Forner is a well-known Marxist Historian. He sees History as a matter of following the buck, or viewing events through the lens of class warfare.
Naturally, he's not going to think much of President Bush.
When all is said and done, through it might be fifty years, Bush will be with the near-greats: Truman, Polk, Eisenhower, and Jackson.
Standing up to the radicals in the Middle East was not easy; especially with ninety percent of the media running the effort down 24/7.
History will validate the effort.
Unlikely. He'll end up middle of the pack, I think. He did a pretty good job in his first couple of years after 9/11, and the fact that he was re-elected certainly puts him in a different category from Carter, et. al. But his lack of a consistent philosophy on domestic matters had led to a mish-mash.
Tax cuts, economic growth, and low unemployment are on the good side. Those are balanced on the bad side by a new welfare state program (Medicare Rx), high overall rates of government growth, lack of progress on reforming the Social Security and Medicare before they reach crisis mode, and abandonment of firm defense of free speech by signing CFR.
Plus consider that modern historians don't have the same values that you do. Even if the Middle East turns out exactly the way Bush envisioned (which looks chancy), the historians will still tag Bush with the "Iraq civil war/failure" theme.
Agreed.