Bush's legacy.

Mario Loyola:

[R]ecall the presidents this country has known (and will know) who were obsessed with their own popularity. Think of the many times Bill Clinton allowed polling data and political advisers to shape military strategy. Imagine how horrifying it would be right now to have a John Kerry or Al Gore as president — no clear statements of policy, military decisions transparently shaped by "how it's going to look", a White House that smells to high heaven of vacillation, weakness, and even corruption. Imagine all of this for a second . . ..

Bush has virtually never in his political career made a decision that he didn't think was the right thing to do and the right way to do it. Conservatives who are piling on the anti-Bush bandwagon should consider that this trait—which makes the Bush family historically great—is a historical rarity to be treasured.

We're used to kicking our presidents around. Lincoln was widely reviled until he was murdered, when people began to remember what he had accomplished, and he became a martyr. Despite the conventional wisdome that Bush is a liar and a moron, history will be far kinder to him than to Clinton, because history looks at character, not the next election. It will be seen that this war was declared in the early '90s, but we did not begin to fight back until 9/11, and that when we did, the Democrats first approved the war, but then changed their minds and reverted to the anti-war lunacy of the late '60s and early '70s, harassing and denouncing the President for the next 8 years, with the help of liberal judges and the vast majority of the media.

I can't agree that the the Bush family has been great, but W. has made tough decisions and stuck by them when his father started grandly but allowed Saddam to remain in place, because he believed in the New World Order and trusted the U.N.