I will readily admit that my personal site usually rails against the policies of America’s Left.  However, I want to turn my focus on the outgoing rather than the incoming in this article.  I voted for George W. Bush in the 2004 election cycle.  I did not vote for him in the 2000 cycle because I was too young at that time to vote.  During each cycle, I supported him as the lesser of the two evils presented to the American voter at that time.  Al Gore had his lock box and John Kerry had botox.  I never felt like they were being honest though.  Perhaps it is a true testament that America is a Center-Right country when the Democrats have to back pedal towards more Populist stances instead of preferred Liberal agendas. 

I’m sure that you along with me have seen the “How will history view the Bush the 43rd?” stories from media outlets.  This morning while sluggishly getting ready for work, I watched Morning Joe.  On the program this morning, Joe Scarborough was defending the outgoing President with a sincere argument that maybe torture is justified because we have not been domestically attacked since September 11, 2001.  Paraphrasing his opinion, perhaps the ugly pill for Americans to swallow was the right pill for the right time.  The entire time, co-host Mika Brzezinski sat by trying to interrupt and rolling her eyes.  This is not the first time I’ve seen Ms. Brzezinski treat the mere utterance of approval of President Bush with such disdain.  She inhibits one of the classic cases of “Bush Derangement Syndrome”.  Not as severe as the prime-timers on MSNBC, but enough to make my morning commute sour until I crank on some Honky Tonk Kid.  Today, I will be reviewing the Hits and Misses of George W. Bush in all honesty.

The War on Terror

We have been safer since September 11th.  American authorities have uncovered and subverted plots by terrorists to harm American lives.  Now traditionally this broad topic can be used to incorporate a few different blemishes on the Bush record, so let the good times roll.

• The War in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom) is the only war that you’ll see a Democrat support.  We should have been more focused on capturing bin Laden in the Hindu Kush.  Steps are taking place now to redeploy a troop surge into Afghanistan to reclaim territory from a resurgent Taliban.  Did the administration distract itself from what should have been our primary goal by opening up a secondary front?  Yes.
• The War in Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom) is what it is.  The entire operation is very unpopular with the vocal American Left.  They opposed that we depose a dictator that violated human rights, violated UN resolutions to allow weapons inspectors to do their jobs, attempted a genocide of the Kurds, would not allow free-elections, repeatedly threatened it’s neighbors, and did I mention the 19 UN resolutions that he violated?  If the UN is going to make a resolution, it should stand up and back it up.  What good is the resolution otherwise?  What is the crime in the main financial backer of the UN (the United States of America) enforcing that body’s resolutions if the body itself will not?  In my opinion, the Iraq War was ill-timed, but the absolute right thing to do.
• Torture became a bone of contention.  Apparently Americans are happy to see torture on and by American agents on fictionalized spy shows and movies like 24 and Alias.  However, if it takes place in real life, we start getting squeamish.  I think that President Bush summed it up well in his last press conference while in that office.  He surmised that if his administration had done nothing and we were attacked again, there would be outcry by the media that he didn’t do all he could to protect the citizenry of America.  Therefore, by acquiring information, sometimes under duress, we got the job done to keep us safe.  From me, Thank You G. W.
• Guantanamo Bay, Cuba holds a detention facility for foreign terrorists.  Many in the American Left see Bush’s massive usurpation of the Constitution is not granting the detainees the Rights described in the Constitution.  First of all, these detainees are not American citizens and thusly have no rights under our Constitution.  However, it may be a mistake to not include them in the Geneva Convention.  Under that agreement we could not forcibly acquire intelligence from the detainees.  That’s a hard call to make with positives on both sides.  No torture or foiling a plot to enact another major terrorist act?  If you read the list of confessions on Wikipedia under Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, then I’ll let you make the call on whether or not it was a good thing to aggressively interrogate him.
• Wire tapping people that were connected with suspected terrorist organizations without a warrant is where I sit in the middle of the teeter-totter.  The Constitution precludes any unlawful investigation without the investigating party to possess a warrant.  Do we stop gathering real-time intel in a real-time world with an antiquated system for obtaining warrants?  No, I think that setting up a special court in which to acquire these warrants was justified.  However, there should be more transparency.  I don’t want to know everything, I just want to know that there is no power being abused, and I think that’s where the mistake was made.  There was just no degree of transparency.
• “Mission Accomplished” was the aircraft carrier’s banner for completing their deployment.  I don’t think I would have had it up in my shot.

The Economy

In this arena, President Bush acknowledged a departure from his own (and Constitutional) ideology.  I think that I have outlined the Constitutional stance enough to blow down the house of bricks of the last little pig.  Government interference in markets is a horrible idea.  It’s that simple.  Whether it be bailout, stimulus, or loans, they are all bad ideas that create fiat money and push problems to compound into a horrible situation down the road.  We’ve done that, we need a correction.  It hurts, but let the correction happen.

Education, Social Security, Health-Care, Immigration

• It is not in the Federal Government’s enumerated power to regulate a child’s education.  That is a power that is under statewide jurisdiction.  Even though it was basically the Texas system of standardized testing expanded, it should not be funded on the Federal Level.
• I loved his ideas for privatizing Social Security and it’s a damn shame Democrats didn’t want to get their cash cow taken from them.  The system is so broken that it does not provide a sensible retirement plan.  I don’t plan on using it for more than just monthly beer money.  An individual should be smart enough to set themselves up for success.  Roth IRA, diversified, with an approximately 12% yield from $4000/year for 40 years puts me at around $1.5 million at 65.  Can’t even come close with Social Security.  You do the math.  Social Security is just a crutch to tax the public now anyway, FAIR TAX!
• The Prescription Drugs and Medi-care Initiative was formed while I was in high school and thusly still invincible.  I’m sorry that I haven’t paid that much attention to it in any of my pieces.  It seems to me that there was an attempt to make it easier for people to get medication without socialising (i.e. destroying) our medical system.  More than I can say for the Democratic plan for disaster.
• President Bush stated that he wished he would have pushed stronger for immigration reform.  There is just a lot that is going to have to be hammered out in this debate.  All I will say until then is this, illegal immigrants are not citizens and are not subject to the same protected Rights that United States citizens are.  That means that there should be no due process or introduction of them into our court systems unless they have committed heinous felonies.  Catch them, deport them, prevent them from entering again illegally.  Guest worker program?  Great!  Just get it on the up and up.  You want to be an American now that you’ve lived here for 10 years?  Awesome, but we are going to make you jump through a few naturalization hoops, then get those dodged taxes out of them through processing fees.

Hurricane Katrina

• As I’m wrapping this up, I cannot help remembering Kanye West stating that, “George Bush hates black people.”  I don’t agree, and if you look back on history, the Republican Party as a whole has done more to advance people of all color in the lauded pursuit of happiness.  There is no guarantee.  If you work hard, you will get rewarded.  Take a look at the (?) letter behind the name of Abraham Lincoln or the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (before he became a Communist sympathizer) and you’ll generally find an (R).
• Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming.  Well, that’s easy to say.  All hurricanes are caused by warming.  Every cloud is caused by warming.  Hurricanes and typhoons are natural systems to cool their respective hemispheres during the time when they are closer to the sun.  As I’ve said before, climate changes.  I’d be more interested in us cooling off than warming up.  There will be less space either way, but you can either wear more clothes or less or have cities covered in 500 feet of water or a mile of ice.  Take your pick.
• The horrible response time falls on more than just FEMA’s shoulders.  The structure in Louisiana at the time was atrocious.  There was absolutely no way that the operation could have gone any better.  I literally watched a History Channel program a week prior to Katrina and it accurately predicted how inept the recovery would be.  You have corrupt leaders at local and state levels, and nothing is going to be done.  Case in point, Texas got the snot kicked out of them by Ike this year.  I guarantee they are already farther along in almost everywhere but Bolivar, the West End of Galveston, and Surfside.  Also take into account that these areas were also well past recovery from Rita.  A competent state and municipality in conjunction with the Federal government gives  recovery a chance to start immediately rather than a full-scale evacuation after the fact.  Also, channelizing the Mississippi River was one of the US Army Corps of Engineers biggest mistakes, but it was made almost 100 years ago.
• “Now Brownie, you’re doing a hell of a job.”  Maybe he was doing the best with what he had available, but it just was not the right thing to say at the time.

Now President Bush is going back to Crawford (the lucky jerk) to work around the house, write a book, and set up a library/school.  He’ll get away from the media who hates him for a few years, but they’ll drag his name through the mud for a long time.  Why?  He was the first President in a Socialist-centric media, that has the widest range of outlets in the world’s history, that they disagreed with.  I wish him good luck and wish that he still drank so that we could go grab a beer one day to a job well done for the more than 50% of the time.