personal stories told by high level former aides. that s not the only thing employed by bush apologists. some are trying to rehabilitate his image through a careful project of omission. this is really great. in her column this week, miss rubin compared george bush george bush s record as president to barack obama, unlike obama s tenure, there was no successful attack on the homeland after 9/11. if you don t count the biggest terrorist attack ever in the history of terrorist attacks on american soil that took place on george bush s watch, then there is still the anthrax attack of 2001, which remain unsolved to this day. maybe those also fall under this mysterious first year immunity rule bush apologists like us to operate on when it comes to evaluating george bush s record on terrorism. when it comes to the economy, they would like you to forget george w. bush was still at the wheel in the back half of the crisis.
granting regulatory authority over chemical security to the epa. perry claimed the proposal was tantamount to overreach and they would need congress to specifically authorize it. kristin whitman and tom ridge rebuffed, figured out the thing to do was go to congress and ask for the authority necessary. whitman writes in their book, it s my party too, the battle for the gop of america, although tom and i agreed such we agreed legislation was necessary, strong congressional opposition led by some republicans on the senate environment and public works committee and house energy committee to giving epa even the modest, statutory authority made it difficult to secure administration support for a meaningful bill. basically, the bush administration from above pulled support for that bill because the chemical industry does not want to be regulated by the epa. fast forward to 2007, and perry,
uncomfortable because it meant president bush probably shouldn t have been president in the first place. in 2000, as some of you may remember there was a disputed election for several weeks. finally, when president bush became president they had the inauguration in washington s own schedule. i think my wife and i were the only two volunteer democrats on the platform. it was left to bill clinton the political genius he is who teased on what was probably the best possible way to thread the needle. he went with the i really like your paintings approach. your mother showed me some of your landscapes and animal paintings and i thought they were great! really great. i seriously considered calling you and asking you to do a portrait of me until i saw the results of your sister s hacked e-mails. those bathroom sketches are wonderful but at my age, i think i should keep my suit.
when you re considering his legacy, go with your gut. joining us is colonel wilkerson, former chief of staff, currently professor of government at the college of william and mary. what was your reaction to watching the circumstance of the george w. bush rehabilitation reputation today? the biggest thing that hit me, because torture was the issue that made me go public in 2005 was when he stood in front of the library and said people will be able to come to this library and see we stayed true to our convictions. this at the same time a week ago the constitution project on detainee treatment released its report which answered two really big questions. did the united states torture? yes. resoundingly so. and did it originate the decision there for at the top level? vice president and president. yes, it did. i don t think that s something
i think this day and looking forward is about stepping back and letting historians take a look at the record and having american citizens drawing their own conclusions. the day-to-day pettiness of politics, i think he will try to stay out of. joy. i think the problem with that analysis is that the major movements within republicanism in the last few years have seemed to be a negative reaction to bush. you have that sort of tea party movement about bailouts. who instituted those bailouts? t.a.r.p., et cetera, that would be george w. bush. the revulsion that was attached to that got placed on barack obama, but it was bush who started those policies. the other big movement you re seeing within the republican party, the libertarian wing of the party more isolationist, more skeptical of foreign wars, that would seem to be a direct repudiation of the neoconservative policies bush