LONG IS ONLY LIKELY TO MEAN THE EARLY 2010s (via Qiao Yang):

The Long View: Advisory thoughts on the 43rd president. (Karl Rove, 8/31/07, National Review)

President Bush took decisive action, cutting taxes and ratcheting down this spending. The results? The net creation of 8.3 million new jobs since August 2003; higher after-tax income and greater incentives for firms to invest and expand; three years where America’s economic growth led the rest of the G7 economies; and a budget on path to surplus by 2012 — despite the increased spending invested in securing America’s safety by standing up the new Department of Homeland Security and fighting the Global War on Terror. In the four years since taxes were last cut in 2003, the U.S. economy has grown 13 percent in real dollars. The additional growth is larger than the entire size of the Canadian economy.

This president also understands our standard of living depends on selling to the globe. The 14 nations with which we have implemented free agreements represent 7.5 percent of the world’s GDP, but 43 percent of our exports. The growing number of free-trade agreements concluded and signed under this president helps explain why American exports have risen 27 percent between 2004 and 2006, creating jobs and prosperity here at home.

History will see President Bush as a reformer who focused on modernizing important institutions.

He is concerned with fundamental change that will — among other goals — strengthen the ways our children are educated and health care is provided.

In education, “No Child Left Behind” introduced accountability into our public-education system by ensuring every child’s progress is measured.

Parents now know whether or not their child is learning — in their own schools, and compared to other schools. This new focus on results helped lead to more improvement in reading scores in five years than in the previous 28 combined. This reform shows that measuring leads to results.

Medicare was modernized with a prescription-drug benefit, now used by 39 million seniors. Giving seniors the drugs they need helped them avoid expensive operations and long hospital stays. The result is better health care for seniors at a lower cost to them and at a lower cost than expected to taxpayers.

The president approached other tasks — such as legal reform, higher-education assistance, transportation, and conservation and forest policy — with the same reformist spirit. And he did so on issues which are controversial within his own party, such as comprehensive immigration reform, which he has championed since he first started running for governor of Texas in 1993.

He will be seen as an innovative conservative thinker with a positive, optimistic agenda for action.

For example, his proposals to reform health care are drawn from his understanding of the values of competition and markets. A standard tax deduction for health care — similar to the deduction homeowners get for mortgage interest — would level the playing field between those who get their health insurance from employers and those who pay for it out of their own pockets and expand the number of families with coverage.

People should be able to save tax-free for out-of-pocket health costs. The Health Savings Accounts the president signed into law are the first step toward this. HSAs will help move health care toward a consumer-driven model and away from a single-payer system. More than 4.5 million American families are benefiting from HSAs today.

More competition would be created by allowing insurance to be sold across state lines or small businesses to pool risk and would lower costs and increase access.

The president has a similar focus on bold changes when it comes to opportunity and poverty. He emphasizes policies, such as welfare reform, that promote ownership and encourage personal responsibility rather than dependence on government.

His faith- and community-based initiative is encouraging social entrepreneurship to confront poverty and suffering. Billions of federal dollars can now be accessed by such groups eager to serve a neighbor in need. Already, 34 Democrat and Republican governors and more than 100 mayors of all stripes have created faith- and community-based offices to build on the federal initiative.

On energy, the environment, and climate change, he is developing a new paradigm. Emphasizing technology, increased energy-efficiency partnerships, and resource diversification, his policies are improving energy security and slowing the growth of greenhouse gases without economy-breaking mandates and regulation. The president who won criticism by rejecting the failed approach of Kyoto has implemented policies that enabled the United States to grow its economy by 3.1 percent and reduce the absolute amount of CO2 emissions (by 1.3 percent).

In these and other areas, history will see President Bush drove policy in new directions, based on conservative principles.

The three biggies are: Ownership Society (including F-BI), Culture of Life (including judicial appointments), & Axis of Good (particularly incorporating India). His achievements on these three trump Ronald Reagan's on the latter two.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 1, 2007 9:40 AM