In January of this year, I was in Austin, Texas for a wedding. The next day, I went to Johnson City and visited President Lyndon Johnson’s boyhood home and the adjacent museum. I realized that I had reduced Johnson’s presidency down to one good policy and one bad one: his courageous stand on behalf of civil rights for black Americans on one hand, his cowardly and disastrous escalation of the Vietnam War on the other. In the museum, I saw and heard all about Medicare, Head Start, school lunches and other government programs we now take for granted that were instituted under LBJ. I left Johnson City with a more balanced and nuanced perspective on a much-maligned president from Texas.
The presidency of George W. Bush contained many unwise policies and some catastrophic ones – particularly the executive-sanctioned use of torture. Yet the last two years of the Bush presidency have not been as bad as the six preceding. Three policies, in particular, stand out as likely to be positively reviewed by future scholars: Bush’s efforts to reduce the prevalence of malaria and infectious diseases in Africa, his sacking of incompetent foreign policy advisers and his support for faith-based organizations.
Recent results from the Pew Global Research Survey have shown that the only world region where people have a positive approval rating of President Bush (leaving aside outlier countries, such as Albania, in regions generally hostile to Bush) is East Africa, the region centered around Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda. There, President Bush literally handed out hundreds of bed nets during his February 2008 visit to the region. He has also encouraged the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct clinical research in sub-Saharan Africa, providing jobs and modern health care to regions lacking in both. He has also shown increased flexibility in his HIV/AIDS prevention policies, abandoning much of the strident anti-condom rhetoric that prevailed early in his administration. Millions of Africans are leading healthier, more active lives right now thanks to President Bush’s foresight and initiative.
Bush has also brought a modicum of responsibility and pragmatism back to U.S. foreign policy. The State Department, under the direction of Condoleeza Rice, has had the freedom to embrace diplomatic solutions to thorny relations with global bad apples like Syria, North Korea and Venezuela. General David Petraeus has brought sanity to our chaotic occupation of Iraq, and now stands poised to apply his theories, as commander of CENTCOM, to Afghanistan. Robert Gates has so thoroughly repudiated the disastrous tenure of Donald Rumsfeld, while building on the idea of a leaner, more surgical U.S. military, that many pundits speak of his likely retention under an Obama presidency. President Bush may have made most of the mess, but he deserves credit for beginning the long and arduous task of cleaning it up.
Last, I strongly supported President Bush’s creation of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, and I continue to do so. Religion plays a vital role in American life, not least as a provider of social services. In the economic downturn that is only getting worse, the need is all the greater. I periodically volunteer at St. Benedict’s, and I can reliably report that attendance at the Community Meal has gone up 20 percent over the past year. Federal support for these programs underscores the pivotal role of congregations in the provision of basic needs and encourages people to do good for their neighbors beyond mere weekly worship services.
President Bush is not a monster; he has damaged America’s credibility in many spheres, but he has enhanced it in the three ways mentioned above. The good that he has done ought not to be lost in an angry mob ready to kick him out the back door of the White House. Being a President is no easy task, and eager supporters of Barack Obama ought to keep this in mind over the next four years.
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