Bush Legacy?

With only 8 days left until president-elect Obama takes office, President George Bush held his final press conference today, attempting to defend his record, and ultimately his legacy. With abysmal approval ratings, it is difficult to think of the Bush Legacy in a positive light. The only two issues most people will recall of the Bush Years are the Iraq War and the current recession. In the end, when I look on the Bush Administration, I see potential that never came to fruition.

The firs thing to mention, even if people are tired of the references, is that President Bush did bring this country through the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. While he failed to catch the man behind the attacks, he did not fail to act against those that were protecting him. It is only a matter of time before bin Laden is found and brought to justice, because the Bush Administration made it evident what will happen to any government that harbors terrorists like him. However, I mean to look at Bush's entire Presidency, not just his first two years.

The first major push by the Bush Administration were the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. Americans were able to keep more of their hard-earned money. Unfortunately, the tax cuts were not accompanied by significant spending cuts, as is necessary to avoid excessive deficit spending. In addition, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan required billions each year, further increasing the deficit. Tax cuts are a sound economic policy, giving consumers more money to circulate back into the market. Unfortunately, there were too many external factors to allow this to show positive returns in a short time frame. In a few more years, we may see the true effect of these tax cuts, much the way the effects of Reagan's economic policies did not return benefits until the Clinton years.

After the tax cuts, the biggest domestic priority of the Bush Administration was getting all public students to proficient levels in reading and math by 2014. To accomplish that goal, we saw the creation of No Child Left Behind. The idea was noble, albeit incomplete. NCLB was the first real push to hold schools all across the county accountable for the performance of their students. Unfortunately, the program focused too much on federal micro-managing of assessment standards. In stead of simply requiring states to meet certain benchmarks, NCLB was too prescriptive, attempting to force states to reach the benchmarks through specific courses of action. Between 2010-2011, the program will receive a major overhaul, but it was the Bush Administration that laid the groundwork for school accountability.

The first official failure of the Bush Administration came in the form of entitlements. President Bush pushed for Social Security reform in 2005, and was met with unparalleled resistance in Congress and a very scared senior generation. Groups like the AARP engaged in scare tactics to ignite a fire under the retired class of citizens who were afraid of any changes that might affect their Social Security payments. Despite the fact that the Bush proposal would have had no adverse effect on current recipients, the push back was enough to get Congress to shut down this attempt at meaningful reform. Instead, they chose to leave the problem for future generations, who will not see a dime from the doomed program.

Finally, it is not practical to ignore the issues of Iraq and Afghanistan. Both of these wars have cost the United States thousands of American lives, and billions of dollars. The fact that no WMD's were found in Iraq certainly work against the President, who assured the nation, and the international community that they were there. While I do not support the amount of money that has been thrown into Iraq, I do believe the world is better place with Saddam Hussein out of power. However, now that we have given Iraq the opportunity to make a new nation, based on new principles, I do believe it is time (or close to it) to allow them to take the reigns, and provide for their own destiny. If the Iraqi government truly wants to transition authority from the U.S. to local forces, I believe we should oblige them, in a practical manner.

As for the economy, as I stated above, the tax cuts were a sound idea, but did not produce an immediate effect that many Americans desired. The fact is, the economy moves in cycles, and while President Clinton was able to ride a wave of success for a number of years, Bush was left to fight against the current of a downward trend. Many people blame him for the rising gas prices over the last 8 years. However, if they have a grievance on the price of fuel, I suggest they take it up with the Chinese, whose excessive consumption had more to do with the price increases than any one else. My only grievance with President Bush is his failure to force Congress to significantly cut domestic spending. With increasing war costs, and a decrease in tax revenue, domestic spending needed to be reduced exponentially. The President, through the use of his Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), attempted to increase government efficiency by proposing the elimination of wasteful and inefficient government programs, but was ignored by Congress.

In my humble opinion, President Bush is not the monster that most Americans make him out to be, though he did fail to live up to his potential. Most of his true failures can be traced back to his divergence from true conservative principles. His failure to reign in federal spending and his push for greater federal involvement in education are just two examples of his departure from core conservative values. The rest of his failures come from an inability to control/convince/cajole Congress into passing his initiatives. However, the man did preside over the most powerful nation in the world for 8 years (meaning we elected him twice), and that is no simple task. He deserves our thanks and our respect, for the time and effort he put into the task, whether you liked the results or not. There are many things we may wish he did differently, just as I am sure there are things he truly wishes he had handled differently. In the end, he did the best he could with the time that was given to him.