What will be most remembered about Bush’s presidency is his leadership in the post-9/11 period. In a recent interview, former Secretary of State George Shultz pointed to President Bush’s pre-emptive doctrine as his most important national-security achievement. It was based on a very important idea, Shultz said, namely that in the shadowy threat of global terrorism, we have to be able to uncover plots before they occur.
On the economic front, Bush has been dealt a bad hand. He came into office in 2001 with the economy in the midst of a restructuring slowdown when the technology bubble burst, followed by 9/11. We weathered that storm, and the economy grew again. But all expansions run into corrections, and the housing and credit bubbles burst, ending Bush’s presidency in a recession.
When Bush leaves office next month, it will be said that he governed us through some of the most difficult and turbulent periods in our history. And in the end, it will also be said that “he kept us safe” in the Age of Terror.
- Donald Lambro, Townhall.com
This is a presidency that has wobbled between overweening arrogance and paralytic incompetence. The latter has held sway these past few months as the economy has crumbled. We have more than enough evidence to say, definitively, that at a moment when there was a vast national need for reassurance, the president himself was a cipher.
In the end, though, it will not be the creative paralysis that defines Bush. It will be his intellectual laziness, at home and abroad. Bush never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and regulation that was necessary to make markets work. He never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and equity that was necessary to maintain the strong middle class required for both prosperity and democracy.
He never considered the complexities of the cultures he was invading. He never understood that faith, unaccompanied by rigorous skepticism, is a recipe for myopia and foolishness.
- Joe Klein, Time
