It was inevitable. A man can only serve as a punching bag for so long. Former President George W. Bush finally came out swinging against the Obama administration, but he did leave the gloves on.
The Washington Times reports that Mr. Bush spoke to a business group in Erie, PA last night.
Repeatedly in his hourlong speech and question-and-answer session, Mr. Bush said he would not directly criticize the new president, who has moved to take over financial institutions and several large corporations. Several times, however, he took direct aim at Obama policies as he defended his own during eight years in office.
“Government does not create wealth. The major role for the government is to create an environment where people take risks to expand the job rate in the United States,” he said to huge cheers.
Mr. Bush weighed in on some of the most pressing issues of the day: the election in Iran, the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, and his administration’s interrogation policies of terrorists held there and elsewhere. The former president has not commented on Mr. Obama’s decision to ban “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding, which the current president has called “off course” and “based on fear.”
“The way I decided to address the problem was twofold: One, use every technique and tool within the law to bring terrorists to justice before they strike again,” he said, adding that the country needs to stay on offense, not defense. On Guantanamo, which while in office Mr. Bush said he wanted to close, the former president was diplomatic.
“I told you I’m not going to criticize my successor,” he said. “I’ll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don’t believe that — persuasion isn’t going to work. Therapy isn’t going to cause terrorists to change their mind.” ….
Mr. Bush returned again and again to the economy, and sought to defend his own actions after the financial meltdown in the waning days of his second term — Mr. Obama repeatedly has said he inherited that mess.
“I am told, ‘If you do not move strongly, Mr. President, you will be a president overseeing a depression that will ultimately be greater than the Great Depression,’” Mr. Bush said. “I firmly believe it was necessary to put money in our banks to make sure our financial system did not collapse. … I did not want there to be bread lines, to be a great depression.”
He said his administration sought to address the “housing bubble” before the system broke down. “We tried to reform” mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, “but couldn’t get it through the vested interests on Capitol Hill.”
Bush remains a class act. When asked if President Obama is leading us to socialism he held his tongue, adding “Well see.” Indeed we will.
Below is video of the former president talking about life since leaving the White House.
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“W” has done a lot to keep us safe. For that I’m grateful.
Based on what we have now I’ll have to not be so p!ssed at they way he spent $$$.
NOTE: I feel he was SEVERELY hampered by a yellow dog MSM that placed everything he did under a microscope and spun it into something negative.
Big Ears cannot hold a candle to him. Laura was a class act First Lady. **Does this make me RAAACIST?**
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Bush will be vindicated by history. Or maybe not. Im not sure we have much of a history left.
With Obama’s policies going to drastically raise prices and steering us toward double digit inflation I think we are facing 12-14 percent unemployment by this time next year and 20 percent by December 2010.
The democrats are going to be massacred at the polls in 2010. Not because the GOP deserves to be back in power but because the policies they are putting in place are mind numbingly dangerous and will penalize Americans to the extreme.
Eventually even the MSM will turn on Obama. When that happens its Massacre time for the Democrats.
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I didn’t realize how much I’d missed him until I watched this excerpt. How humble, how sincere, how unaffected, and how real this man is. I think his legacy will speak volumes. I wonder if Obama knows that every move he makes down his liberal, socialist path will only end up heaping more praise on ‘W’ in the end.
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Sigh…
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I just want–just once–to shake his hand and say thanks.
There is so much we don’t know, and much we will never know, about how much this man did for the country while he was in office. I think he knows that, and is comfortable with that. Can you imagine Obama not taking credit for something and sitting there, willing to be vilified for his decisions? Nah. The Dems love to claim Truman now, too, but they loathed him at the time; he was his time’s “Joe Biden”—a know-nothing little Missouri farmer who was NEVER supposed to take the reins from the exalted FDR. And thank God he did–I think Truman did what he had to do, too, and like W he was willing to be history’s bastard as long as the country was safe.
W did spend some money–the bulk of it on terrorism, and some of it on the ‘compassionate conservatism’ he had hoped to govern with. I know in my own situation, my elderly grandmother needed that prescription drug assistance; she could never have survived without my additional income, renting a room in her home and sneaking extra money into her account. She came from that generation W was trying to help, that generation without 2 paychecks in the family and people too poor–and too traumatized by the Depression–to invest and make money. So I can’t personally blame him for that, I was grateful for that. Of course, we also only accepted THAT–we didn’t expect anyone else to support my grandmother. We did without, we didn’t expect our neighbors to. Or even strangers.
As to the bailout—remember, what he approved was buying toxic assets from the banks; all those dead and dying mortgages, to keep the banks solvent. Taking over GM and etcetera was never in the picture. We have The One to thank for where that went–he didn’t inherit all of THAT. He planned and hungered for that power from the day he changed his name from Barry back to Barack (ooooh, does that make ME racist?)
I will forever be a fan of George and Laura Bush, and personally can’t think of better role models for my nieces and nephews. Flawed people, maybe; we all are. But I think they tried really hard.
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