DAVIS: Farewell to Bush, the president and the man

OPINION/ANALYSIS:

I have strong disagreements with Mr. Bush on policies and politics; but I have respect and affection for him as a person, going back to our years as friends at Yale College in the 1960s.

My policy differences with Mr. Bush as president are major.

I thought his tax cuts favored the wealthy and were ill-advised. They helped convert a trillion-dollar surplus left behind by Iraq war and this past fall´s economic meltdown.

I strongly disagreed with his decision to go into Iraq pre-emptively. And I still think, despite progress and some signs of stability and democracy in Iraq for which he deserves credit, that the war was not worth the lives lost or the hundreds of billions spent, with little sign that it had any effect on the war against terror and seems to have had a greater effect of empowering Iran in the region.

I was disappointed by Mr. Bush’s apparent indifference to the dangers of global warming and to those in his administration who seemed to care more about ideology and the economic interests of the Republican Party than science and facts.

I worried that, in the name of waging war on terror, Mr. Bush had allowed his America´s reputation around the world as a nation of laws and constitutional principles.

But I also think it is unfair not to give Mr. Bush the benefit of the doubt that he did these things sincerely, believing they were legal under the circumstances and helped protect America from another terrorist attack. And I believe, to be fair, he deserves some credit that no such attack has occurred since Sept. 11, 2001.

And to give credit where credit is due, Mr. Bush also at times exhibited what President John F. Kennedy defined as political courage - the willingness to stand on principle against the base of your own party. He did so on such issues as comprehensive immigration reform, providing more than 40 million seniors with Medicare-covered prescription-drug benefits, and “No Child Left Behind.”

Regarding the latter, despite all the valid criticism that it was too driven by teaching-for-testing and a lack of adequate funding, it should be remembered that the liberal icon and hero White House in the early days of his administration to co-sponsor this legislation and still supports this program, because it did produce dramatic improvements in public school performance and accountability in certain respects, particularly among inner-city minorities and poor children.

Finally, lest we forget, Mr. Bush was also willing to touch the third rail of American politics still avoided by most Democrats - Social Security reform. His proposal that would have allowed individuals to divert a percentage of their contributions to Social Security to investments in the stock market would have added more than $1 trillion to the system´s deficit. Obviously, given the market’s recent historic plunge, it is just as well the proposal was DOA.

But Mr. Bush is the first president to suggest the rather liberal concept of some form of needs-based consideration in Social Security entitlements. He raised the question of why it made sense for a billionaire to receive a check he does not need whereas the working poor receive a check much less than they need. This was Mr. Bush’s “China” moment: No Democrat would have dared make such a progressive proposal, even though we secretly were cheering him on.

And now to address Mr. Bush the man.

I have written before about his basic decency and empathy as a person, hearkening back to an incident I recall vividly during Yale days when we were both residents within the small community of Davenport College. We were hanging out one night when a classmate of mine, who was obviously gay, walked by. Someone made a nasty crack. Mr. Bush snapped, “knock it off” or something to that effect - “why don´t you try walking in his shoes and seeing how it feels.”

I remembered this incident more than once as I watched with dismay Mr. Bush allowing his political advisers to use gay marriage as a polarizing political tool to help him win re-election in 2004. But I also knew that Mr. Bush had provided tens of millions of dollars to Africans suffering from AIDS or other diseases.

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