The phony freedom agenda.
I have to say, I find the effort to rebrand George W. Bush as Woodrow Wilson II rather amusing. Here's Bari Weiss writing in the Wall Street Journal:
Mr. Bush is almost certainly aware that the freedom agenda, the centerpiece of his presidency, has become indelibly linked to the war in Iraq and to regime change by force. Too bad. The peaceful promotion of human rights and democracyâ??in part by supporting the individuals risking their lives for libertyâ??are consonant with America's most basic values. Standing up for them should not be a partisan issue.Yet for now Mr. Bush is simply not the right poster boy: He can't successfully rebrand and depoliticize the freedom agenda. So perhaps he hopes that by sitting back he can let Americans who remain wary of publicly embracing this cause become comfortable with it again. For the sake of the courageous democrats in countries like Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, Colombia, China and Russia, let's hope so.
For the sake of argument, let's grant Weiss' argument that promoting freedom was the "centerpiece" of President Bush's foreign policy agenda. How'd he do? Well, according to Freedom House, global freedom decreased in each of the last three years of his tenure, continuing through the first year of Obama's tenure.
I happen to think it's foolish to assign blame or credit for the ebb and flow of global freedom to the actions of a single politician or a single cohort of bureaucrats in Washington. But that's the terrain that Weiss has chosen to fight on, and by that measure, the freedom agenda was not successful (at least according to Freedom House's rankings).
