Milt talks with Robert Merry, editor of The National Interest, about his new book Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians.
Subscribe to The Milt Rosenberg Show in iTunes (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in iTunes or by RSS feed.
Your guest got a few things wrong about George W Bush. A) Saddam Hussein was giving money to Al Qaeda front groups. This fact was attested in a Congressional report that came out in 2007 or 2008, as I recall and B) Saddam had known supplies of yellowcake Uranium (500 metric tons) and C) Georges Sada (former Iraqi National Security Advisor and general in the Iraqi Air Force) has asserted, and credibly so, that Saddam’s WMDs were shipped to Syria in the weeks prior to our invasion of Iraq.
So did a lot of others. In fact, Bush kind of apologized for not finding more WMDs.
To me, the fact Bush and his administration didn’t fight back on this meme was one of the main reasons the Dems took Congress, later the Presidency and then Obamacare. Just my opinion.
As far as I know you are both right on target and right on the now-known facts.
As much as I dislike Dubya, I wouldn’t have put him in the bottom five. Bush 43’s sin re: Iraq was less the decision and more the stop-and-start prosecution of the war (and per the comment above, its PR at home). I also thought his critique of Bush’s fiscal record and role in the financial crisis was trite. There are criticisms to be made, but he said it like both were givens. That said, I just don’t see how Dubya’s record will wear well…unless we compare it to Obama’s.
BTW, the professor’s addition of Wilson to the blacklist — and praise for Coolidge — gave his judgments’ weight and credibility. Not done with the podcast, but this is one of my favorites so far.