Back and Forth: getting a focus on Bush

 

For those very few of you who are still trying to sort through the confusion: Is George W. Bush "the most under-rated president ... ever? Has he "blindly blocked all serious efforts" to crack down on greenhouse gases? Here are two takes on two different elements of the Bush presidency in its closing months:

One, by Sameh El-Shahat, an Egyptian-born, Cambridge-educated filmmaker and commentator, says in Britain's Telegraph that unlike the Europe-favored Bill Clinton, Bush is "a man you can trust and who prefers to tell it like it is."

The other, by Joseph Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who served in the Clinton administration's Energy Department, says in the Guardian that -- depending on the work of the next president and Congress -- future generations will view Bush as "irrelevant" or "the man who, more than anyone else on the planet, ruined their health and well-being."

For El-Shahat, click here.

For Romm, click here.

--James Gerstenzang

Photo: Haraz N. Ghanbari/Associated Press