Moral Tribute to President George W. Bush

So pervasive, accusatory, emotive, contagious, and vindictive has become the contempt for President Bush, even in sectors of his own party, that it is a pleasure to defend his moral honor and accomplishments. It is always better to be on the side of the advocate, rather than that of the accuser, especially on behalf of an underdog! From the perspective of Catholic moral teaching, his positives far outweigh his negatives.
1. Defense of the fetus. His Supreme Court appointments alone vindicate his presidency, but his overall firmness and consistency on this, the primal moral issue of our time, has been impressive.
2. Embryonic stem cell research. In 2004 the hype and deception around this issue reached a pandemic proportion with candidate Edwards prophesying that Michael Fox would be revitalized if the resistance to progress could be overcome. As fellow conservatives (Hatch, McCain) caved in to the pressure, Bush stood tall against the tide. His stance on this issue at that time was simply heroic.
3. Aid to Aids in Africa. Even his political enemies acknowledge that his energy and impetus in this area has reaped marvelous results.
4. Faith-based initiatives. This was less than successful but the idea itself remains promising for the future. The best chance to make inroads against deeply ingrained poverty is an alliance between government, the private sector and volunteerism, especially of the religious kind. (Fr. Neuhaus reminds us that there are not a large number of atheistic charities.)
5. Immigration. Here again he was unsuccessful, but he defied his own base and make an honest attempt at a decent, humane resolution of the problem.
On all of the above this President stood with “the very least” and faced opposition from both the left and from the right.

His negatives are, admittedly, not trivial:
1. Torture. This is the one “essential evil” that he endorsed. This was unfortunate as it lessened our prestige across the globe and seemed to have produced little fruit. On this issue especially he would have profited from a lucid Catholic moral analysis.
2. Iraq War. The invasion did not (in my view) pass muster as a “just war” and subsequent information (on WMDs) confirmed it as a rash judgment. Nevertheless, with the success of the surge, the establishment of a definite timetable for troop withdrawal, and hope for the first stable democracy in the area, we still await the final verdict. This remains one of the very most ambiguous of moral issues: granting the high costs of the war, how do we measure them proportionally against the possible costs of an indefinite Hussein regime? The emotive indignation of the left and paleoconservative right are simplistic.
3. That war is a prominent example of a broader and deeply troubling tendency towards narrowness, arrogance, and rash judgment. The failure of Cheney and Rumsfeld to consider important intelligence information about Iraq was rooted in a deeper distrust of professionalism in general and a hyper-confidence in their own convictions and ideology. A small group within the White House made the crucial decisions as dissident voices (Colin Powell) were marginalized. The politicization of the Attorney General’s office reflected this same partisan overzealousness, narrowness and lack of humility. This attitude seems to have pervaded the administration and is partially responsible for the bad spirit in which it departs.
4. President Bush’s sins of omission are many and will be given different weights according to one’s predisposition: health care, global warming, alternate energies, regulation of the economy, Katrina debacle, and tax advantaging of the affluent. All of these have moral dimensions but are complex, prudential policy issues allowing for a diversity of opinions within the Catholic community.

The record is mixed but given the gravity of the offense against innocent life and his consistency there, his overall grade is a B.

Obama has no comparable body of work to evaluate so we can only go by his rhetoric and voting record. He indicates not the faintest concern for the very least among us, the unborn. He even advocates destruction of babies who survive abortion attempts. With that stance, he can not earn higher than a failing F in basic social morality, whatever his compensating strengths.

His strengths, however, are not trivial and exactly mirror the weaknesses of the Bush years. His initial cabinet appointments indicate openness to the best of the professional and intellectual world and openness to expertise, diversity and study. By a powerful swing of the pendulum, he promises to address the very things that Bush ignored. Hopefully, he will succeed in what is best in this agenda but fail to reverse what is most honorable in the Bush legacy, especially concern for the VERY least.