For hate’s sake, I spit my last talking point at thee.
The two most female women associated with outgoing President George W. Bush defend his legacy in this touchingly talking-pointed story.
Yes, the Bush administration is going out with a carefully scripted whimper.
Laura Bush and Condi Rice seem to be operating from the very same list of talking points. They claim that W. has achieved important foreign policy victories, such as providing aid to treat AIDS in Africa. They say that future generations will look back on W.’s time in the White House and thank him for all the good he’s done. They also tout the successes of W.’s efforts toward resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with a two-state solution. Recent events suggest that any successes in this area were fleeting (if they ever existed).
There are some things they appear to have overlooked, such as:
- Roughly doubling the National Debt over the course of his Presidency.
- Allowing corrosive and predatory lending practices to pull the rug out from under the US economy, which was already shaky
- The abject failure of costly tax cuts and “stimulus packages” to provide any sustained improvement in economic stability.
- The failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, and “stop” al Qaeda.
- The initiation of two wars of aggression, the consequences of which, the American people will be saddled with long after Bush leaves the White House
- The failure to achieve victory in Iraq and Afghanistan (or even to define what “victory” is)
- Countless human rights abuses in the conduct of “The War On Terror”
- The failure to resolve anything substantial with Iran and North Korea
- The erosion of personal liberty, here at home, in the name of “Homeland Security”
- Need I go on?
I don’t know how historians will look back on the Bush Presidency, but I’m fairly certain I know how I will.