AURORA, CO – As our nation prepares to swear in a new president, and God willing, a new era in Washington, DC, I thought it would be prudent to reminisce over the last eight years under the Bush administration. Besides, everyone else is doing it.

George Bush has been so brutalized in the press, that it is difficult to find criticism of the man that is not rooted in personal hatred or biased ignorance. As the leader of our country, he is definitely responsible for the problems we face, but it is unfair that he is blamed for things that are untrue. For instance, the far-left continues to decry that Bush’s anti-terror policies have taken away some of our most sacred rights. Yet they are always unable to provide examples of how they are being oppressed. The United States has very real problems to deal with, but if you believe the mainstream media, George Bush has turned our country into the former Soviet Union.

We are at war on two fronts in the Middle East, as well as on the precipice of another Cold War with Russia. Our economy is on the very real verge of collapse. Our political system is fraught with corruption and full of people who are more interested in furthering their own careers and agenda than bettering American lives. These are the problems that can be laid at the foot of the President. During the last eight years, our reputation around the world has declined. Much of the negative impressions are also unfairly attributed to Bush, but nonetheless, as the soon-to-be-former leader of our country it was his responsibility to do something about those misconceptions. I could go on and on about the problems, both real and concocted, we face, but I wanted to limit this column to two focal points that I think truly define the presidency of George W. Bush.

It was within the first nine months of the Bush presidency that our nation was attacked by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001. This event was world-changing, and personally it changed my outlook on life. I have given President Bush a lot of lee-way in his decision-making because of the 9/11 attacks. Whether he made all the right moves following that fateful day or not, one thing I am absolutely certain of is that I thank God that Al Gore wasn’t president on September 11, 2001. There isn’t a single person I talked to who did not think we would be attacked again and again following the attacks on New York and Washington. But here we all are, seven and a half years later, without a single attack on American soil. President Bush did such a fantastic job at keeping us all safe that we have become complacent regarding national security again. It’s almost as if 9/11 never happened. And in this humble reporter’s opinion, that outweighs almost all of the bad President Bush has done.

Many Americans agreed with me as Bush was re-elected in 2004 because he had kept us safe. However, if 9/11 defined President Bush’s first term, his second term was defined by an event that devastated our country in a different way. Like 9/11, it was during the first year of his second term when Hurricane Katrina roared ashore east of New Orleans, LA. The days following the storm made it evidently clear to me what my father had told me for years – you cannot depend on the federal government for anything. It was almost unbelievable to see people stranded on their roofs for days waiting for help to come. The sight of thousands of Americans stranded in shelters without enough food or water or medicine, not to mention the dead bodies lining the side of the road because help never came, completely decimated any good will that President Bush had built up. The government’s slow and ineffective response to this horrible natural disaster, under the leadership of George Bush, was the proverbial nail in his coffin. I never forgave him for what happened to the Gulf States, and in particular New Orleans and he was never able to recover politically after that.

So there you have it… the good, bad, and ugly of President Bush. He kept us safe after 9/11. He left us stranded after Katrina. And all the other stuff will be debated by people much smarter than I for the next twenty years. In the end, I think history will find that George Bush did make the right decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan. I hope his recent handling of the economic collapse hasn’t turned us into a socialist country, but again time will tell. I wish him and his family well as he leaves for Texas to begin his life in the private sector.