Outside the box #2 : President Bush

[amul]

not_croaker: Something you agree with George W Bush on.

This was a pretty tough one for me, both because of my general distaste for the Republican platform, and President George W Bush in particular. On top of that, I was pretty deeply enthralled in my own concerns for most of the Bush administration, despite a growing interest in politics.

As a result, I had to spend about an hour surfing the web for his political history in order to do this one justice. It was tempting to make light of this question, since I wasn't specifically asked for a similarity based on political beliefs, but I didn't like side-stepping the question like that.

In the end, I found something that I agree with President Bush on, and in fact, it's a pretty big one.

Say what you want about the rest of his politics and practices, the fact is that he is the first President to openly and publicly take on the Social Security crisis. Previous to his 2005 State of the Union Address, most Americans had turned a blind eye to the enormous strain that the SS system is currently under, and most politicians would rather engage in a smear war with the Christian Al Queda than talk about the need for Social Security reform.

Nor did he approach the problem with his normal ineffectiveness, nor try to shove the solution into the hands of big business. I have to give him credit, he approached the issue with a (relatively) open mind to potential solutions, and got Congress talking about it. In this, he showed a degree of character I'm not used to seeing in him.

It takes courage to step on the Third Rail of Politics, particularly at the State of the Union Address shortly after the majority of Americans lost faith in the system and many believed the election results that kept him in office were false. You could argue that this freed him to tackle any task, and in some ways I can see that argument, but it is one thing to be free to do something, and another to actually tackle it.

From that perspective, it's doubly sad, although no more surprising, that nothing came of his effort to bring a critical topic out from under the rug which everyone swept it under. An effective and intelligent solution, one which can stand the ebbs and flows of demographics, is sorely needed. If our government cannot take care of those who have remained loyal and patriotic citizens once they can no longer effectively contribute to our economy, then whose job should it be? The only way to find such a solution is to start talking about it, and President Bush is one of the few politicians I've seen make that effort.

Comments

[amul.livejournal.com]

I'm not really familiar with the geopolitical situation. I've only just begun to expand my perceptions to national-level politics.