I watched all of your final press conference, your interview with Brit Hume, your interview with Sean Hannity, and while I didn’t agree with everything you did while President, particularly letting government spending spiral out of control and not vetoing any spending during your first term, overall I’m still glad you were our President during this time. I shudder to think what Al Gore or John Kerry would have done.
I’ve watched some of Vice President Dick Cheney’s interviews too, and I am completely convinced he was critical to this country’s effective (although not perfect) response to 9/11.
Despite critics, as you said, the Patriot Act, the military actions, and many other things done, despite huge opposition, meant the U.S. was not attacked again in the past 7 1/2 yrs.
The economic collapse will be a black eye, although there’s an enormous number of people who can legitimately be blamed not for just not avoiding it, but for actively causing a crisis to become a MAJOR disaster. Banks were told to write lousy loans, and they did, then banks and Wall St. bundled up all the lousy loans and sold them to suckers worldwide, with the government’s blessing, or ignorance.
The final Press Conference today was good, but it’s a shame most people won’t see all of it. You were forceful, direct, articulate, and in control, and handled the media’s ‘obvious’ questions well.
You handled the worst disaster since Pearl Harbor effectively, brought a fledgling democracy to Iraq, made this country safer, got the terrorists on defense and on the run, and the economy did ‘ok’ for the most part, despite man made and natural disasters, until the ticking economic time bomb went off.
You leave office unpopular, but as you have said, no one knows what will happen from here or how history will ultimately judge events and actions of the past 8 years.
I, for one, thank you.