Quite a legacy

The Bush administration and its craven apologists, have been issuing pronouncements in recent weeks attempting to burnish what's left of the rusted chrome that is "Bush's legacy." The most common argument you hear made is that there haven't been any attacks on U.S. soil since 9-11-01. Careful readers of this blog may recall that I said "So what" to the claim a week or so ago. Matt Yglesias takes it even further.

This is like saying that except for the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover had a good economic record. The vast majority of Americans to have ever been killed by foreign terrorists were killed under George W. Bush’s watch. As Gillespie says, whether or not a president succeeds in preventing foreign terrorists from murdering thousands of American citizens is an important part of that president’s record. And Bush took office on January 20, 2001. Nine or so months later by far the largest terrorist attack on American soil was perpetrated. That’s a fantastically enormous failing. If you only look at Bush’s final seven years, you’ll see that he was as good as every other president at preventing terrorist attacks. And if you include his entire presidency, you’ll see that he was by far the worst.

Exactly so.