Yes, history will be kind to Bush. The war against Islamic fanatics has been the most talked about aspect of his presidency and will be in the future when looking back. It will cast a shadow over everything else.

Precisely.

He didn’t have to be a Reagan-quality communicator– but strong communications skills ARE a leadership function, and they ARE a part of the President’s job description, and they HAVE been very lacking in this Presidency. I’m not waiting for the media to do us any favors, but there have been enough missteps and strategic blunders in the Public Relations department that I cheerfully stand by what I said. If we’re to hold or retake the Presidency, we need to realistically assess how we’ve done and see what went well, and what we can improve.

Of course, the media and the Democrats will attack us. That’s what they do. It’s no use crying into our cheerios, “It’s not faaaair!!” The President’s job is to win despite opposition.

Pretending that everything went perfectly, that there’s no need to assess our strengths and weaknesses and attack one another as heretics is exactly the formula we need to lose and lose big this November.

Although I agree with much of what you wrote, I think Bush has done poorly on keeping the population informed on the progress of the GWOT. Granted he would get skewered for a lot of what he would have said (and particularly how he said it) but that’s a necessary function for him to perform and one that I feel he left undone. Unfortunately you have to deal with the citizens in ways that you point out the obvious: When Churchill rallied England when it was getting pounded, did he really say anything that people couldn’t get from the scads of motivational speakers that exist today? Or that is beyond the capability of Bush’s writers now that the goof McClellan is gone? I think had he done a better job of communicating that the national opinion of the war and his approval ratings would both be higher.

I emphatically disagree. Clearly, that is the present conventional wisdom. However, I suspect history will look poorly on the evident prejudice applied from the left and right to the President’s speech patterns — as if some genetic defect prevented many from engaging in serious consideration of WHAT was said as opposed to the desire for TV-perfect tonal pitch.

He’s not Ronald Reagan. Boo-freakin-hoo. And that applies to you, too, Peggy Noonan! The man didn’t blink on the big issues of our time and he had to deal with punk ass surrender monkeys on the left and far too many on the right with a narrow vision that’s simply breathtaking.

I’m still waiting for the Republican version of the East and West Coast elites, bitch and moan freaks in their own right, (David Frum, Peggy Noonan, Rich Lowry, etc.) to detail what was so damn bad about Harriet Miers and Albert Gonzales — other than them engaging their jobs in ways contrary to the personal likes of said elites.

What precisely is he saying? Many “tell-all” books turn out to not be presented accurately in the media.

Plus, whatever your views of his policy and strategic decisions, I think everyone has to admit that George W Bush is one of the worst communicators of the modern era. I used to fantasize in my cubicle about how great it would be to have a president who was just great policy and NO media operation at all. GWB is a bitter lesson that you need salesmanship to go with your product, triply so in politics.

So the perspective of the guy who ran the President’s media operation would be very valuable. Whether he has an axe to grind or not, he was there and we can tease out his and the President’s mistakes for the future. Whatever happens this election, odds are that there will eventually be a republican president again, and I for one would love the next Presidency to avoid the mistakes of the current one.

You do not know what you are talking about. The United States has always considered Hamas a terrorist group and George Bush would not even be in the same room with Arafat. And right now there are more Israelis who are willing to negotiate with these groups, so do not act as if the entire fate of Israel rests with the United States or this American president. If Obama wins the next election they might found out just what a friend to them Bush really was.