"Is Your Children Learnin'?" -- The Legacy of George W. Bush

Bush: Mouth Closed was Best Pose

From the contentious 33^rd Congressional District race to the momentous Presidential election, Santa Monica Bay voters -- Democrats and Republicans, and disaffected Independents -- have looked over and lambasted the legacy of former President George W. Bush. Their reflection is timely because even though elite liberal interests cannot defend their incumbent Obama by attacking the previous presidency, their remarks deserve candid respect in evaluating the current Republican nominee, whose record of moderation and professionalism distance him from the previous GOP standard bearer.

I refuse to honor the conspiracy theories about the Bush Presidency, from the "rigged" elections in Florida to his “prior knowledge” about the 9-11 attacks. These sophistries are insulting and irrelevant. I believe that George W. Bush won Florida and the 2000 Presidential election by the slimmest of margins. The Supreme Court properly ruled in Bush v. Gore that Florida could not recount the votes in one county without conducting a comprehensive recount throughout the state. Besides, Bush commanded enough respect that "Hardball" Chris Matthews voted for him, and he also a tingle up his leg when Obama clinched the election eight years later. Bush was his most presidential shortly after the 9-11 attacks, but from that moment on, the Presidency was just too much for this son of a President from Texas.

Surveying the 43^rd president’s eight-year presidency during the “Naughts” (01-09), George W. Bush made more gaffes than Vice President Biden, yet only got more press because he was a Republican. I never believed that “Dubya” was a stupid, but his philosophy of government, from “Mission Accomplished” vs. nine years and counting in Iraq, to “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system” exposed a leader who was a walking contradiction.

The source of this double-speak, in which many times his lips could not catch up with the message, stemmed from his domestic policy of “compassionate conservatism”. I cannot think of a legacy more crippling to the cause of constitutional rule than this Orwellian double-speak, which is neither compassionate -- two world wars unfunded and still depleting this nation's coffers and prestige around the world; nor conservative -- exploding government with deficit spending and largesse.

The Bush Administration’s initial accomplishment, “No Child Left Behind”, outlined an outrageous agenda of 100% literacy in our schools by 2014. With declining revenues and moral breakdown in our schools, one wonders how “more testing” would have improved public education. More like “Every Child Left Behind”, the President should have advanced a policy of “Leave Public Education Alone” instead of the barrage of standardized testing and dizzying curricular mapping. Rarely do I applaud President Obama, yet his “Race to the Top” and waivers for NCLB deserve greater recognition than they have received.

Following his 2004 reelection, Bush’s abortive pleas to “privatize social security” dispelled any political capital that he had to spend. The 2005 Transportation “bill” – more like “political payout”--dumped multimillion dollar pork perks from land speculation in Illinois to the “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska.

I resented his federal government intrusion into the Terry Schiavo case, in which a Florida husband wanted to pull the plug on his incapacitated wife after fifteen years of chronic care, but the federal government passed a last-minute bill of attainder to intervene – both immoral and unconstitutional, neither compassionate nor conservative. His poor response to Hurricane Katrina extended his preceived lack of leadership. Following the breakdown of the New Orleans levies, which flooded the Ninth Ward and pushed a punishing temporary diaspora across the South, President Bush looked like an executive who exuded little authority.

His greatest legacy, and this nation’s greatest loss, was his decision to occupy Afghanistan and invade Iraq. Combining the short-term vision of displacing terrorists, Bush attached an aggressive program of “nation-building”, crippling our national budget while stretching our armed force to the breaking point. “The War on Terror” excused bipartisan pork-barreling with expanding bureaucracies: the “overburdened” Department of Homeland Security and another intelligence director for the disconnected FBI, CIA, and TSA. Bush’s positives include tax cuts and conservative Supreme Court appointments, yet he remains a Republican “Lyndon Johnson” who fostered a "Not-So-Great Society" of exploding deficits and diminished national prestige.

Understandably, voters do not want four more of Bush, nor do we deserve four more years of Bush on steroids: Barack Obama. If nothing else, Mitt Romney is not George W. Bush. After an early career of fulfilling religious missions and running sound operations at Bain Capital, Romney salvaged the 2002 Winter Olympics with a profit. Contrary to the arguments about his “flip-flopping” on social issues, Romney ran Massachusetts with a conservative assiduousness, vetoing 800 bills and refusing to raise taxes. He can talk, and not talk down to voters. He can walk without tripping on his own arguments.

Notwithstanding this year’s election, the public’s recriminations about the Bush Presidency are legitimate. I only hope that we have learned the lesson from the “Naughts” without settling for four more years of overextended military ventures combined with record deficit spending. “Is your children learnin’?” should not dominate our thinking or our future when voting this year, but our vote should engage real leadership for the next four years.