He Took a Shoe for His Country

Jason Gelernter in the Weekly Standard:

Ronald Reagan was one of the few who looked straight at this pitiful wreck, grasped the big picture, and refused to accept it. He was no genius like Churchill, no all-conquering statesman-politico like Roosevelt, but his depth of vision and sheer courage were comparable to theirs, and he belongs with Roosevelt and Churchill among the world-changers. He was even attacked in the same ways they were: He was supposedly a charming lightweight bubble-brain like FDR and a fanatic warmongering ideologue like Churchill. Today we have another president who aspires to look the world in the eye and change it, and all we can say is God help him and may he prove to be as big a man as Ronald Reagan.

Paul Kengor at American Thinker:

More than any aspect of George W. Bush, I know his faith — having written a book on the subject. I know he acutely identifies with Christ’s passion. He understands that one who stays true to principle, who tries to do right, and who stumbles on the way to his destination, sometimes cannot earn his rewards until his earthly life is finished.

Such, too, is pure leadership. Americans, whether they realize it or not, have just witnessed eight years of remarkable presidential leadership, especially compared to the poll-driven president who preceded Bush. Sure, there’s much George W. Bush should have done better. As someone who has studied Ronald Reagan, I wish Bush had a sliver of Reagan’s communication skills to win hearts and minds, to shape public perception. I wish he had better people working for him on Iraq in the bad years. Still, this was leadership.

What was the mission? What was the reward that must wait?

As an effective primer, I direct readers to November 2003, when Bush gave the best speech of his presidency, the text of which ought to be required reading in every Poli Sci class, and by Bush friend and foe alike. In that speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, Bush invoked Ronald Reagan’s June 1982 Westminster Address, Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and FDR’s Four Freedoms, in concluding: “The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country…. We [Americans] believe that liberty is the design of nature; we believe that liberty is the direction of history…. [T]his is, above all, the age of liberty.”

Bush sought to take liberty to the area of the world where it has been most resistant: the Arab-Muslim Middle East. He sought to sow a long-term democratic transformation in the worst of regions, before it went nuclear. He looked to take Reagan’s “March of Freedom” into the region with the starkest “freedom deficit.” He endeavored to initiate a “democratic peace” in that cesspool of terror.

He pursued that most commendable task knowing he will not live to witness its fruits, if they occur, and with no political gain for himself and his party — precisely the opposite. If the sacrifice works, Bush will have changed the course of history, but only after he leaves this world.

There is another Bush speech I find somewhat profound in retrospect — a witty but forgotten commencement address to his alma mater, Yale University, on May 21, 2001. Recalling his life after Yale, where he had studied history, Bush averred:

When I left here, I didn’t have much in the way of a life plan. I knew some people who thought they did, but it turned out that we were all in for ups and downs, most of them unexpected. Life takes its own turns, makes its own demands, writes its own story, and along the way, we start to realize we are not the author. We begin to understand that life is ours to live but not to waste and that the greatest rewards are found in the commitments we make with our whole hearts — to the people we love and to the causes that earn our sacrifice.

Bush said that four months before September 11, 2001, and roughly two years before he sent troops into Iraq — the unexpected causes that earned his sacrifice. It was his plan for Iraq that began his descent into the worst disapproval ratings in the history of Gallup’s presidential polling.

It should be noted that an FA reader (a Bush critic) left a link to a Vanity Fair piece which I find useful here, in light of the reference to his Yale speech:

Mrs. Bush congratulates me on my recent graduation. Then the president asks in which direction my chair was facing. At the ceremony, Yale had given him an honorary degree, and during his speech, in a remarkable act of disrespect, a large portion of my graduating class had turned their seats 180 degrees, facing their backs to the president.

“I’m really sorry about that,” I say. “It was an embarrassment to our class and to the university.”

For a moment, the president—a Yale man from a family of Yale men—looks down at his plate, like a child who’s been scolded. “Yeah, that was a tough one.”

Bush, the man who refused to be a weathervane president making policy decisions based upon popularity polling, is not unaffected nor out of touch with public opinion. But he understands the fickle nature of opinion polls. He took his lumps then, with grace, as he does today:

Bush, for his part, met his largely hostile crowd face on with self-deprecating remarks and a playful tone that endeared some audience members and offended others.

Here’s the way WaPo reported it:

As Bush, in blue academic robes, accepted his award and rose to speak, the graduates raised a sea of yellow protest signs with slogans such as “Conservation, not Consumption,” and “Execute Justice, not People.” Students booed, hissed and heckled the president, and some turned their backs on him, made gagging sounds or shouted “Go away!”

Students from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies wore miniature power plants on their mortar boards, burning incense through tiny smokestacks. Scott Hedges, whose power-plant graduation cap even had a toy coal car, joked that “emissions requirements were waived” for his polluting cap under Bush’s new energy policy.

More than 170 Yale professors boycotted the ceremony because they said Bush was not worthy of his honorary degree. Students wore stickers declaring “Got Arsenic?” and “5-4,” a reference to the Supreme Court decision that essentially handed Bush the presidency. A banner flying from a dorm room window portrayed Bush as Mad magazine’sAlfred E. Neuman wearing a pin that said “Worry.”

The angry reaction to a GOP president was no surprise on a liberal campus

He had been in office for only 5 months.

Some critics say they gave President Bush a fair shake and a decent chance; they point out his high approval rating right after Sept. 11th.

I don’t buy it. I think most decent Americans who call themselves patriots would have rallied around the sitting president by default no matter who it was. From DAY ONE, many of Bush’s staunchest critics never accepted him as their president.

Recall the protests in 2000 against his inauguration. Was it just about the Florida recount fiasco? Recall some of the fear and protests against Reagan’s election to the presidency and how protesters worldwide thought he’d plunge us into a nuclear holocaust:

When he traveled to Europe in 1982 he faced massive protests in France, Britain, Italy, and especially Germany. Historians and philosophers of history will be faced one day (when they wake up) with a puzzle. Compare Reagan’s trip to Europe in ’82 with JFK’s two decades earlier. Both arrived bearing the same message: America will stand by Europe. America and Europe will face down the Soviet threat together. But Europe loved Kennedy to pieces and did not love Reagan at all. Why? The answer must lie, at least partly, in a sign waved at Reagan by a European peace-marcher in 1982: “I am afraid.” As Europe steadily disarmed and her enemies did not, she grew (not surprisingly) steadily less bold and more scared. ’63, ’82, ’03; the deterioration is sad and clear.

The answer also lies in the “D” and the “R”.

President Bush #43 has endured more worldwide hysteria and distortions to his character and policies than any president before him. Given the growth and evolution of the internet these last 8 years, perhaps the volume of vitriol and conspiratorial beliefs is in part a reflection of the information and disinformation super highway [sarcasm] (created by global warming climate change alarmist, Al Gore) [/sarcasm].

It amazes me that there are still liberals out there who fail to recognize and concede that the overall mainstream media tilts left of center. I suppose some of them are so far to the left, they think center-left is “right wing”.

Note some of the whining from liberal elites in regards to the cost of the Bush 2004 inaugural. How many of those same journalists today are deploring the disproportionate escalation of inaugural price-tagging during a time of troubling economic downturn?

The same happened for another GOP president’s re-election inauguration:

4. Less is more?
After criticism for his first inauguration in 1981, which cost $16.3 million for nine white-tie balls, President Ronald Reagan attempted to scale back the budget and have a more “for the people” celebration. However, the budget ballooned from $12 million to $20 million, and there were 10 balls instead of nine and two galas instead of one. Apparently, “scaling back” meant that the balls were black tie instead of white and the entertainment was less high-brow than at previous events, according to the Washington Post.

Kengor concludes:

George W. Bush took up his cross, walked the walk, and then silently let his persecutors enthusiastically carry out his political crucifixion. He committed his whole heart to a great reward earnable only much later.

I miss President Bush already!