I come to hail chief, not bury him

[WhiskeyGirl]

I come to hail chief, not bury him

Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor | November 13, 2008
Article from:  The Australian

I WRITE in praise of George W. Bush. I recognise this may be an eccentric position to hold and an eccentric moment to express it. But I am inspired by the example of the great Catholic polemicist, B. A.Santamaria.


In 1963, South Vietnam's president Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated in a military coup backed by the Americans, though they didn't back his murder. To cover the assassination, the slander was put out that Diem, a devout Catholic, had committed suicide. Santa was torn. He wanted to defend Diem and denounce the Americans for the most foolish thing they did in Vietnam. But with a federal election looming he worried that he might diminish support for the US alliance. In the end Santa robustly defended Diem and denounced Washington's folly.

Later his great friend, archbishop Daniel Mannix, told Santa he haddone the right thing. For, he said, you must always be loyal to your friends, especially when they are dead and the whole world is against them.

...Bush's biggest failing was his inability to speak persuasively to an international audience. His stubbornness, which is courage if you look at it a different way, was amplified for foreign audiences a thousand times by the Texan accent. In rejecting elite American opinion, he too often looked as though he was rejecting international opinion. In dismissing The New York Times, he seemed to dismiss Europe.

His other big fault was his failure to exert himself to ensure his administration was unified, especially during its first term. Having appointed big beasts such as Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld, Bush needed to stamp his authority on them more and adjudicate their disputes.

Third, there were bad mistakes in implementation in Iraq. There was also a failure to pursue energy independence, even to the point of resisting fuel efficiency improvements in motor vehicles...

Finally, there was a failure on hiswatch to properly regulate the financial system, a failure he shares in full measure with congressional Democrats.

Has any Democrat suggested that they made a mistake by not starting reform of the financial system in 2006, before it crashed?

...Barack Obama in some measure owes his success to the inclusiveness of Bush. Bush appointed Powell secretary of state. He appointed Condoleezza Rice national security adviser, then Secretary of State. Over eight years, this accustomed the electorate to African-Americans handling critical national security positions. No other president, certainly no Democrat, had done anything like it. Bush was always a liberal on race, always way ahead of his party on immigration and the need for Republicans to woo racial minorities, particularly Hispanics. Without embracing the rhetoric of identity politics, he simply did things that advanced racial equality.

Bush doesn't get the credit he deserves for greatly increasing US aid to Africa, especially on AIDS. In reality no Democratic president would have done more.

read the rest here - http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24642500-7583,00.html

It sound like Bush wasn't as good at talking as he was as walking...  imho