W.

Shortly before the election, a left leaning friend of mine asked me for my assessment of George W. Bush. Put on the spot, I inartfully weighed a list of pros and cons (social liberal on things like illegal immigration and welfare, solid on low taxes, defense, sanctity of life), and graded him somewhere in the B range. Having had a few weeks to reflect, I think I'd still give him a B, largely on the same grounds.

However, I don't think someone has to get straight A's or bat 1000 to be a great man. I once heard Dennis Prager say "I revere this man" when speaking of the 43rd POTUS. I concur. I love George W. Bush. I sincerely mean that. I have love in my heart toward the man. I believe he is a good and principled man, and flawed as all human beings are. I think on many levels, George W. Bush is one of the great men of history, like it or hate it, agree or disagree.

At the risk of getting a little Peggy Noonan for a moment: When you see this man speak, how can you not see his big heart? How does one fail to understand that he loves this country and every man, woman and child in it? For those who think he has cavalierly sent our fighting men and women off to war: have you seen him after a meeting with the parents of a fallen serviceman or woman? His compassion for those families and the weight of their loss is so palpable on him that even Cindy Sheehan noted it:

“I now know he’s sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis,” Cindy said after their meeting. “I know he’s sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he’s a man of faith.”

After all, this is the man who introduced the (problematic) term "Compassionate Conservative" into the national lexicon.

I have never held the slightest doubt that this man would act in any means necessary to protect this nation (and more specifically, my family) from harm--and I am comfortable that for the most part the methods used to do so on his watch were all morally justifiable. (I do not believe what happened at Abu Ghraib was morally justifiable, but Abu Ghraib is not what I mean by "methods used." And only a fool would think that the President would condone such behavior.) While I don't need to be told everything that happens in the name of national defense, I trust that he has told the truth about the things he has publicly divulged. I believe, for example, he was telling the truth when he said those famous "16 words:"

The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

What Bush said was absolutely factually true. At the time he said those words, in January of 2003, the British government had concluded a six month investigation with the help of British Intelligence. Their findings were published as the Butler Report, which concluded:

It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.

In other words, the President was telling the truth, and Joe Wilson is a liar. For a full recap, including how Wilson unintentionally bolstered the President's case, read here.

In addition to being an honest and honorable man, President Bush is also incredibly long suffering and forbearing with his detractors and political enemies (many of whom seem outraged by the very fact that he presumes to be the President)--or as they are known by most, the media. One gets the impression that 10 years from now, a journalist from Good Housekeeping doing a puff piece on President and Mrs. Bush will lead off the interview with "is there anything about your administration that you still regret, and would you like to take this opportunity to apologize?" The mainstream media seems to have made "apologize!" its latest demonstration of how hopelessly and shamelessly partisan it is.

But this is hardly the most extreme example of the press's extreme antipathy toward this man. Over the last eight years, the media has bent over backwards to undermine the Bush administration, and often--and intentionally--the war effort as well. To do justice to the highly irresponsible and near-treasonous escapades of this bunch over the last eight years would take all day, so briefly, and in no particular order: The fact that the MSM to a person believed and substantiated the claims of the aforementioned liar Wilson; The New Republic's Jonathan Chait, who refreshingly came clean and told us that he hates the President; Disgraced CNN executive Eason Jordan's blatant lie that American troops were firing upon journalists in Iraq; The NY Times' divulging of the SWIFT program, by which US intelligence was tracking terrorists' money--and which probably saved lives until the Times reported it; The NY Times' divulging that our intelligence agencies were listening to terrorists via wiretaps--again a program that saved lives until the Times reported it; A flagrantly false report by Newsweek that US interrogators at Gitmo threw a Koran in the toilet to torment an interrogee--which resulted in a riot in Afghanistan in which 15 people were killed, and for which Newsweek was forced to apologize; My personal fave, the shameless Anderson Cooper broadcasting a video that a terrorist sniper made of himself assassinating a US soldier. Last but not least, and one of the rare examples of a media lie meeting with an appropriate response, Rathergate, which resulted in Dan Rather being fired.

Again, this is just a highlight, a fun little jete down memory lane. If your favorite was left out, please forgive me.

But this is not a man (unlike his predecessor, and possibly, his successor) who would unleash the power of the federal government upon his political enemies. There have been no FBI investigations. No IRS audits. (A few lawyers who served at the pleasure of the President were fired for not doing their jobs to their boss's satisfaction, and look at the ensuing mania.) This is a man who, understanding that history will be the true judge of his administration, shrugs and ignores.

And there has been much to shrug at and ignore over the last eight years, and not just in the media. Nutbags of all sorts, be they antiwar, anticapitalist, anti traditional Judeo-Christian values--or in the case of Hollywood bimbos and mimbos, all three combined--have lined up to take their shots at this man over the years. Their terms of endearment for the president--nazi, facist, murderer--are ubiquitous. My favorite slander is the accusation that the President has somehow trampled the Constitution. (This argument is often made in regard to the treatment of foreign enemy combatants who are not protected by the Constitution.) I've lost count of the number of times I've had to stomach some self-aggrandizing, self-styled martyr loudly, publicly, and without the slightest fear of molestation, pontificating about that tyrant and scourge of the Constitution, George W. Bush. It's laughable. Woodrow Wilson signed laws that allowed him to throw his critics in prison, sent goon squads into the street to beat dissidents, and ordered the postmaster general not to deliver subscriptions of magazines that were critical of him. By contrast, President Bush has been so "tolerant," illegal aliens can march in the streets to demand their "rights" without the slightest concern that our deportation laws will be upheld. Contrast that with President Clinton, who unleashed the full fury of the INS to dispatch the clear and imminent danger of a little boy from Cuba.

So long story short, I think Bush is a good guy.

Does this mean I've done cartwheels over everything he's done since January of 01? By no means. His leniency on illegal aliens and the spending like a liberal in heat we've already touched on. Bush is a fiscal and social conservative on some things and a fiscal and social liberal on others. A sampler of other things that were less than stellar:

On Iraq: I'm willing to give the President grace for not having a superb post-invasion plan in place for Iraq (I remain an unabashed supporter of the invasion), but it's now clear he waited too long to replace Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and move forward with a surge; On the financial crash: Much like how Calvin Coolidge sat back and allowed the financial power brokers of his day to cut interest rates to the bone, which set off a speculative frenzy that shot the stock market up into orbit and ultimately brought it crasing into the abyss a year later, so Bush sat back while lenders continued to dutifully obey the mandate of the Clinton administration to loan hundreds of billions of dollars to people who could not afford to pay back; Katrina was (pardon the expression) a "perfect storm," that should have been forseen in some ways (ie, the woefully dilapidated levees, which are controlled by a tangled and inept (and in some cases corrupt) mess of local politicians) and at the same time could not have been forseen in terms of its magnitude. But once it happened, live on TV, it demanded an immediate response--and the demanders also wanted to assign immediate blame. A hefty share of that can go straight to the feet of Ray "schoolbus" Nagin and Kathleen Blanco. And despite the claims that the government sat on its hands and did nothing, this article illustrates the amazing rapidity of the mobilization and implementation of the relief effort the first week. Yet, the moment the reporters and film crews rolled into town, it was all Bush's fault. Yes, any good that FEMA accomplished was overshadowed by incompetence, perceived or otherwise, and in hindsight perhaps Bush could have deployed the National Guard faster. But Katrina was an event that demanded the knowledge of hindsight in the heat of the moment, and was utterly unforgiving of that lack of knowledge.

All in all, and all of the above considered, the good--not the least of which has been appointing Roberts and Alito to SCOTUS--has outweighed the bad. Perhaps the only thing the Bush administration has done that I can truly say is contemptible is the cynical manner in which they threw Jerry Thacker under the bus. Thacker, who was appointed to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS in January 2003, has HIV. So does his wife, so does his daughter. (All as a result of blood transfusions). Thacker, an evangelical, is a good man who of all people was in a unique position to understand HIV and to be compassionate to those with it. But the mainstream media and some gay activist groups found some words on his website that they could easily take out of context, and the next thing Thacker new Ari Fleischer was demonizing him in a press briefing. That the President allowed this brother in Christ to be so poorly treated is a stain upon his legacy.

There are other flaws and triumphs that I've missed, no doubt. Those who will disagree with what I've may outweigh those who will agree. I am grateful that this man has served as my President, and I can only hope that President elect Obama will take the best elements from the Bush years, in particular on fighting the terrorists, and encorporate them into his own administration.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention one thing that has driven me absolutely batty about President Bush, and that is his total inability to clearly explain his reasons for waging the "Global War on Terror," in particular the Iraq theater. This has driven me, and numerous other conservatives up the wall, precisely because such good arguments were lying at his feet waiting to be made. As journalist Steven Hayes has covered exhaustively, there was more than enough justification to invade Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein was in bed with terrorists of all stripes, including Al Queda. But no, we have to get vague, vanilla platitudes about making the world safe for "peace loving peoples." Learn to make an argument. You went to Yale and Harvard. Sheesh.