by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
The American<\/em><\/p>\n This article appears in the “Geopolitics” section of the recent issue of\u00a0The American<\/i>.<\/strong><\/p>\n B<\/span>y October, 15 months before his presidency would end, George Bush\u2019s approval ratings still hovered around 30 percent.<\/p>\n His administration will go down, say historians such as Columbia\u2019s Eric Foner and Princeton\u2019s Sean Wilentz, as a disaster. As Wilentz put it, \u201cMany historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.\u201d<\/p>\n A new genre in American popular culture has arisen comparing Bush to Hitler \u2014 on the Internet, and in fiction, stand-up comedy, and drama. To the novelist Garrison Keillor, Bush\u2019s Republicans are \u201cbrownshirts in pinstripes\u201d \u2014 echoing Al Gore\u2019s similar slur of \u201cdigital brownshirts.\u201d<\/p>\n Even Bush\u2019s supporters seem resigned to such abuse. They now talk not of a restoration in public esteem before the president leaves office, but rather of a Trumanesque turnaround: a once-despised president only years later becomes appreciated for his unpopular but necessary decisions.<\/p>\n But for now, Bush seems to have an orphaned presidency defended by very few. From the left, he is criticized for his tax cuts for the rich, his lack of concern for African-American victims of Katrina, his illiberal homeland-security measures \u2014 and always for Iraq, with shrill persistent choruses of \u201cpreemption\u201d and \u201cunilateralism.\u201d Much of this anger against Bush is Pavlovian and superficial, deeply embedded within the president\u2019s caricatured dead-or-alive, smoke-\u2019em-out lingo.<\/p>\n As a result, the left gives the president no credit for policies that have irked his conservative base. In his first term, he increased federal spending at a faster rate than Bill Clinton. He extended the reach of federal education policy with his No Child Left Behind legislation, and he did not veto a single spending bill, instead sponsoring a major new prescription entitlement for Medicare recipients. His immigration bill, blasted by many conservatives, ultimately failed, but still won over Senator Ted Kennedy and infuriated red-state America.<\/p>\n So will Bush leave disgraced and confirm this prognosis of worst president? Probably not \u2014 and not merely because we have had far worse, from James Buchanan to Richard Nixon.<\/p>\n Start with the fountainhead of Bushophobia \u2014 the postwar reconstruction of Iraq. The surge that began in June seems to be working far better than anticipated. Should such tactical progress translate into strategic success \u2014 the verdict is still out \u2014 historians may conclude that George Bush removed the two worst regimes in the Middle East, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and then successfully battled al-Qaeda terrorists in both countries in his pursuit of democratic reform. History could further record that he accomplished all this at far less the cost than the stalemate in Korea in the 1950s or the defeat in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s.<\/p>\n We also forget that the abuse heaped on past presidents while in office sometimes fades with perspective. A once-reviled Calvin Coolidge is generally assessed as a far better president than Lyndon Johnson. Ronald Reagan has been recently canonized, so we forget that during the Iran-Contra scandal there was talk of his impeachment. George H. W. Bush blew a 90 percent approval rating after the Gulf War and was blamed all through the 1990s for cynically not removing Saddam; now he is seen as a sober realist and globalist. Lauded today, Bill Clinton ended his tenure in disgrace.<\/p>\n The current stridency of Democratic presidential candidates is also starting to show Americans that easy criticism of a sitting president is not quite the same as assuming the responsibility of governing.<\/p>\n As the campaign wears on and exasperated Democrats continue to appeal to their base, the bystander president could be seen as a more sober and judicious statesman. And should a Republican candidate \u2014 all the frontrunners have more or less endorsed the president\u2019s Middle East agenda \u2014 be elected, it will provide a lame-duck Bush with a type of national approval for yet a third time.<\/p>\n Similarly, few have offered alternatives to most of the Bush initiatives. Neoconservatism is slandered as messianic and dangerous in its advocacy of democratic reform. Are we then to revert to amoral realism that tolerated Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, or winked as the House of Saud fundedmadrassa<\/i>s that empowered global jihad? Or should we treat terrorism as a \u201ccriminal justice\u201d matter? We did that serially in the 1990s, from the first World Trade Center bombing to the attack on the USS\u00a0Cole\u00a0<\/i>\u2014 and earned 9\/11 as the logical outcome of such appeasement.<\/p>\n In short, should we avoid another 9\/11, see North Korea denuclearize, stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, or perhaps catch Dr. Zawahiri and bin Laden, while the economy stays strong and our southern border with Mexico is closed \u2014 all possible in the next year and a quarter \u2014 George Bush could still leave office with a successful presidency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a92007 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson The American This article appears in the “Geopolitics” section of the recent issue of\u00a0The American. By October, 15 months before his presidency would end, George Bush\u2019s approval ratings still hovered around 30 percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[753],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Uz","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4452,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/little-eichmanns-and-digital-brownshirts\/","url_meta":{"origin":3507,"position":0},"title":"“Little Eichmanns” and “Digital Brownshirts”","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 18, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Deconstructing the Hitlerian slur by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The effort to remove fascists in the Middle East and jump-start democracy, for all its ups and downs, has been opposed not just by principled critics who bristled at tactics and strategy, but also by peculiarly vehement cynics here\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2005"","block_context":{"text":"March 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/march-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1990,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-fairer-verdict-on-bush\/","url_meta":{"origin":3507,"position":1},"title":"A Fairer Verdict On Bush","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 30, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A reassessment of the 43rd president has already begun. by Victor Davis Hanson Forbes Magazine Critics are tallying the Bush administration's pluses and minuses, and some consensus is emerging that in time George W. Bush, like Harry Truman, will be seen in a far more favorable light than his low\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2009"","block_context":{"text":"December 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/december-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1689,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-and-the-new-civility\/","url_meta":{"origin":3507,"position":2},"title":"Obama and the New Civility","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The heated rhetoric of the Bush years gone. A new age has dawned. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online It was sometime early this year that Americans finally learned the rules of proper political discourse \u2014 another dividend from the Obama administration. We can all be grateful for our\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2010"","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":137,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bush-reconsidered\/","url_meta":{"origin":3507,"position":3},"title":"Bush Reconsidered","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online George W. Bush left office in January 2009 with one of the lowest job-approval ratings for a president (34 percent) since Gallup started compiling them \u2014 as compared to Harry Truman\u2019s low of 32 percent, Richard Nixon\u2019s of 24 percent, and Jimmy Carter\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Retrospective"","block_context":{"text":"Retrospective","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/retrospective\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3009,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bush-considered\/","url_meta":{"origin":3507,"position":4},"title":"Bush Considered","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"American is a safer place thanks to his administration. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online A\u00a0disinterested appraisal of Bush administration foreign policy will take years. For millions on the Left, events in Iraq, Guant\u00e1namo, and New Orleans rendered the 43rd president an ill-omened phantasma \u2014 omnipotent, ubiquitous, and responsible\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2009"","block_context":{"text":"January 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/january-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5907,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bushs-warranted-rehabilitation-will-come\/","url_meta":{"origin":3507,"position":5},"title":"Bush’s Warranted Rehabilitation Will Come","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner George W. Bush\u2019s September 14, 2001, so-called \u201cbullhorn\u201d speech, that he gave with his arm around fireman Bob Beckwith at Ground Zero (\u201cI can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people \u2014 and the people who knocked these buildings\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Retrospective"","block_context":{"text":"Retrospective","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/retrospective\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3507"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3507"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3509,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3507\/revisions\/3509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}