The Bush Legacy

Webster's defines the word legacy as "something handed down from an ancestor or from the past." In other words, it is something handed down to younger generations that causes us to remember someone or something that came before us.

There is a considerable rush at this time to state what the Bush legacy is going to be. Many foreign papers today are stating that Bush was an abject failure as President. This is also the feeling of most papers within the U.S.

The international community does not like President Bush because of his single-handed approach to fighting the terrorist threat that faces us on a daily basis. He did not want to do it their way. He was a renegade. They are also now fond of blaming him for the current financial situation. It will not be long before they blame him for the plane that landed in the Hudson last week.

Liberals and the media elite in the U.S. do not like him because he has ruined the American goodwill with other nations. He is not an environmental zealot. He had the audacity to try to protect the U.S. from being attacked again. He was a divider, not a uniter.

According to recent polls (which I am sure are bias-free), the majority of people view President Bush as the worst President ever. It is hard to believe that anyone could have forgotten about Jimmy Carter, but we tend to cloud our view of history with what we see going on in the present.

With all this being said, let me offer my opinion: You cannot judge a man's legacy at the time he is leaving office. Only history will be able to tell us how good of a President that Mr. Bush has been. I believe that history will be kind to him, for a variety of reasons. The main reason is that we have not been attacked since 9/11/01. He saw to it that we went after the terrorists; he did not want to wait for them to come back at us. As time goes by, people will understand that this was the right thing to do.

The American people want to see America remain a superpower. They do not want to cede that power to other countries, or especially to the UN. Other nations are upset with us because we are taking the leadership role, and they want to drag us down. They use the UN as a collective body to try and pull the U.S. down from its leadership position. President Bush would not let that happen, and for that he deserves our gratitude. The only other thing he possibly could have done that would have benefited us more would have been to jettison the UN from New York City and level the place.

Other nations complain about our leadership position in the world, yet they know where to come when they face a crisis. Do we remember the tsunami in Indonesia? It was the U.S. people that gave millions of dollars. It was the U.S. government that gave millions of dollars. The U.S. government has given billions of dollars to help fight the spread of AIDS in Africa. The U.S. has been so generous to other countries through the 2 terms of President Bush. Yet, he receives no accolades for this, nor does he seek them. And the international community conveniently forgets the times we have bailed them out.

We hear about the budget surpluses that existed when President Bush became President and the deficits that he has created since being President. One thing people fail to remember is that it is not the President that spends the money for the U.S. government. It is Congress. Because of Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in the 1990's, we had surpluses. It was not President Clinton. He happened to be the President at the time, so he gets the credit. Likewise, President Bush is not the cause of today's government deficits (although some of his policies have led to higher spending). It is due to Congress not being able to control spending. They need to be held accountable for that.

Even some liberal causes that Bush helped to further were snubbed by the liberals: No Child Left Behind, immigration, bailouts, health care. There are areas where he tried to reach out, yet the liberals were not willing to meet in the middle. They had an utter disdain for this man. They give him credit for nothing. And the media reports these things as Bush failures, not as the failures of liberal ideas.

They also like to blame President Bush for ruining the bi-partisan goodwill after 9/11. If I recall, it was the liberals who started to attack this man because he actually wanted to go after the terrorists who were determined to attack us. Actually, they never stopped attacking him for winning the 2000 Presidential election. It was not the President who went after the liberals. Rather, he stayed true to his beliefs, his principles, his ideals. He did not waiver. The liberals (including the media) attached the President.

President Bush is a good man. Yes, he has his faults, as we all do. He proposed things that I did not (and still do not) agree with. However, he is a man of principle and character. He did not make up his mind based on the latest opinion poll. He stayed true to what he thought was right, whether or not other people agreed with him. That is what I want in a leader. A true leader does not change his ideas based on the political climate. Rather, he remains true to his ideas. That is what I will remember and appreciate about this President.