George W Bush, as I have argued many times, has been a spectacularly successful president - if your definition of "successful" includes turning the govt into a sort of combination National Chamber of Commerce and corporate wish-list enforcer. He has virtually gotten everything he's asked for, usually on his own terms. He had a rubber-stamp Republican Congress for 6 of his 8 years and even when the Democrats won it back in '06 largely due to the way his ultraconservative, pro-corporate policies devastated the country, they continued to give him pretty much everything he wanted, including FISA, telecom immunity, more troops in Iraq (anybody remember "the surge"?) and worker- and environment-unfriendly trade deals.
But once he's gone, history is not going to look kindly on him. He hasn't left yet and already they aren't. The reasons are simple: his success has been a disaster for the nation in every important area one can think of. Surprisingly, that's not how he sees it. For example, he's currently running around insisting that the odious, destructive NCLB has been a major success and even had the gall to warn Obama not to mess with it.
Bush argued that No Child Left Behind has "forever changed America's school systems" for the better, forcing accountability on failing public schools and leading to measurable improvements among poor and minority students. [There's no evidence whatever it has done any such thing, but since when would a lack of proof stop Bush?]
"I firmly believe that, thanks to this law, students are learning, an achievement gap is closing," Bush told the audience at General Philip Kearny School.
He also suggested that Obama, who has vowed to overhaul the program, should tread carefully before following through on promises of reform. "There is a growing consensus across the country that now is not the time to water down standards or to roll back accountability," Bush said.
No, there isn't. There's a growing consensus that NCLB has been an utter failure and needs to be re-vamped. Personally, I think it's so bad there's no saving it. We ought to throw it out and start over.
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