Celebrating George W (no, really)

Last week I tried to guess what the legacy of Tony Blair would be. Ok, I was being intentionally negative to make a point, but it got me thinking. There has been a lot in the media recently about the fact that both Bush and Blair are lame ducks, serving out the remainder of their terms with low approval ratings and more speculation over who will replace them than their current agendas. So, I thought, how will Bush be judged?

Not well, in a nutshell. In fact, I would say he will be judged as one of he worst in recent history. If not the worst. Whilst other Presidents have taken their country into illegal wars (Johnson and Vietnam, Nixon and Cambodia), have severally damaged the economy (inflation under Ford/Carter, budget defecits under Reagan), have been utterly incompetent (Carter and the Iranian embassy seige) and have been dogged by scandal (Nixon and Clinton), Bush Junior is the only one to achieve all four. His tax cuts and spending has created crippling budget defecits. His incompetence led to the catastrophe that was the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Aides in his White House have been arrested and quizzed by grand juries, whilst his Vice President shot a man. And then there is the horrific quagmire that he created with the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq.

So saying Bush has not done well as President is easy. Hell, it is too easy. So, as a challenge I thought I would try and name some of the 43rd President's achievements. And here we have it - two (count them) achievements from Dubya.

1. He won. Not in 2000. Gore won the popular vote then, and had the recount continued, he would have won the White House. But Bush did win conclusively in 2004. Yes, Democrats, take a deep breath and say it - Bush won the last US Presidential Election. In fact, with 62,040,610 votes, Bush won more votes than any other Presidential candidate in history (Ok, Kerry, with 59,028,111, has the second most of any presidential candidate but he still had less than Bush). Say what you like about Bush, and his campaign, but whilst he was fighting an unpoular war and whilst he was seen as inferior intellectually to Kerry, he still managed to mobilise his supporters and beat the Senator. Perhaps this is a cynical way to assess achievements, but it is also valid. At the end of the day, Bush won. It is Bush who is sat in the White House, leading the country, whilst Kerry sits in the Senate.

2 The Aftermath of September 11th. Yes, he did very little prior to 9/11. And the links between invading Iraq and finding Bin Laden are non existent. But in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 he did extremely well in uniting the nation. Perhaps the defining, positive moment of his presidency was responding to the statement "we can't hear you" at Ground Zero. His improvised reply, relayed through a megaphone, is justly the stuff of legend. "Well, I hear you. And the world hears you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon." In the days after 9/11, Bush united his country and the world. He would later lose all that sympathy, but gaining it in the first place was a superb achievement.

So even from the detritus of the Bush administration, there are some successes to acknowledge, some achievements to celebrate.