George W. Bush: Unintended Presidential Paragon?
by Scott D. DeSalvo
During his campaign for the Presidency of the United States, I was unimpressed with the intellect powering George W. Bush's political agenda. The media did its part for the Democratic Gore campaign by strongly suggesting that George W. Bush's undergraduate degree from, and even admission to, the prestigious Yale University was purchased rather than earned through academic acumen. Evidently, my impression mirrored popular opinion, in that George W. Bush was elected the 43rd President of the United States, despite receiving less than 50% of the popular vote.
The controversy surrounding the election was an inauspicious start to a Presidency destined to be sorely tested by the terrorism of September 11, an economy on the downturn with rising unemployment, and an American public uncertain about the caliber of leadership destined to guide the nation for four years.
George W. Bush's response to these challenges has been nothing but awesome and inspired.
President Bush, in his historic address to Congress, galvanized the American people after the World Trade Center attacks, in a stirring and unapologetically-patriotic speech the likes of which had not been heard from an occupant of the White House since Franklin D. Roosevelt's Pearl Harbor speech on December 8, 1941. His administration built a coalition of nations that deposed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and toppled the al Quaeda power base in the Middle East. Faced with the ongoing threat of terrorist support in Iraq, a smaller coalition toppled the Hussein regime in mere weeks, when detractors estimated a Vietnam-like "quagmire," a military engagement with heavy casualties and without end. He is doing what no American President before or since has ever accomplished: he remains engaged in the Middle East. This week, it appears that President Bush and his administration, criticized early in their tenure for a lack of foreign policy savvy, is on the verge of settling the Israel-Palestine problem, a conundrum that has confounded Nobel-Prize winners, and had been said to be a puzzle with no solution.
In response to the needs of the economy, President Bush has acted swiftly and decisively. In 2001, President Bush was able to garner enough bipartisan support in the thinly divided Senate to pass his $1.35 trillion tax cut package. We stand on the verge of a second tax cut as part of President Bush's economic stimulation package. Although President Bush championed a $674 billion tax cut, after his proposal was pronounced dead by the media, he rallied, and though intense political legwork, has won Congressional approval for a tax cut of about half that. And, he has made no secret of the fact that his tax cut aspirations are not at an end.
Although civil libertarians and prudent Objectivists correctly worry over such Bush initiatives as the establishment of the Cabinet-level 'Department of Homeland Security,' and investigation into a TIA (Total Information Awareness) system, which seem patently Orwellian in their implications for individual freedom, no one can doubt that President Bush's response to terror and the economy have been other than sorely-needed and spot-on. No one need doubt that President Bush is much more astute in foreign policy than ever was suspected, and much more decisive than his critics feared. His strong and unwavering love of the United States of America is laid bare by his vigorous, bold approach to his Presidency. And that, too, is something Americans have not seen from a President for too long.
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