Bush Is Back

WASHINGTON — As with the late Abraham Lincoln, so with the present George W. Bush — once the right general was found and the right strategy adopted, victory was in hand and a beleaguered president's fortunes were restored. Doubtless President Bush is aware of the parallel, and perchance, he will avoid Ford's Theatre.

A curious inhibition shared by both Bush 41 and Bush 43 is to downplay their interest in reading. Actually both are hearty readers, certainly as compared with the general public. Earlier this year, I attended a luncheon that the president hosted at the White House for the distinguished British historian Andrew Roberts, whose 736-page volume, "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900," the president had polished off months before, even before the book was released in America. He had been talking the book up with his staff, and when I heard that my friend Roberts was going to be in town, I passed that intelligence on. Bush invited Roberts in not only for luncheon but also to lecture the White House staff. This president knows his history and its significance.

Through the past three years of gloomy news, he has been called "bullheaded," but the evidence from Iraq, the economy and various other precincts — for instance, advances in stem cell research — suggests a different adjective, to wit, "resolute." Moreover, in Iraq, we see not only a resolute president but also a flexible president. Last spring, he changed his tactics in Iraq, and the change has been successful.

Historians studying Lincoln's war have concluded the gravest challenge facing him was to find an effective general. In fact, one of the most authoritative early series written about the war was titled "Lincoln Finds a General," by Kenneth P. Williams. From the successful way things are going in the Iraq war today, it is clear that Bush has found his general, David H. Petraeus, and that this general has implemented a strategy effective across an array of problems that heretofore had made a hash of our post-invasion presence in Iraq. Gen. Petraeus' "surge" has pacified once-violent neighborhoods and effected, in the provinces, alliances with otherwise-warlike sheiks, who have turned on al-Qaida's brutes and apparently beaten them. The surge even has suppressed incoming weapons from Iran. Now Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who in July called the surge a "failed policy" and the president "delusional," has returned from the battlefield and admitted the "surge is working."

The economy is strong with steady growth, low unemployment, low inflation, low interest rates and only one sector in doubt — housing — which, in an economy as enormous as ours, can be endured for a while.

The nature of modern broadcast media and the present rancorous condition of partisan politics encourage a colossal din after a president undertakes daring endeavors. Today we forget the widespread contempt that surrounded President Harry Truman's last years in office, as he contended with the Korean War and the early stages of the Cold War. Who remembers the sorry repute of Ronald Reagan a year before he vacated the premises? Former White House speechwriter Clark S. Judge, in one of the first newspaper columns to notice the Bush revival, wrote last week, "In 1987, President Reagan's fortunes were down." Judge noted the president's loss of the Senate, the setback of the Bork nomination and, of course, the Iran-Contra affair. "But then," Judge recalls, "the Soviets started to give way on arms and other agreements, the economy continued to grow despite the October stock market crash and Reagan began the long climb in the polls that helped put the current president's father in the Oval Office."

Well, maybe the present president's "long climb" has begun. From a lowly 29 precent approval rating in September, when Petraeus was testifying before Congress on the surge, Bush's approval has climbed to 36 percent. The Democratic Congress' approval is but 22 percent, and its leadership has undertaken no daring endeavors. When President Bush finally retires to his ranch to continue his readings of history, quite possibly the books about contemporary Washington will make for pleasant reading. Perhaps even a boulevard will be named after him in Baghdad.

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator, a contributing editor to The New York Sun and an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute. His newest book is "The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House." To find out more about R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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