Every American President has obvious attributes and shortcomings, and the job of historians is to assess both, and come up with a reasonable conclusion on the tenure of each occupant in the White House.
George W. Bush has now been out of office for four years and three months, and has stayed out of the public eye and controversy, unlike his controversial Vice President, Dick Cheney.
Bush’s purpose in life is to begin the rehabilitation of his shattered image, primarily based on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and the economic collapse in his last months, known as the Great Recession.
This is a lot to overcome, and having allowed Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to have so much impact on policy making does not help Bush’s quest to be seen as a President who did his best in difficult times.
Tomorrow, at the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library on the Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas, a few hundred miles from his father’s library in College Station on the campus of Texas A & M, all four former Presidents will be present, along with President Obama, Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, and many other dignitaries.
The new library will allow visitors to make judgments on whether they would have done any differently in the major crises of his eight years in office.
The library also avoids much attention paid to Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush’s political genius, Karl Rove, who, like them, remains highly controversial and divisive in the minds of many Americans.
It will be argued that Bush is trying to manipulate history, and of course he is, but every President in his library attempts that.
Will a reassessment of Bush change the view of C Span scholars who in 2009, rated him 36th of 42 men who have been President?
Likely, over time, and particularly after his future demise, whenever that is, the image of George W. Bush will rise somewhat from the depths, but it is hard to imagine him going higher than say number 30 out of 43, and certainly, there is NO chance that he will surpass his father, rated 18th out of 42 in the C Span poll in 2009.