And, FWIW, there probably wouldn’t be a “free market system” to save if Bush hadn’t fought the war on terror. In five years, he absolutely cremated al-Qaeda. Obama is slowly letting them off the mat in Afghanistan, and we’ll have to do it all over again in a year or so, after more towers go.
Oh, I understand that completely. But I don’t think that lets George W. Bush completely off the hook for a whole series of government-expanding, budget-expanding initiatives (Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, TARP, etc.). In the end, “compassionate conservatism” sure wasn’t conservative, and I don’t think it was terribly compassionate for the folks who are going to pay for it down the road—you, me, and our kids.
GWB doesn’t deserve anywhere near the hate he gets from the left or the right (and it sure looks like Bartlett thinks he ran over his dog or something). But at the same time, let’s be clear-eyed about the mistakes he made in addition to the fantastic job he did against Islamic terror.
}:-)4
IIRC, Bartlett was a paleoPaulie fan which is enough to eliminate him as rational now and forever. Just another poseur on autosmooch for Islamofascist butts.