On what? Name something besides the war. And, name something that a conservative would be proud of.
> On what? Name something besides the war. And, name something that a conservative would be proud of.
The war was his key, defining issue, and it is arbitrary and wrong to exclude that when evaluating his overall performance. It should receive most of his performance weighting. All else — quite rightly — is small stuff by way of comparison.
As a war-time president he did a very good job. Much better than FDR, for example.
He would have been an abject failure in 9/11 was able to happen more than once.
As to the “small stuff”, the Illegal Aliens issue would be tops, followed by this current Financial Crisis. He would have scored a near perfect mark had he nailed these bonus points.
Still, I’d give him 85%.
He did appoint what appear to be two great supreme court justices. He also reduced income tax rates and signed no new tax increases during his two terms.
He chose Dick Cheney as a VP, Condi Rice as a secretary of state.
He signed a partial birth abortion bill. He has kept Islamic immigration into the US at a level so low that our European friends are complaining about us.
He allowed SDI to go forward.
He lobbied for increased energy independence.
On the other hand...
Still, we will long for the days of George Bush before Obama is done with us.