I Know it’s fashionable to hate Bush now but I never keep pace with fashion. He had strengths, weaknesses etc. but when 9/11 hit, he was the right one. He went against popular opinion to say “You are either with us or against us” and the press and the UN rejected him for it. In fact, he ran against the press twice and won. I recall a pundit remarking that the left must hate him so because as stupid as they claim he is, he won against them twice. E.g., if he’s just an ape wearing a tie, why did he win against the establishment twice? and how humiliated they were for it.
I hear all kinds of raves about what he is and isn’t. He was there in the rubble of the twin towers on 9/11 and when his megaphone wouldn’t function, he yelled, “I hear you!” to the workers gathered to dig out the tours and they loved him for it. The military loved him. He had the press and left hating him and the military and blue collars loving him. No, I don’t have to like what he did afterwards. I don’t have to like his excessive HOmeland efforts etc. - but I’ve never known a leader that was all of what I wanted and none of what I didn’t want in a president. I looked around on 9/11 and was glad it wasn’t any of the others who ran standing up as POTUS then.
You state the case beautifully for me. I was so grateful Bush was there when 9/11 happened, and that Clinton was gone. And I hoped that the Afghan and Iraq wars would make us safer. I thought of Bush as a decent man, but he turned out to be too idealistic to do what really needed to be done. Thus my deep gratitude that we now have Trump, whom I trust doesn’t have the problem of wanting to be overly nice rather than effective. I never realized before Bush that a leader could be TOO decent. And I think his orientation as a Globalist was just wrong for the country. Trump is forcing the pendulum back to the middle, where it needs to be.