, this is a man who had invaded his neighbors, used chemical weapons twice, violated every UN resolution and murdered thousands of his citizens.
Worse than that, what kind of foreign policy would Obama be inheriting if we had listen to him and the Dems back in 2006?
Along the way, Pres. Bush was blamed for everything including your wife's favorite TV show. It's time to put some of this irrational anti-Bushism in some historical perspective.
Energy crisis:
"Bush was unfairly blamed during the summer as gas prices soared.
In the short term, the high oil prices were the result of market forces that are beyond the control of the American president.
In the long term, the blame for not having a sound energy policy for the United States goes to every president since Nixon."
On the housing crisis:
"It was not George W. Bush who set up Fannie and Freddie and encouraged home ownership even for folks who could not afford it.
Bush did not force these people to buy bigger houses than they could afford by lying about their income.
He did not force people to ignore the contracts while signing Adjustable Rate Mortgages and then again use any available inflated equity to buy plasma TVs.
There was only one policy that could have prevented the catastrophe—responsibility, both personal and corporate."
Iraq War and the shameful poll-reading by Dems:
"As much as I disagree with him about the Iraq war, I cannot hold him as the sole scapegoat.
Congress—Democrats included—was complicit in the decisions that led to the war.
The same people who were spineless to oppose a popular war called for a cut and run only after the support for that war plummeted in polls."
Katrina and New Orleans, a city run by Democrats:
"Bush has also been charged with singlehandedly botching Hurricane Katrina.
But he did not design or build the levees that were breached.
The Hurricane Contingency plans for the area were formulated by the City of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana.
The response from FEMA was inadequate because it was something that nobody has even seen or expected before.
It did not help that people in the city ignored the mandatory evacuation orders."
Leadership and his real legacy:
"He showed real leadership at a time when the country was the most vulnerable after 9/11.
And he has managed to keep the country safe from terrorist attacks thus far."
Minorities:
"He has also appointed more minorities and women to high positions in the government than any other president.
Who will miss Bush?
"After all these efforts, the people who are going to miss him the most are liberals.
They will have to finally start owning responsibility for the way the country is being run.
They had successfully morphed their “Blame America First” slogan to “Blame Dubya First” and once he is out of the White House, there is only going to be a certain period of time before that goes stale."
What about all of those Europeans who despise Bush:
"Mr Bush, of course, is more lame duck than poisoned chicken. The eyes of the world are on his successor.
But I still harbour a conviction that for all their expectation of a brave new dawn, the Europeans are going to miss Mr Bush in ways that they are only beginning to understand.
They'll miss, first, having a villain in the White House.
It's a really convenient excuse to avoid doing anything yourself on pressing global concerns." (Baker)
Yes, the Euros will now have to explain to Obama why they don't want to fulfill their NATO obligations in Afghanistan. Also, the Germans will now have to explain why their cozy business ties with Iran won't change either.
The WSJ has a good editorial today called Germany Loves Iran:
"Readers may recall that Barack Obama assailed President Bush for not doing more diplomatically to contain Iran, including more vigorous sanctions.
Job one on that score for Mr. Obama would seem to be persuading his many admirers in Germany.
Good luck."
For much too long, our allies have put off the tough decisions by blaming "The Texas Cowboy".
Let's see what they do now! During Obama's trip to Germany, they cheered every line except the one about sending troops to Afghanistan!
What about the Bush economy:
"The U.S. annual economic growth rate has been 2.2% through this presidency, the highest of any advanced country, and the economy expanded 19% in this time, well ahead of other large economies.
The same pattern was replicated in per-capita income and spending, investment of all kinds and unemployment, which ran at half a percent below the average of the Clinton years and three full points below the Eurozone.
Until the last three months of his eight-year presidency, Bush avoided a recession." (Black)
Not a bad record at all.
As we celebrate Thanksgiving, we say thank you to a good man.
Like any other decision maker, Bush made a ton of decisions.
He got some right, specially the big ones like The War on Terror and two wonderful Supreme Court appointments.
He got some wrong. I wish that we had spent less, although the federal deficit relative to GDP (2-3%) was low by historical standards.
Of course, his critics didn't have to make decisions. They just sat in the bleachers and played the Monday morning QB.
As we know from watching football, the Monday Morning QB never throws an interception. At the same time, there aren't any Monday Morning QBs in the Hall of Fame either!
He was forced to deal with many issues unresolved for decades, such as Social Security and immigration.
He tried to fix Social Security by allowing younger workers to invest in private accounts. He was greeted with the usual "class warfare" and "they want to take your grandmother's check" garbage from Dems.
He was forced to deal with terrorism, an issue that the Clinton administration totally overlooked and came home to bite us on 9-11.
How do you know that Pres. Bush did a good job? You won't see big changes from Obama. Our friends at Power Line call it Hope and change down the road:
"John writes that, in light of Obama's staffing decisions, "it now appears that the Obama administration will represent a continuation of Bush-era policies on taxes, response to the current financial crisis, and national security policy, including Iraq."
We have spent the last two years hearing how bad Bush's policies are.
So what does the "hope and change" candidate do?
He keeps Gates as Sec of Defense and retains an economic team that looks very centrist rather than liberal.
It will be fun to sit in the bleachers and watch the Dems actually make decisions for a change!
They've been the opposition party for 28 of the last 40 years!
Let's see if they can govern as well as they've bashed Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush and Bush!
Again, we say thanks to Pres. Bush for dealing with incredibly difficult problems and keeping a very cheerful outlook.
