Cheney says Obama conceded that Bush policies were RIGHT

(The Hill) President Obama has “learned from experience” that some of the Bush administration’s decisions on terrorism issues were necessary, according to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

In his first interview since undergoing major heart surgery last July, Cheney said he thinks Obama has been forced to rethink some of his national security positions now that he sits in the Oval Office.

Cheney also asserted that Obama has learned that the prison at Guantanamo Bay simply cannot be closed, despite the promises he made while campaigning for the White House.

Bush job approval rating higher than Obama's

In the past month, Bush popularity and comeback proved that history will judge him fairly. Americans short attention span are fueled by the media's negative narrative. Without using facts, most Americans are fascinated to hate the former president. Bush "mistake" with Katrina, government spending, and the financial crisis are overblown by the media. Looking further behind the personal attacks, each had a Democrat signature associated with it.

The high approval rating is a correction for the poor treatment Bush received from the media since being elected in 2000. With climbing approval numbers, Bush stands alone as the only president to gain tremendous boost in popularity after leaving office. Hopefully, as more Americans are expose to the truth and less what they hear from the media, Bush approval rating is expected to be respectable to the likes of JFK, Reagan, and Clinton.

(Politico) George W. Bush’s job approval rating as president has spiked to 47 percent, according to a Gallup poll released Monday.

That’s 1 point higher than President Barack Obama’s job approval rating in a poll taken the same week.

This is the first time Gallup asked Americans to retrospectively rate Bush’s job performance. And it was a stunning turnaround from his low point of 25 percent in November 2008. The 47 percent number is 13 points higher than the last Gallup poll taken before Bush left office in 2009 and the highest rating for him since before Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Bush’s 47 percent approval rating also raises serious questions about the wisdom of the White House’s decision to relentlessly attack him in the months before the Democrats’ historic losses in the midterm elections. The president had kept warning a House Republican majority would return to Bush-era policies. But Obama’s message did little to galvanize the liberal base, and independents flocked to the GOP on Election Day.

Bush’s rebound gives some credence to what he has long said — that history will eventually judge his presidency.

It Took an Obama White House to Realize How Much We Miss George Bush

(The Telegraph) The 43rd and 44th American presidents are a study in contrasts, but the link between them is symbiotic, argues Toby Harnden. There could have been no Obama without Bush, and only Obama's stumbles could have made Bush look good again so quickly.

Just after his successor Barack Obama took a self-described "shellacking" at the polls, Dubya was back, mocking the current occupant of the White House by his very presence. For the 43rd President, the return must have been sweet.

During the 2008 election campaign, Obama slammed Bush at every turn. Since then, the 44th President has almost ceaselessly blamed his predecessor for everything, even stooping to lambast Karl Rove, Bush's long-time aide, by name during the recent mid-terms campaign.

Two years after Obama was anointed, the halo around his head seemed distinctly tarnished. In his post-defeat interview with 60 Minutes, Obama was at his most listless and meandering, projecting all the certainty of a Hamlet on the Potomac.

Who would have thought that the man hailed as a great American orator and whose stage at the 2008 Democratic convention was a faux Greek temple would be shown up in terms of the theatricality and articulation of the presidency by the man derided as a tongue-tied bumbler and global village idiot?

Looking at the 43rd and 44th American presidents right now, it is worth reflecting that it was only the unpopularity of Bush and all he represented that enabled someone as inexperienced and unproven as Obama to ascend to power.

By the same token, perhaps only a performance in office as myopic, self-absorbed and hubristic as that of Obama could have brought about a Bush rehabilitation so swiftly.