Bush contemplates how he’d like to be remembered
President George W. Bush, nearing the end of his final term in office, says he most wants to be remembered as someone who came to Washington and didn’t lose his values. Someone who didn’t sell his soul to the political process. Somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace. So he told his sister, Dorothy Bush Koch, in an interview for StoryCorps, the national oral history initiative. An excerpt of the interview aired on National Public Radio on Thanksgiving Day and the White House released excerpts on Friday. The entire interview will be archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
“I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process,” Bush said in the interview. “I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values. And I darn sure wasn’t going to sacrifice those values.” “I’d like to be a president (known) as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace; that focused on individuals rather than process; that rallied people to serve their neighbor,” the president added. He mentions his HIV/AIDS and malaria initiatives in Africa, and the Medicare prescription drug benefit as two programs he is proud of. Asked about his “No Child Left Behind” education law, Bush called it one of the “significant achievements of my administration.” “We said loud and clear to educators, parents, and children that we expect the best for every child, that we believe every child can learn, and that in return for federal money we expect there to be an accountability system in place to determine whether every child is learning to read, write and add and subtract,” Bush said.
Bush hands over power to President-elect Barack Obama on Jan. 20, 2009. As he heads into the final weeks of his presidency, Bush’s job approval ratings remain low. Only about 26 percent approve of his performance, while some 70 percent disapprove. Bush’s decision to take the United States to war in Iraq is widely unpopular. A Quinnipiac University poll in early November found that 58 percent disagreed with decision.
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Photo credit: Reuters/Ho New (Bush talks by phone to troops in remote locations on Thanksgiving); Reuters/Jason Reed (Bush pardons national Thanksgiving turkey, Pumpkin)
Bush sacrificed the American public in order to protect his own “values”. He has done everything possible to undermine our country and has done so with a smile and a glib “stay the course” on his lips. He has left the country in an absolutely preventable recession, with unemployment rates higher than they’ve been in 15 years, simply because he could and because he didn’t care. He spent 8 years using America as a disposable playtoy and has never once thought of taking responsibility for his own actions and attitudes.
“I think W. will be remembered as a man who did what he thought was right, a man of action who refused to back down or see America’s greatness compromised. ” — Posted by Mark
What someone thinks is right is not always the right thing to do. Politics can NOT be governed by personal values, especially not in a country as large and diverse as ours is. The President must put what’s best for the people at the forefront of his office. What’s best for himself comes last.
We didn’t need other countries to compromise America, he was happily doing it from within. Did you ever stop to wonder why Americans in other countries constantly felt the need to apologize for Bush, or were you too busy swallowing his “everything is fine” idiocy to look past your front lawn?