As George W. Bush prepares to leaves the White House after eight misunderestimated years, National Review Online asked a group of experts in policy and politics to assess his presidency.
Jay Nordlinger
He defeated two men who would have been lamentable in the Oval Office: Al Gore and John Kerry.
He nominated excellent judges, including his two on the Supreme Court. He was widely derided for his nomination of Harriet Miers (later withdrawn). He still insists she would have been an excellent justice. Who knows?
Andrew Breitbart
I felt Chris Matthews–like tingles throughout my body at every White House Correspondents’ Dinner as I witnessed Bush at the podium. I was always proud to have him as my president. And I believe honest historians will help redeem his artificially tainted image.
Heather Mac Donald
Notwithstanding our current credit crisis, American technological innovation and entrepreneurship thrived during the last decade, aided in part by a saner regulatory and tax environment.
William McGurn
I went to Washington in 2005 never having served in government, and only because our nation was at war. My view was then and is now: If we fail in Iraq, nothing else will matter.
The President did not fail in Iraq. We are safer for it, and we are stronger for the fight ahead.
George Weigel
After the triangulation of the Clinton years, after 9/11, and in the face of the biotech challenge, America badly needed a president who didn’t govern by focus groups and polls. That so many people resented this says, I fear, more about our political culture than it does about George W. Bush.
This is from a major conservative outlet, too.
