George W. Bush: the most underrated president ever

Who do you suppose said this:

So, the hot news now is Barack Obama.

Obama this, Obama that… Naturally, it is very laudable that the United States may have chosen to look beyond the issue of race and opted for a person purely on the merit of his character. But what will they find?

The usual hot air that Washington politicians seem to have made their own. Mr Obama is no different. We’re just too politically correct to say that the only thing refreshing about him is his colour. So we say he’s “bipartisan”, or he’s a “uniter”. . . .

Of course you think Mr Obama is going to make a difference, but as I write this, he’s already giving all the signs of somebody who will say anything to get into power only to act in exactly the same way as the Washington clique he aims to replace!

Or this?

Whatever happened to leadership and honesty as presidential traits? I happen to believe that the only leader in the West to have these two admirable qualities in droves is the leader of the free world: George W Bush.

Or this?

Bush may not have the slickness of his predecessor, but he is a man you can trust and who prefers to tell it like it is.

This is refreshing, and very scary for us who are used to our politicians always talking grandly about principles and hiding behind political mumbo-speak.

The fact is you guys hate Mr Bush because he is not a hypocrite and you are used to hypocrites as your leaders. We hate what we don’t understand.

Must be some knuckle-dragging old-fogey white guy with a trust fund and Texas fortune behind him, right?

Wrong. It’s by Sameh El-Shahat, writing in the London Telegraph a couple of days ago. The Telegraph also posts this short video by Mr. El-Shahat.

Final query: why doesn’t the herd of independent minds ruminating in the pastures of The New York Times, CNN, NPR, and the purlieus of the left-liberal Obama-besotted elite get it? George Santayana said that those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Have they forgotten Jimmy Carter: Mr. “Misery Index” (21.98 percent when Carter lost to Ronald Regan in 1979), the fount of prissy, hectoring talk about the necessity of living with diminished expectations, the architect of the foreign policy disaster of Iran–the Ayatollah, the hostage crisis. Obama will not, I predict, be the next President of the United States, but if he were, it would be Carter redux, with more charm, possibly, but less experience and even more programmatically left-left-leaning let’s tax-’em tax-’em tax-’em instincts. Meanwhile who will remember George W. Bush. Not the elite punditocracy, of course–until, that is, they wake up and find that tout le monde is wistfully remembering what a strong leader Mr. Bush was (he will be then be referred to as Mr. Bush) and the victims of Bush Derangement Syndrome will be like the rock- and bomb-throwing 60s radicals: quaint players in a rancid drama whose plot no one can quite remember.