President Bush in His Last Year of Office

In 2009, when President Bush hands off the responsibility to lead this nation, he will give his successor a nation in worse condition than any other president before him. Here are some of the problems the new president will face: a fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan ballooning out of control, a continuing stalemate between Israelis and Palestinians, Iran with nuclear intentions still unclear, global warming unaddressed, U.S. leadership in the world at its lowest point well over 100 years, illegal immigration still unresolved, 40 million Americans with no, or inadequate, health insurance, and an economy teetering on the brink of recession.

It is true, of course, that every new president inherits some of the problems from the previous president’s administration, but in the case of President Bush those problems are myriad and overwhelming. What has been accomplished in the 7 years of this presidency? Not one of the nation’s serious problems have been resolved or even seriously addressed by this administration. Under President Bush’s leadership America has started two wars, both of which are still unresolved, and those wars have occupied this President to the point of such distraction that most of our other national and international problems have placed on the back burner.

Even the wars – the one thing to which this president seems to have paid attention – have been mishandled to the point of buffoonery. He pulled forces from the first war – the one we had every right to fight – before it was won and sent them on an ill-conceived and badly managed invasion of a country that presented us no serious threat, in an effort to find weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. Bush strutted out on an aircraft carrier to proclaim mission accomplished before the second war was over. Now young American men are still dying in both wars. The result of all of this is that the American nation is less secure today than it was before the wars were started.

Fifty years from now as historians look back on the dawn of the 21^st century, I believe they will rank the Bush presidency as the worst in our nation’s history, lower even than Buchanan, Harding, Grant and even Carter. I do not envy the task of the next president, regardless of the party that wins the White House.