The National Geographic channel ran a program tonight remembering 9-11.  There were extensive interviews with George W. Bush, along with videos of his public appearances.  It was a stunning reminder of how well Bush handled this.  At one point Bush visited ground zero.  He talked about how he planned on shaking the hand of every man working there, looking him in the eye and thanking him for his service.  This was followed by his off the cuff speech from the top of a ruined fire truck when he said:  “I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”  That, my friends is what a President sounds like.

What a contrast with the pathetic speech by Barack Obama Tuesday night.  Where did we go so wrong?  Where did we forget what it was like to have a real President and why that matters?  Where did we forget that honesty, integrity and leadership in a President of the United States should never be taken for granted?

We allowed the liberal media to destroy Bush, by failing to challenge them when they started lying about nearly everything.  We allowed people to accuse Bush of lying about the intelligence regarding WMD in Iraq when the hard cold documented facts prove the opposite was true.  Even today we allow people to ignore that fact that not only did George W. Bush had strong bi-partisan support for both the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, it was Democrats who were the loudest voices urging him on.  Even today we allow naïve fools to pretend that we gained nothing from removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Those assumptions are absurd.  If you think things are bad now, just imagine having to deal with someone like Assad if the Taliban were still in control of Afghanistan providing a safe haven for al Qaeda.  Just imagine trying to deal with Assad if Saddam Hussein was still in power in Iraq, with everyone still convinced that he also had large stock piles of WMD.  Now add in the real potential that Saddam Hussein would have his coveted nuclear weapon.  Explain exactly how Barack Obama, or any other President, could possible deal with that.  Obama couldn’t generate the guts to launch a couple of cruise missiles against Syria who is ill equipped to fight back.  Explain, once again, how Bush got it all so wrong and why we would be so much better off if he hadn’t cleaned out at least some of the trash.

When you’re done with that explain why George Bush is responsible for the deregulation of the financial markets that was signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1998.  Explain why Bush is responsible for the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, when these organizations exploded in size under the leadership of Bill Clinton.  Did you miss the part where Bush was begging congress to give him the power to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, warning congress that failure to act could bring down our economy?  Did you forget that we had the quickest recovery from a recession in our nation’s history, in spite of 9-11, under the leadership of George Bush.  Did you notice that we had sustained dynamic job growth up until the end of 2007?  If it was all Bush’s fault, as Obama claimed, how did that happen?

The economy started to sour in January of 2007.   So what happened in January 2007?  Did George W. Bush change?  NO!  Did he change his economic policy?  NO!  What changed was that Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House and Harry Reid became Majority Leader of the Senate.  Both came into office determined to force Bush to surrender in Iraq and to end the Bush tax cuts that were fueling our economic growth.  They were determined to change things.  They did.  They made everything worse.  When we stupidly elected Barack Obama to be President our current economic mess became inevitable.

This program was a wake up-call.  It was a reminder that George W. Bush was a real class act and that if we do not honor such men we end up with someone like Barack Obama.  The simple truth is that Barack Obama is not worthy to be mentioned in the same sentence as George W. Bush.  In a little over four years we went from a President who was the most respected and feared leader in the world to a President who is rapidly becoming an international joke.

It is time we remembered that once we had a real leader and it is long past time we started the search for another one.

TDM