Our incredibly impressive president

Jack Cashill looks at the incredible progress the nation has made since 2000:

To put the Bush presidency in perspective, one need only reflect back on the state of the world in the year 2000.

On Easter Saturday of that year, the Clinton Justice Department displayed its zeal for civil liberties by seizing Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint and shipping the boy back to Castro. Beginning in May 2000, Nasdaq tanked harder than any major American market ever – yes, including the stock market crash of 1929. In June 2000, Mohamed Atta casually entered the United States and began plotting his evil mischief.


In June 2000, California endured the first of its rolling blackouts. That same June the World Bank paid off Enron for still another Clinton-Enron deal gone sour, this one in Java. In September of 2000, Palestinians turned thumbs down on Pax Clintonia and launched an intifada. In October 2000, al-Qaida blew up the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, once again with impunity.

In January 2001, President Clinton put the cherry on his eight-year sundae of corruption by pardoning fugitive Marc Rich and a host of other scalawags. So outrageous were the pardons that they moved even Sen. Chuck Schumer to denounce them as a "mockery" of justice. Six weeks later, the United States lapsed into recession. This was the Washington that George Bush inherited – minus, of course, the "Ws" on White House keypads, spitefully snatched by the outgoing administration. Needless to say, the events of September 11 almost unraveled an economy already under siege.