Soccer Dad

Credit

Ive written before about the lack of credit that President Bush gets for his policy towards Africa.

It's interesting but there's something else that he isn't getting credit for: President Barack Obama. And by Don King of all people.

"We had 43 presidents in the United States, he was the 43rd president, 42 of them promised us everything and gave us nothing, both Democrats and Republicans," King said in an interview with Reuters.

"(Bush formed) the most diverse cabinet of any president in the history of the United States. I know that they are condemning him now ... but this man prepared us for a Barack Obama, for the 'great change,'" King added, naming Bush Cabinet members Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Rod Paige and Alfonso Jackson as examples.

Quite a few critics point out that there aren't a lot of African American Republicans. But is that because Republicans are hostile to minorities, or because African Americans are hostile to Republicans? While Sen. Obama (or any African American Democrat) is going to get over 90% of the black vote, Lynn Swann, Ken Blackwell and Michael Steele certainly didn't.

What gives?

In another area where President Bush isn't getting enough credit, Ross Douthat writes:

It's true that at the national level, welfare reform reduced spending along the way (though Tommy Thompson's reforms in Wisconsin, the model for the national reform, boosted funding during the transition to workfare), whereas the Bush anti-homelessness push has required an infusion of roughly $500 million (less, I believe, if you adjust for inflation) over what HUD provided for homelessness policy in 2002. But the payoff in terms of conservative goals - reducing dependency, increasing workforce participation - has been pretty impressive. And responding intelligently to homelessness seems like exactly the kind of thing that a more minimalist, means-tested welfare state ought to be doing.

Ross Douthat asks why conservatives won't take credit for a success like this. But I think the better question why isn't the MSM, at least, pointing to such success.

Fiery Spirited Zionist keeps writing in the comments that history will judge President Bush more generously than he is treated now. There's ample evidence that that's the case. The question is whether future historians will be as partisan as those writing the first draft.