The Unappreciated Man

Remembering the tenth anniversary of the financial crisis, WSJ columnist Greg Ip says George W. Bush doesn't deserve the opprobrium heaped upon him:

Mr. Bush’s legacy is overshadowed by many controversies of his own making, such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but his responsibility for causing the crisis that would cost his party the White House was at most minor and shared with predecessors.

Greg Ip's main point, however, is that President Bush deserves credit for rescuing the world's financial system during the critical months near the end of his presidency:

The day after Lehman Brothers failed [September 15, 2008], Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke went to President George W. Bush with bad news. Insurer American International Group Inc. needed $85 billion or it, too, would collapse.

Though unhappy and frustrated, Mr. Bush approved the loan, saying, “If we suffer political damage, so be it,” Mr. Paulson later wrote.

Scholars of the crisis rightly focus on the decisions that the three crisis managers—Mr. Paulson, Mr. Bernanke and New York Fed President Tim Geithner—made to rescue the financial system. Though unpopular at the time and still second-guessed, their actions were vital in avoiding a second Great Depression. Yet most would have been impossible without the president’s support, which Mr. Bush gave unreservedly from start to finish.

In 2008 it was far from clear what to do (image from
http://economicsofcontempt.blogspot.com)

President Bush made mistakes, but he also made courageous decisions during his second term. When everyone--Democrats and Republicans--were sickened by Iraq and called for U.S. withdrawal in defeat, he ordered the 2007 surge that rescued the war to such an extent that Joe Biden declared in 2010 that victory in Iraq "could be one of the great achievements of this administration." Mr. Bush's decisions after the Lehman bankruptcy likewise revealed the character of the man.

In 2005 I thought that President Bush would be viewed as a consequential (not the same as great) President. Some of his decisions have been over-ridden by both events and successors, but I have come to appreciate his character. Like George Washington, George Bush has stayed away from politics and declined even to defend his legacy. Long after we are gone, I suspect that historians will treat him more kindly.