What Will History Say……?

By Chuck Lehmann

Now that George W. Bush has completed his 8 years in office as President, as of this past January, that’s the question that will be answered sometime in the future, “What will history say about him and his administration”?

All Presidents have had ups and downs during their time in office; all have had their legacy judged by how their policies have played out after they had left office. Some have gotten rave reviews, and some were judged quite harshly.

As George W. Bush left office, the prevailing opinion, at that time, was that his administration had been a failure. That prevailing opinion was not universally held, but had been propagated by the main stream media, left-wing professors, and by most all of the Democrats, who seem to have had a visceral dislike of him as a person. The “Bush haters” have been on this kick ever since the presidential election of 2000. His opponents could (or would) not accept the fact that he was declared the winner over Al Gore, and the vituperation and personal attacks continued for most all of his 8 years in office. President Bush never had a “honeymoon” and only had a slight reprieve immediately after 9/11, but after a few months of rallying behind the President, it was back to bashing him relentlessly. One major positive personality attribute of President Bush, is that he never returned the personal invective, in kind, to his personal abusers. That was a class act. One area of protocol that his successor seems to have forgotten.

Of course, all the policies that he initiated didn’t pan out, but even his successes, like keeping us free from another attack on our homeland, and his relentless “war on terror”, and the “surge” policy in Iraq, were denigrated and shoved aside so that his failures could be “hailed” by all the late night comedians, the main stream media and his political opponents as the only things that should be reported on. The term B.D.S. (Bush Derangement Syndrome) was cultivated by author/pundit Bernard Goldberg, to label the malady that has affected those antagonists of Bush and his policies. It is an aptly named description and they are still affected by it even today, even as he is no longer in office.

Hopefully for President Bush, history will not judge him or his policies immediately and by seeing the latest poll numbers, but it will judge him after a reasonable amount of time has passed and the consequences of his policies have been fully vetted and judged as to how those policies affected the country and the world community after he left office.

This could be a “déjà vu” moment for President Bush, as he finds himself in a similar position as President Harry Truman found himself at the end of his second term. President Truman was vilified by the press and his political opponents, and his poll numbers were in the low 20’s. But, through the passage of time, President Truman’s legacy is one that has him rated as one of our best Presidents, as the policies that he put forth, and for which he was roundly criticized for during his time in office, were found to be historically correct by the hindsight of history.

According to his most vociferous critics, George W. Bush was the first “mentally retarded” person to get a Harvard M.B.A., graduate from the U.S. Air Force flight school as a jet pilot, be elected and re-elected Governor of Texas, and then be elected President of the U.S. twice, and he had a higher G.P.A. at Yale than did John Kerry. I wonder how many of his critics could match that resume.

What is very frustrating to witness, is that some present-day historians, who should know better, like Professor Robert Watson of Lynn University, in Boca Raton, Florida, have already passed judgment on President Bush, as he had rated him one of the worst Presidents even before he had left office. That is just one more example of the partisan bias in academia, as well as in the “drive-by media”, that they didn’t want to be confused with the facts as their minds had already been made up, as it had been for the past 8 years, and counting.

So what will history say? Who knows, but we must wait for the future “Impartial” historians to determine what was the real history of his administration, and free from the partisan biases of the present day Bush haters.

By Chuck Lehmann
"Chuck on the Right Side"