Britons Are So Wrong About Bush The Brave

After my book on President Bush was published in the United States, I was interviewed by a British journalist about the relationship between Bush and Blair.

He asked me what these two very different men could possibly find to talk about, and I suggested religion. He visibly winced. "You don't think they pray together do you?" "You say that," I answered, "as if it were worse than showering together." "I suppose I would find that less disturbing."

British people distrust George W Bush's public religiosity. They don't much care either for his verbal stumbles, or his lack of concern about global warming, or his indifference to the UN.

This dislike is bad news, and not just for Mr Bush. The low regard for him in Britain is weakening the Anglo-American alliance, on which the peace of the world has depended for nearly 90 years.

But there are also grounds for hope that now the British will come to change their minds.

When I went to work for Mr Bush in January 2001, I found that the better I knew him, the more I liked him.

Many Britons continue to believe that he is not merely occasionally tongue-tied, but downright stupid. When pressed to explain how he has managed to function as an effective chief executive, these critics reply that he gets good advice, as if advice came in envelopes labeled "good advice" and "bad advice".

Mr Bush's mind is not crammed with facts and figures. But he has tremendous focus. He can instantly separate the essential from the inessential. And he has the presidential temperament, the moral courage to make decisions and stick to them.

His war leadership is defined by three characteristics that you would not normally expect to see together: boldness, moderation, and persistence.

Whenever Mr Bush has had to make a wartime decision, he has opted for the boldest choice. He decided to fight Hezbollah as well as al Qaeda and Iraq as well as the organised terrorist groups. He sought the overthrow of not only the Taliban but also Saddam. He is pushing not for any Palestinian state, but for a democratic Palestinian state.

Some may regard these choices as over-ambitious. But they bespeak a president who is willing to take risks and who is mindful of a fact that some more articulate presidents never absorbed: doing nothing or doing too little is often the riskiest choice of all. While Mr Bush sets big goals, he is willing to advance on them by a slow and careful route.

Fourteen months elapsed between the "axis of evil" speech and the opening of the ground campaign in Iraq, 14 months in which Mr Bush won resolutions from both Houses of Congress and waged a five-month campaign to win two UN resolutions endorsing military action.

It's not at all clear that, say, a Democratic president would have been able to move so deliberately.

The mood in the US was red-hot and angry in 2001 and perhaps the greatest of all of Mr Bush's gifts to his country was his guidance and restraint.

Mr Bush's advisers remember his father's experience. The elder George Bush tumbled from 89 per cent approval after the Gulf War to 37 per cent of the vote in 1992, the worst Republican showing since Barry Goldwater. The elder Bush's defeat is usually attributed to too much focus on foreign affairs, and many of the younger Bush's advisers urged him in December 2001 to avoid his father's fate by swiftly downshifting the war on terror and turning instead to a domestic agenda. He has refused, come what may.

The decision to go to Baghdad was characteristic Bush boldness.

The decision to integrate the humanitarian campaign for the Iraqi people into the military operation was characteristic Bush moderation. And the decision to proceed unrattled by the inevitable reverses and disappointments of war is characteristic Bush persistence.

Americans too were not at the start over-impressed with George Bush. But as they have come to appreciate his virtues, they have learned to make their peace with his faults. If this Iraq war ends in the victory we all want, British people should open their minds to reconsider their opinions.