Another Positive Bush Retrospective

We affirm the plainspoken and clear-thinking Michael Barone's NRO column noting the notable successes of the Dubya administration. To summarize Barone's good list without elaboration:

• educational accountability
• prescription drug benefits
• elimination of Saddam
• establishment of something resembling a functional democracy in a former dictatorship and terror supporter in the Middle East
• effective programs against AIDS in Africa
• establishment of an alliance with India
• continuing good relations with Japan, Australia, Mexico and Brazil

We'd add shepherding the expansion of NATO to include the new democracies of Eastern Europe.

And Barone's catalog of the land that remains unconquered:

• improvements in China
• getting Russia in line
• NoKo
• nukes in Iran

Still, Barone says, it beats 1941. We say it beats anything in the 1970s or 1980s too.

What we really like is Barone's ignoring of the domestic short term--and Western Europe altogether. His focus is on long-term issues that will affect global living conditions for a generation.

We also note that the non-accomplished issues Barone lists aren't really on the political rader right now. More's the pity.