Bush's Reputation Rebounds

Recently, Democrats as well as once critical Republicans have begun to offer praise for former president George W. Bush.

This morning, the Washington Post previewed Bob Woodward’s upcoming book Obama’s Wars, including this quote from a Woodward Obama interview in July, in which the President said:

We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever... we absorbed it and we are stronger.

Sounds like tacit approval of the post-9/11 Bush response to me. Who was leading the country when America “absorbed” the impact of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor?

Earlier this month, Eli Lake wrote that President Obama’s strategies in the War on Terror are just continuations of President Bush’s policies:

On issues ranging from the government's detention authority to a program to kill al Qaeda terrorist suspects, even if they are American citizens, Mr. Obama has consolidated much of the power President George W. Bush asserted after Sept. 11 in the waging of the U.S. war against terror.

The persistence of President Bush’s policies is best symbolized by the fact that President Obama called him before the Oval Office address on the end of combat operations in Iraq.

Indeed, if Bush’s popularity is improving, it is on the back of the success of the surge in Iraq. Even Republicans who have traditionally been critical of the 43^rd President of the United States are rallying to him for his decision to back the surge.

In an editorial for the Washington Times, tea party favorite and Indiana Congressman Mike Pence praised President Bush for setting in motion the Iraq military drawdown, and for choosing “not to lose”:

Early in 2007, amid growing violence in Iraq, Mr. Bush acted on the advice of commanders on the ground and embraced a new strategy that came to be known as the "surge." When I met with Mr. Bush days before he announced the strategy, he told me and a handful of other congressional leaders that he had "decided not to lose." He told us he was implementing a new strategy on the ground with new commanders and was determined to give victory one more chance.

At the Values Voter Summit last weekend, Rep. Pence – who won the conference’s presidential straw poll - continued on this theme, calling Bush “our courageous Commander in Chief”. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney followed this up by lauding the “courage of George W. Bush”, to loud applause.

It would take real myopia for voters to forget that the ongoing economic distress was caused by a crisis that happened while President Bush was managing the economy – but nostalgia is in this season, and the recent drawdown in Iraq has given pause to some who might be willing to give President Bush another look.

UPDATE: A new ABC News/Yahoo News poll out today shows that 35% of Americans would prefer President Bush to be in charge of economic policy, rather than President Obama, who stands at 52%. This may seem paltry, but for Bush, whose approval ratings hit the low twenties in his last days in office, this can be seen as something of an improvement.

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