Dubya 18012009

Dubya's reputation might yet be saved - Opinion - smh.com.au

The bare bones of the case that the presidency of George Bush was a failure are hard to dispute. But despite the fact that much of the world has invested in Barack Obama as the anti-Bush, there are likely to be important continuities between the two administrations - particularly with respect to their international objectives.

Obama will no doubt pursue the global objectives he shares with Bush in ways the world will find more appealing, with less force and more diplomacy, and less unilateralism and more collaboration. But as important as these differences in style are, they should not obscure the underlying similarities between the Bush and Obama approaches to America's national interests.

This leads to a profound irony. By helping to restore the moral authority and the global credibility of the United States, Obama will further big goals he shares with his predecessor.

The more Obama succeeds, by using methods that are kinder and gentler than Bush would tolerate, the better the Bush legacy will begin to look. Along with the rest of the world, Bush should therefore wish Obama all possible success in playing the very difficult hand he has been dealt.

Defending the Bush record is futile. The core elements in the anti-Bush case are clear. The US went to war in Iraq on false pretences; there were no weapons of mass destruction. The moral stain of inhumane treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib has undermined the nation's standing in the world. Bush will forever be likened to Herbert Hoover in the Great Depression, presidents whose benign neglect of the excesses of rampant capitalism left their country and the world in dire straits.

The Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer says Bush isn't Hoover but Harry Truman reincarnate, a wartime president history will reward for laying the foundations for victory in a generational struggle against evil. The British journalist Martin Wolf claims that China is as much to blame as the US for the global financial crisis.