As the Obamaite sans culotte hordes defenestrate Washington with a mania not seen since Jacksonian hordes invaded in 1829, it's a good time to make a preliminary assessment of George W. Bush's presidency.  I recognize that it is several decades before it's really possible to assess a president's impact on national and international politics but it is possible to make a few preliminary observations.

One of the most important is that George W. Bush is an honorable man who restored significant chunks of honor to a presidency desecrated by Bill Clinton's depravity.  Bush's presidency will be forever marked by the 9/11 attacks and his responses to them.  The imbecilic and hyperbolic responses of his deranged leftist critics to many of his policies also reflect well on the man and should endear him forever to all conservatives.

Bush was right to launch the initial assault of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan to oust the Taliban and deprive some form of sanctuary to Al Qaida.  Contrary to leftist critics such as Plagiarizer Joe Biden, he did not take his eye off the ball by pursuing further operations in Iraq but not enough sustained attentioned and forces were deployed to Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal areas to further crush Al Qaida remnants.  Insufficient pressure was applied on Pakistan, in particular its intelligence services, to aggressively pursue Al Qaida and Taliban remnants in Pakistan's tribal areas such as Waziristan.  Cleaning up this region is a difficult and long-term task due to the reflexive Islamic primitivism of its inhabitants and will take decades of sustained effort.

Contrary to the petulant whining of leftist critics, Bush was right to launch military operations against Iraq.  We should have launched such operations if 9/11 never happened and Osama Bin  Laden didn't exist.  Saddam Hussein's regime aspired to acquire weapons of mass destruction, supported various terrorist groups, and conducted offensive military operations against countries as diverse as Bahrain, Iran, Israel, and Kuwait.  It was not a regime that was responsive to UN sanctions or to various UN blessed sanctions short of outright regime change.  The conventional operations against Iraq in 2003 were brilliantly executed and proper.  Unfortunately, we failed to plan for the power vacuum Saddam's ouster would create and we failed to account for the resurrection of centuries old Shia-Sunni hatreds within Iraq which occurred in the invasion's aftermath.  We should have sent a larger number of  troops for stabilization and reconstruction operations in the aftermath of Saddam's defeat.  Consequently, it has taken the pain and casualties of a civil war which only begun to be reversed in 2007 with the ingenious and visionary strategic leadership of General David Petraeus which is beginning to put Iraq on the road to having a chance of becoming a normal nation by the warped standards of Middle East Islamic culture.

President Bush's stalwart courage and resolve and his refusal to buckle in to defeatist cowards and critics is one of his greatest triumphs.  If the Mideast region achieves some greater semblance of political and religous freedom as a result of our actions and sacrifices in Iraq and Afghanistan in the decades to come it will be because of Churchillian resolve even if he lacks Churchill's rhetorical eloquence.

The fact that we have not been attacked by Islamist terrorists since 9/11 is another towering vindication of Bush's leadership.  Some of the steps his administration has enacted such as the USA Patriot Act, NSA's wireless surveillance program, and imprisoning Islamist terrorists at Gitmo, have been unpopular in the terrorist apologist communities of lawyers and leftist academics, but they have worked.  Civil liberties have not been impeded and you don't have to worry about these policies unless you are an Islamist terrorist plotting to kill or injure Americans or someone seeking to aid and abet such individuals.  Sadly, Bush and his administration have refused to rhetorically engage these imbecilic critics in the vigorous fashion necessary to gain widespread support for these policies.  This has, in turn, made Americans susceptible to the delusional sophistries of Barack Obama and his hordes of buffoons clamoring for "change we can believe in."

There were economic successes on Bush's watch.  The 2001 tax cuts, which are now in jeopardy, helped spur significant economic growth after the recession of Clinton's final presidential years.  Until 2007, significant stock market growth was occurring, the trade deficit was declining, and overall economic growth was positive.  Unfortunately, excess non-defense spending by the Bush Administration and Republican and Democratic congresses has drastically increased our budget deficit and national debt which are the core causes of our economic malaise.

Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of U.S. economic history should know that presidential policies can do more to harm economic growth than promote such growth.  Unfortunately, the abysmal economic education taught in our schools and in far to many families, reflects how easy it is for charlatans like Barack Obama to peddle their fraudulent visions of change masquerading as historically failed public policies.  Present and historic congresses and presidential adminstrations of both parties share responsibility for allowing imprudent legislation like the Community Reinvestment Act and American Dream Downpayment Act to become law without requiring prospective homeowners to demonstrate the earnings potential and workforce stability to demonstrate they can meet monthly mortgage payments.  Bush and conservatives should have done more to promote prudent long-term personal and governmental financial planning instead of succumbing to Democratic blandishments to spend more money to achieve desired social objectives or to believe that tax cuts alone, instead of prudent spending and long-term strategic financial planning, are all that's required to achieve sustained economic growth.

George W. Bush's presidential legacy is a mixed but honorable one on balance.  I believe honest and intelligent historians who are not seduced by leftist silliness and our contemporary enthrallment with Barack Obama will recognize that George W. Bush's presidency is a significant one who's stature will improve with time as Harry Truman's and Dwight Eisenhower's did.  Bush did a better job of responding to our problems than either of his defeated opponents Al Gore or John Kerry would have.  Buyer's remorse over Obama will occur within the next several months as it becomes manifestly clear that melliferous rhetoric, statist spending policy, and a dangerous alchemy of liberal Christian and secularist social polices are not the change America needs.
We will grow tired of Obama's empty rhetoric and polices which will worsen our national debt and endanger  national security.
The time will come when many Americans will realize how they let Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi play them for fools and they will long for the refreshing honesty of George W. Bush's presidency.

Most conservative men like myself, will also miss Dana Perino's press briefings.  She is a cheerful and assertive defender of the President (not to mention serious eye candy and worthy of being remembered as the hottest presidential press secretary) and it's regrettable she was not appointed to this position earlier instead of the duplicitous Scott McLellan who might as well have worked for the Democratic National Committee.   Fortunately, the archived White House website will feature video webcasts of these press briefings as we enter into the torpor of the Obama era. 

We should also be grateful for First Lady Laura Bush who restored civility and class to that position after it was degraded by Hillary Clinton who's degradation of national institutions as extended to the U.S. Senate, and will soon envelope the State Department and U.S. foreign policy credibility.

Conservatives must stand strong, humorous, and defiant in this orgy of Obamite imbecility.  The flaws of "change we can believe in" are about to become apparent and our opportunity to recover our bearings and our country will return sooner than many of us might expect.