PRESIDENT BUSH’S CONSERVATIVE LEGACY

I don’t really care about the political left or the media. They’ve been attacking President Bush and distorting his record for eight years, and they’re not going to stop now. Yet he has consistently responded with class, grace and civility.
I do have a bone to pick with conservatives who have turned on the President they helped elect, and the President who prevented us from suffering through a Gore or Kerry administration.
It’s easy to criticize the missteps — the expansion of government programs, the misguided immigration proposals. But much of the sniping from the right is disappointing, and frankly, ungrateful.
I am thankful that President Bush was in office on September 11, 2001. It is not by accident that we have had no more attacks on the homeland since then — an achievement none of us thought possible in the days and months after 9/11.
But there are two reasons conservatives will be thankful for President Bush for generations to come.
First, his disciplined appointment of conservative judges committed to restraint and the rule of law, not just on the Supreme Court but throughout the federal judiciary. Federal judicial activism has been substantially slowed, if not brought to a grinding halt.
Second, he re-established the American commitment to advancing liberty around the world – to acting on our creed that “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”. Fred Barnes has more on that in this piece on Bush’s achievements.
I am one who shares the view that history will be much kinder to President Bush than current public opinion.

4 Comments

  1. Well said Len. And now, despite our ideological differences with President-elect Obama, he will be our President in a few days and needs our support and prayers. We must disagree and commit for the good of our nation.

  2. I believe that history will confirm George W. Bush as a very good President. I doubt that any other presidential contender could have led America as well through such difficult times. I wish President Bush had been stronger on border security, but perhaps history will prove him right on that matter. God Bless George W. Bush, and God Bless America.

  3. I find it interesting that the national media and even the little People are saying we all have to support Obama. That in my memory has never happened to an American President Elect.

  4. I am a former supporter of your run for governor in ’06. After a year of research, I am convinced the Bush administration did more to undermine the Constitution than any previous administration. I’m aghast that you’ve forgotten the firing of 8 federal attorneys, with serious talk of firing all 93 because they weren’t filing enough lawsuits against Democrats. I’m aghast that you have forgotten the CIA renditions of thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghan citizens, the hundreds of murdered detainees, the lewd torture of illegally-held prisoners in American-run prisons, the illegal detentions and torture of American citizens on American soil, years of illegal government eavesdropping on American citizens which continues today, and the documented tampering of votes in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004.
    This administration is the most secretive in history, the fallout from which will take decades to examine. Bush did as he pleased, Congress and the Constitution be damned, as proved by his signing statements which undermined the very bills he signed into law. Dozens of his numerous presidential directives, especially NSPD 51, are so secret even Congress is not authorized to see them.
    Bush and his cronies pushed for a falsified war in Iraq, then reaped enormous profits for their former business colleagues from that war. No matter that Bush unconstitutionally authorized this atrocity which has killed/injured/displaced half the population of an innocent nation which never harmed us nor posed a threat to us.
    As a lawyer and former political candidate yourself, I find it irresponsible that you glowingly support this kind of governance. I doubt the founding fathers would have seconded your faith in such an administration. Worse, I believe you, and other influential Christians, have crossed the line into supporting a dangerously fascist environment.