SUMMING UP

Posted at 8:51 a.m. ET

President Bush delivered a dignified, eloquent farewell to the nation last night.  I flipped channels right after the speech to catch reactions, and caught Chris Matthews, resident embarrassment at MSNBC, making a vile, disgusting attack on the president, mocking Mr. Bush's belief in spreading democracy, claiming he was never ready for the presidency, and asserting that he was captured by "the neocons."  There was absolutely no graciousness or reflection in Matthews's comments - simply an all-out assault from a man who cannot separate his partisanship - he's an active Democrat - from his so-called journalism.

When I was a student at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, I interned at the old Huntley-Brinkley Report.  The atmosphere was professional, restrained and respectful.  Watching Matthews is to watch the train wreck that NBC News has become, apparently in a grab for ratings. 

One can, of course, disagree with Mr. Bush on a host of things, yet remain civil and thoughtful in dissent.  That has not been the way of much of the opposition during the last eight years, and the country has suffered for it.

This morning, Charles Krauthammer, in The Washington Post, gives a positive view of the Bush presidency, and his arguments are worth reading: 

Except for Richard Nixon, no president since Harry Truman has left office more unloved than George W. Bush. Truman's rehabilitation took decades. Bush's will come sooner. Indeed, it has already begun. The chief revisionist? Barack Obama.

That appeared in The Washington Post?  That is permitted?  Is this a new Post?

Vindication is being expressed not in words but in deeds -- the tacit endorsement conveyed by the Obama continuity-we-can-believe-in transition...

...It is the great care Obama is taking in not preemptively abandoning the anti-terror infrastructure that the Bush administration leaves behind. While still a candidate, Obama voted for the expanded presidential wiretapping (FISA) powers that Bush had fervently pursued. And while Obama opposes waterboarding (already banned, by the way, by Bush's CIA in 2006), he declined George Stephanopoulos's invitation (on ABC's "This Week") to outlaw all interrogation not permitted by the Army Field Manual. Explained Obama: "Dick Cheney's advice was good, which is let's make sure we know everything that's being done," i.e., before throwing out methods simply because Obama campaigned against them.

He praised Dick Cheney?  Battle Stations!  Code Pink to the White House!  The "Impeach Obama!" movement starts today.

...Obama is consciously creating a gulf between what he now dismissively calls "campaign rhetoric" and the policy choices he must make as president. Accordingly, Newsweek -- Obama acolyte and scourge of everything Bush/Cheney -- has on the eve of the Democratic restoration miraculously discovered the arguments for warrantless wiretaps, enhanced interrogation and detention without trial. Indeed, Newsweek's neck-snapping cover declares, "Why Obama May Soon Find Virtue in Cheney's Vision of Power."

Code Pink to Newsweek, too!  Medea Benjamin, you're wanted on the front lines.  Ban Newsweek!

Whatever venom the war generated is concentrated on Bush himself. By having personalized the responsibility for the awfulness of the war, Bush has done his successor a favor. Obama enters office with a strategic success on his hands -- while Bush leaves the scene taking a shoe for his country.

Which I suspect is why Bush showed such equanimity during a private farewell interview at the White House a few weeks ago. He leaves behind the sinews of war, for the creation of which he has been so vilified but which will serve his successor -- and his country -- well over the coming years. The very continuation by Democrats of Bush's policies will be grudging, if silent, acknowledgment of how much he got right.

Well argued, I think.  Let's see if the ultra-Dems in Congress will allow Obama to govern responsibly, or whether they'll try to turn him into Jimmah II.  The Democratic Party in Congress is still controlled by the intellectual leftovers of the sixties generation.  They run the committees, and if Mr. Obama tries to govern from the center, which he should, they may make it impossible.

January 16, 2009.