What About President Bush?

“The President "lied" us into war. Much of the pre-war intelligence was wrong. The civilian defense chief was detested as "brusque, domineering and unbearably unpleasant to work with." Civil liberties were abridged. And many embittered Democrats, claiming the war had been an utter failure, demanded that the administration bring the troops home.

George Bush? Well, yes - but also a President who looms far larger in American history, Abraham Lincoln. One is struck by the parallels in reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's masterful new book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.” Thomas Bray , Real Clear Politics

I have admired President Bush since he came onto the national scene, but my admiration increased tremendously when he showed his toughness in fighting off the attempts of the Democrats to steal the 2000 election in Florida, and tried again in Ohio in 2004. I can’t imagine having the toughness and the self-confidence to persevere given the number of fifth columnist liberals embedded in the government, academia and in the press trying to destroy him and his programs. These people all think they know better what this country’s policies should be than the people who elected this president, and they will stoop to any means to destroy him and his team. Vice President Cheney, who has served this country well as a Congressman, as a Defense Secretary and as VP, is treated in the mainstream press as though he were some sort of criminal, even to the point where he was excoriated for getting the advice of people from the energy industry in helping to set an energy policy. Imagine the gall, to ask someone who knows something about the subject for advice!

The other day, after I posted my article about the machinations of people like Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame and Richard Clarke, I also submitted my article to Freerepublic.com, a conservative forum. One of the responses, from an unknown contributor whose screen name is “the invisible hand”, had these things to say:
“Tangentially, the President and his staff have, over and over again, consistently demonstrated an unusual wisdom for leadership that must be called genius. Over and over, in the most treacherous of circumstances, with the highest stakes in history, they have deftly dispatched enemies within and without. It has been a marvel to see….

No less a marvel is all the ranting by alleged "conservatives" who seem all of a sudden to believe that the administration is really lame after all, that the genius must have been luck, when America encounters high oil prices, immigration debates, and allegedly low poll numbers. It is then that people seem to suddenly realize that they are smarter than the President after all, because, after all, they don't get what he's doing. All they know is that they are feeling the bug-bite of an iota of sacrifice, the kind that liberty demands, only in such a measure that the Founders must be spinning in their graves to see their protestations to these, the merest hints of inconvenience. Perhaps the most thankless job of all is leading the American people in this age.,,,,

Start with the Bush Doctrine. But each and every alleged scandal has been an attack that has been thwarted. Just look at it: the media has the public convinced that everything is wrong and it's all Bush's fault, even hurricanes, for goodness sake! The media is an evil dictatorship that's had the Good Bush Administration in its sights from the beginning. Dealing with such an adversary is no simple matter. Most people simply couldn't take it. But this administration has kept its sense of humor, its integrity, its clarity of vision, its effectiveness where it has counted. The media and its backers are determined to make every domestic effort a failure, after failing to make every foreign effort a failure. They would destroy this country (and are) if doing so would impugn the President…..

Now ask yourself why. Why is he their arch enemy? Because he has the audacity to stand up to evil; to promote liberty, while their most cherished possession is dictatorship and oppressive force, the absolute dominion they have had over public opinion for generations. And they are sensing in him such a threat, that they have pulled out the stops to discredit him, and the entire world sees right through it, and thinking men everywhere know he's right, and the media is a wounded dragon….."

I think the Democrats are in for another rude awakening this fall, when red state voters show that, maybe they have been largely silent, but they have been watching and evaluating what has been going on, and they are quite skilled in separating lies and spin from truth and substance. Particularly in these dangerous times, they don’t want control of their country turned over to folks whose only talent is in defaming and spreading lies to regain power. The old saying is that no good deed goes unpunished, but we really do want grownups with a sense of decency in charge. The country has become very aware that Democrats mainly complain while Republicans act.