George W. Bush was a good, not great president.
Despite quibbles regarding the actual prosecution on the Global War on Terror, Bush took necessary steps to safeguard the nation, preventing another terrorist attack on American soil. While some of the security measures may be heavy-handed in relation to their infringement on civil liberties, that is a price this American is willing to pay to prevent another 9/11. Such policies can (and have) been reviewed and can (and have) received bipartisan support. Laws can be changed. Policies can be ended. Lives lost cannot be restored.
Both Afghanistan and Iraq were legitimate wars in prosecuting the GWoT. The public backlash - fueled in no small part by the liberal media - over each handcuffed the president from doing more to eliminate the threat of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. Had Bush's support at home not evaporated in his second term, he likely would have okayed or participated in some limited military engagement to disrupt Iran's nuclear ambitions (as he should have regardless of the political winds). Thanks to Bush, Afghanistan went from being a safe haven and training ground for al-Qaeda, run by the thugocracy of the Taliban and entirely hostile to the interests of the United States to being a non-threatening ally (albeit a hesitant, corrupt, imperfect one). Iraq went from the greatest military threat in the Middle East governed by an avowed foe of the United States who gave aid and comfort to terrorists over the years, attempted to assasinate a United States president, and had used Weapons of Mass Destruction (i.e. chemical agents) while seeking to build a nuclear weapon, flagrantly violating international sanctions and law, to becoming a potential stablizing force and a fledgling non-sectarian democracy which could be used to advance American interests rather than actively seeking to thwart them.
Both wars were won. The American people, inflamed by the press, did not have the stomach for an extended occupation, nor did they care for the nuances of geopolitics and the very good national security reasons to see the job through. President Bush failed to take his case to the American people and persuade them to stay the course. As a war president, this was his greatest failure. I can't help but believe that more accurately identifying and discrediting the enemy (Islam) in a massive propaganda campaign (much as previous administrations marshalled resources against communism in order to fight the Soviet Union) would have substantially helped Bush make even greater progress towards securing the nation and protecting our interests at home and abroad.
Even after 9 years in Iraq and 14 years in Afghanistan, combat deaths for American forces have only reached approximately one-eighth those in Vietnam and one-fiftieth of those in World War II. More than twice as many combat deaths occurred during the Mexican-American War. In fact, of the nation's 10 wars, the combined deaths in the War on Terror represent the second-lowest (exceeded only by the guerrilla war in the Philippines). As for the expense of the wars, Bush's debt-to-GDP ratio of 2.7% was nearly half that of either his father's or Ronald Reagan's administrations. (Until the Republican-forced sequester began lowering it, Obama's debt-to-GDP ratio stood at a whopping 8.9% through FY2012.) Federal outlays under Bush averaged just a little less than under the Clinton administration when compared to GDP. In other words, while the administration may have spent a lot of money, the growing economy made it affordable. The biggest driver of federal spending under the Bush administration was the increase in entitlement spending, mandatory under federal law.
Which leads me to Bush's domestic policies. If his greatest failure was in calling a spade a spade and treating the War on Terror as Truman, Ike and subsequent administrations treated the Cold War, then his greatest domestic failure was to utilize his political capital to pass meaningful entitlement reform, particularly on Social Security. (Followed closely by Bush's push for amnesty which, in a misguided attempt to win Hispanic voters to the GOP, wound up costing his party control of Congress in the 2006 mid-term elections.) But Part II of the lesson will have to wait until this old man's had his dinner.
....oh, nurse?