A Conservative's Take on President Bush

Alright Nick, here it goes… my take on the article from Politico that you sent and my take on Pres Bush and his legacy from a conservative perspective.

There are numerous types of conservatives. They fall into camps based on how they define themselves. Conservatism exists in three main forms: national defense, fiscal, and social. I have heard people who take a strong position on any, part, or all of the three define themselves as conservatives.

Personally I take a strong conservative stance on all three.

Like most conservatives I have mixed emotions about Pres Bush. As a national defense conservative I love the fact that Pres Bush rebuilt the military that was decimated under Pres Clinton and has acknowledged and addressed terrorist groups around the world. I even disagree strongly with the authors of the Politico article and think that Iraq in the future will be seen as a huge success and will not slip into the anti-US authoritarian government that the author describes. I think that it has been a tremendous learning opportunity for the US in regards to asymmetric and anti-insurgent warfare.

However, he failed to close the loop. He did great internationally, but failed to secure the borders in our own country while millions of people poured in bringing increased crime, drug and gang activity, and a resurgence of serious diseases that hadn’t been seen on a large scale in this country in decades. From an over all national defense conservative perspective, Pres Bush gets mostly good marks as reflected in his popularity among military personnel.

From a social conservative perspective Pres Bush has done more to limit abortion now and in the future than any other recent president. He re-instated the Mexico City Policy that Pres Clinton removed, he signed the bill outlawing partial birth abortion that Clinton vetoed multiple times, he also took a moral stance on government funding for embryonic stem cell research, and most importantly he appointed two excellent judges in John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Basically as a social conservative I have to give Pres Bush high marks.

That’s where the train pretty much hits the wall.

From a fiscal conservative perspective Pres Bush has looked more like a liberal than a conservative. I do have to give him credit for the tax cuts, but even in that regard they were set up to be temporary. I know it was a political move in order to get them passed, but I think with better PR (which has been Pres Bush’s weakest point) he could have made them permanent. Throw in a whole plethora of new government spending on everything thing from the NEA to the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan and the government that had been running a surplus under an economically centrist Pres Clinton suddenly ran a deficit. I know a good chunk of that was military spending, but considering we had record tax revenue (thank you tax cuts), that didn’t have to be the case. Instead of cutting the government in all areas he expanded it significantly across the board. In the meantime the dollar was falling to record lows against all other major currencies because he had the Fed dropping the interest rate to try and maintain the housing boom. He also needed (again a PR mistake) to bring the issue of Fannie and Freddie into the public eye and expose the disaster that was going on. He pushed congress, but he didn’t go over their heads to the people to get the situation exposed and fixed before it completely exploded. Time and time again an out of control congress (including the non-conservative Reps) sent bills to his desk heavy laden with pork and excess spending and he let them go through instead of vetoing them and exposing the waste and abuse in the system. All of that was well before the most recent wave of irresponsible and irrational deficit spending on stimulus packages to bloated and unethical corporations and unions. So from a fiscal conservative perspective Pres Bush has been a disaster; a near ‘worst case scenario’.

That’s why you hear some people that call themselves ‘conservatives’ saying that they hate Pres Bush, while other ‘conservatives’ say that he has been a good president. For those of us who are national defense, social, AND fiscal conservatives, Pres Bush has been a very mixed bag.