2013-04-29 04:18:31

美國總統小布希 George W. Bush 的紀念圖書館於上周開幕，美國前後任五位總統全部出席。包括卡特總統，老布希及克林頓在內，一一致詞，連現任奧巴馬總統都難得的稱讚小布希為國為民的愛國情操。

一直到今天，美國的有組織民意-傳媒-一直將小布希描繪成負面角色。但是經過奧巴馬的四年多統治，越來越多人認識到George W. Bush的熱情，正直的一面。

克林頓總統時期的幕僚之一戴維斯Lanny Davis在布希圖書館開幕前一天，發表了一份文章，直指：我們自由派民主黨人嚴詞攻擊了他那麼久，但是我要指出幾件事，是我們這一邊的人不了解，沒有體會到他好處的地方。

戴維斯在文章中說，雖然以民主黨人身份，他對許多布希的政策不贊同，特別是伊拉克戰爭，但是他指出，當時民主黨內許多人亦都相信伊拉克的薩達姆確實擁有大規模殺傷武器。同樣的包括很多軍事專家也都這樣相信。他說：「我們現在的政治風氣像是有毒一樣，兩邊的人都故意的將說謊和誠實的錯誤混為一談。」

戴維斯又說，布希總統自稱是「熱情的保守派」Compassionate Conservative，事實上，他的熱情的一面，勝過他的保守的一面。他推出的的兒童教育計劃No Child Left Behind，一方面幫助低收入家庭的子弟可以減低求學困難，卻也同時嚴格要求學校要提出教學成績，大大提高了教育水平。他當時支持的移民改革法案，與現在參院達成的移民改革方案已非常相似。而他推出的擴充藥物補助計劃，是自六十年代詹森總統以後，最全面的醫療補助計劃。而戴維斯說，這些都是民主黨人，以及美國傳媒從未給他任何正面評價的地方。

戴維斯更列舉他在耶魯大學時與布希接觸的一件小事，證明布希絕對是一個走在時代前端的「熱情」角色。當時同性戀者還很少，而且極少公開身份。當時一群男生就對著一個男同性戀者說出屈辱的話。戴維斯說他聽了很不高興，但沒有說什麼，反而是在一旁的布希對住那些人大罵說：「喂，少來這套。你有沒有想過如果你是他會怎樣？」

自那時開始，戴維斯就對布希肅然起敬。他說布希看起來好像什麼也不在乎，但其實骨子裡很有原則，很認真。

除了戴維斯，另外一個左傾的女評倫家Ellen Ratner，她也在布希圖書館開幕前發表文章說，布希總統是美國總統中拯救最多生命的總統。Ratner所以這樣說，因為她非常關切非洲人的福利。她說，布希比奧巴馬更關切非洲人福利。

Ratner指出，她從未投票支持布希，反而是兩度投票給奧巴馬。但是她對奧巴馬非常失望，反而是布希給了非洲人最多的幫助。他在2003年的國情咨文中，推出了幫助非洲人救治愛滋病的緊急基金PEPFAR，五年內撥款150億美元。Ratner說，那筆錢是至今任何一個國家就愛滋病撥出的最大一筆數字的醫療撥款。她說由於這筆撥款，五百萬的非洲兒童及婦女接受了對抗愛滋病的治理。單單在2010年，就有60萬懷孕婦女接受注射，避免她們的胎兒感染愛滋病。

Ratner說，布希這筆持續性的撥款還幫助非洲訓練了成千上萬的醫療工作者，護理人員。直到今天，當地醫療工作者還對美國第43任總統念念不忘。

她還說，很多人不知道，布希總統今天與妻子羅拉還在為婦女的子宮頸癌治療募款及做推動工作。

布希是出生於美國東部傳統的家族，他們對於自己做的「好事」從來都不會主動去談。就像他下台之後，對於後任的總統一個評語都沒有，反而讓奧巴馬總統將所有的經濟困局都推到他身上。事實是，在我過去寫過的美國債務危機 等文章中已經解釋得很明白，美國的兩房危機，起始於克林頓總統及民主黨的國會，是他們的政策造成2008年的金融危機。

至於伊拉克戰爭方面，戴維斯說了良心話。當布希發動伊拉克戰爭時，幾乎所有人都相信薩達姆擁有大規模殺傷武器。當時聯合國通過了十七次決議案，要求伊拉克讓聯合國的軍事專家去審查，他都拒絕了。而當時的聯合國軍事專家也提出報告稱，有超過一千噸的不同種類的化學武器不知下落(沒有交待)，而布希的出兵行動也是經由參議院以99-1的高票通過的，連當時的希拉里參議員也是支持的。就因為當時的情報資料，所以英、西、意等國也都加入盟軍參與軍事行動。但是現在經過傳媒的混淆視聽，所有的人都將發動戰爭當做是布希一個人的主張，甚至造謠說，布希家族由伊拉克戰爭中獲得石油方面的利益。

伊拉克戰爭本來是一次快速的，有效的戰爭，不到一個月時間就推翻了薩達姆政權。這比起後來，奧巴馬政府時代，推翻利比亞強人賈達菲，及現在歷經一年多內戰還未有任何進展的敘利亞內戰，算是非常有效率，及死亡人數都少的成功戰爭。

但是後來伊拉克的發展急轉直下，是因為美國及西方的民主體制，無法繼續維持一個勝利的戰爭。這情況與美國當年參與越戰相似。明明是一場勝利的戰爭，但是在國內的反戰潮流下，加上傳媒的偏袒一方，將勝利的果實雙手奉上。

伊拉克戰爭取得勝利之後，伊拉克境內分成兩派繼續混戰。雖然多數國民是希望有一個穩定的局面，但是激進派的回教野心份子利用盟軍不受歡迎的事實，趁機坐大。而在美國及英國等地，反戰示威無日無之，反戰輿論也是一面倒。這些都使到原本已經結束的戰爭持續下去。

而由於盟軍戰後沒有發現大規模殺傷武器，遭到反戰一派的大肆攻擊。布希面對國內的反戰輿論，無法再出兵繼續未完成任務，使到伊拉克局勢繼續惡化。這局面一直到布希任期最後一年，他才做了一個不受歡迎的決定，一次過派出兩萬名軍隊到伊拉克，亦即是所謂的The Surge，力圖以短時間內扭轉局勢。這做法是決斷的，冒險的，但是結果證明是成功的。伊拉克所以有今日的平靜，奧巴馬所以可以成功撤軍，其實都是布希的決定所致。

布希受伊拉克戰爭所困，下台時支持率只有32%。但是今天，他的支持率已回升至49%。他的支持者說，歷史會善待布希，相信會是這樣。(April， 2013)

相關文章：Sandy颶風的報導

 

註；美國左派及傳媒塑造布希總統愚蠢的謠言，其實他在耶魯的成績好過美國前副總統高爾Al Gore，這是很多人知道的事實，但是沒有人會報道。下面是一個鏈接，一個耶魯教授的文章，證明布希總統比大多數法學院的學生更聰明，更有智慧。

http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/

George W. Bush is smarter than you

24 April 2013 by Keith Hennessey

The new George W. Bush Presidential Centeris being dedicated this week. This seems like a good time to bust a longstanding myth about our former President， my former boss.

I teach a class at Stanford Business School titled “Financial Crises in the U.S. and Europe.” During one class session while explaining the events of September 2008， I kept referring to the efforts of the threesome of Hank Paulson， Ben Bernanke， and Tim Geithner， who were joined at the hip in dealing with firm-specific problems as they arose.

One of my students asked “How involved was President Bush with what was going on?” I smiled and responded， “What you really mean is， ‘Was President Bush smart enough to understand what was going on，’ right?”

The class went dead silent. Everyone knew that this was the true meaning of the question. Kudos to that student for asking the hard question and for framing it so politely. I had stripped away that decorum and exposed the raw nerve.

I looked hard at the 60 MBA students and said “President Bush is smarter than almost every one of you.”

More silence.

I could tell they were waiting for me to break the tension， laugh， and admit I was joking.

I did not. A few shifted in their seats， then I launched into a longer answer. While it was a while ago， here is an amalgam of that answer and others I have given in similar contexts.

I am not kidding. You are quite an intelligent group. Don’t take it personally， but President Bush is smarter than almost every one of you. Were he a student here today， he would consistently get “HP” (High Pass) grades without having to work hard， and he’d get an “H” (High， the top grade) in any class where he wanted to put in the effort.

For more than six years it was my job to help educate President Bush about complex economic policy issues and to get decisions from him on impossibly hard policy choices. In meetings and in the briefing materials we gave him in advance we covered issues in far more depth than I have been discussing with you this quarter because we needed to do so for him to make decisions.

President Bush is extremely smart by any traditional standard. He’s highly analytical and was incredibly quick to be able to discern the core question he needed to answer. It was occasionally a little embarrassing when he would jump ahead of one of his Cabinet secretaries in a policy discussion and the advisor would struggle to catch up. He would sometimes force us to accelerate through policy presentations because he so quickly grasped what we were presenting.

I use words like briefing and presentation to describe our policy meetings with him， but those are inaccurate. Every meeting was a dialogue， and you had to be ready at all times to be grilled by him and to defend both your analysis and your recommendation. That was scary.

We treat Presidential speeches as if they are written by speechwriters， then handed to the President for delivery. If I could show you one experience from my time working for President Bush， it would be an editing session in the Oval with him and his speechwriters. You think that me cold-calling you is nerve-wracking? Try defending a sentence you inserted into a draft speech， with President Bush pouncing on the slightest weakness in your argument or your word choice.

In addition to his analytical speed， what most impressed me were his memory and his substantive breadth. We would sometimes have to brief him on an issue that we had last discussed with him weeks or even months before. He would remember small facts and arguments from the prior briefing and get impatient with us when we were rehashing things we had told him long ago.

And while my job involved juggling a lot of balls， I only had to worry about economic issues. In addition to all of those， at any given point in time he was making enormous decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan， on hunting al Qaeda and keeping America safe. He was making choices not just on taxes and spending and trade and energy and climate and health care and agriculture and Social Security and Medicare， but also on education and immigration， on crime and justice issues， on environmental policy and social policy and politics. Being able to handle such substantive breadth and depth， on such huge decisions， in parallel， requires not just enormous strength of character but tremendous intellectual power. President Bush has both.

On one particularly thorny policy issue on which his advisors had strong and deep disagreements， over the course of two weeks we (his senior advisors) held a series of three 90-minute meetings with the President. Shortly after the third meeting we asked for his OK to do a fourth. He said， “How about rather than doing another meeting on this， I instead tell you now what each person will say.” He then ran through half a dozen of his advisors by name and precisely detailed each one’s arguments and pointed out their flaws. (Needless to say there was no fourth meeting.)

Every prominent politician has a public caricature， one drawn initially by late-night comedy joke writers and shaped heavily by the press and one’s political opponents. The caricature of President Bush is that of a good ol’ boy from Texas who is principled and tough， but just not that bright.

That caricature was reinforced by several factors:

• The press and his opponents highlighted President Bush’s occasional stumbles when giving a speech. President Obama’s similar verbal miscues are ignored. Ask yourself: if every public statement you made were recorded and all your verbal fumbles were tweeted， how smart would you sound? Do you ever use the wrong word or phrase， or just botch a sentence for no good reason? I know I do.
• President Bush intentionally aimed his public image at average Americans rather than at Cambridge or Upper East Side elites. Mitt Romney’s campaign was predicated on “I am smart enough to fix a broken economy，” while George W. Bush’s campaigns stressed his values， character， and principles rather than boasting about his intellect. He never talked about graduating from Yale and Harvard Business School， and he liked to lower expectations by pretending he was just an average guy. Example: “My National Security Advisor Condi Rice is a Stanford professor， while I’m a C student. And look who’s President. ”
• There is a bias in much of the mainstream press and commentariat that people from outside of NY-BOS-WAS-CHI-SEA-SF-LA are less intelligent， or at least well educated. Many public commenters harbor an anti-Texas (and anti-Southern， and anti-Midwestern) intellectual bias. They mistakenly treat John Kerry as smarter than George Bush because John Kerry talks like an Ivy League professor while George Bush talks like a Texan.
• President Bush enjoys interacting with the men and women of our armed forces and with elite athletes. He loves to clear brush on his ranch. He loved interacting with the U.S. Olympic Team. He doesn’t windsurf off Nantucket， he rides a 100K mountain bike ride outside of Waco with wounded warriors. He is an intense， competitive athlete and a “guy’s guy.” His hobbies and habits reinforce a caricature of a [dumb] jock， in contrast to cultural sophisticates who enjoy antiquing and opera. This reinforces the other biases against him.

I assume that some who read this will react automatically with disbelief and sarcasm. They think they know that President Bush is unintelligent because， after all， everyone knows that. They will assume that I am wrong， or blinded by loyalty， or lying. They are certain that they are smarter than George Bush.

I ask you simply to consider the possibility that I’m right， that he is smarter than you.

If you can， find someone who has interacted directly with him outside the public spotlight. Ask that person about President Bush’s intellect. I am confident you will hear what I heard dozens of times from CEOs after they met with him: “Gosh， I had no idea he was that smart.”

At a minimum I hope you will test your own assumptions and thinking about our former President. I offer a few questions to help that process.

• Upon what do you base your view of President Bush’s intellect? How much is it shaped by the conventional wisdom about him? How much by verbal miscues highlighted by the press?
• Do you discount your estimate of his intellect because he’s from Texas or because of his accent? Because he’s an athlete and a ranch owner? Because he never advertises that he went to Yale and Harvard?
• This is a hard one， for liberals only. Do you assume that he is unintelligent because he made policy choices with which you disagree? If so， your logic may be backwards. “I disagree with choice X that President Bush made. No intelligent person could conclude X， therefore President Bush is unintelligent.” Might it be possible that an intelligent， thoughtful conservative with different values and priorities than your own might have reached a different conclusion than you?  Do you really think your policy views derive only from your intellect?

And finally， if you base your view of President Bush’s intellect on a public image and caricature shaped by late night comedians， op-ed writers， TV pundits， and Twitter， is that a smart thing for you to do?