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There is little doubt that President Bush is one of the most unpopular modern presidents. Iraq has a lot to do with that. But historians will no doubt look differently at the Bush presidency—at least in certain areas. One of the most profoundly important is the Bush priority to fight global AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. These were embodied in the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Malaria Initiative, both of which Congress passed into law. This is a grand, aggressive international compassion initiative that dwarfs the Peace Corps and is unequaled since the Marshall Plan. One of the key goals of the president has been to promote health and development as alternatives to despair and bitterness. To that end, through such initiatives as these, Bush has more than quadrupled aid to sub-Saharan Africa.
Is it working? Columnist Michael Gerson reports on a recent visit to Africa: “The largest significance of this bill, of course is human. Traveling in Rwanda . . . I saw the effect that American health funding can have in a well-run, well-intentioned country. With an infusion of bed nets and effective drugs, child malaria deaths were cut by two-thirds in less than two years. In 2003, about 4% of Rwandans in need of AIDS drugs were receiving them. In 2007, that figure was about 92% . . . Visiting one tidy, two-room Rwandan home, I met a family of eight, in which a mother and father and their youngest daughter—a shy and beautiful 10-year old named Esther—were HIV positive and on treatment. Under prompting, Esther told me that her favorite subjects were English and math, and, warming with pride, that she stood sixth in her class of 54. Without the amazing generosity of America, the challenge faced by that family would be a private holocaust of abandonment, mourning and despair.”
How did this all pass a divided, bitterly partisan Congress in the middle of an election? Gerson reports that much of the credit goes to the president and to Joe Biden. Biden rose above the raw partisanship and worked at each step for compromise to build the coalition to get the bill passed. His tenacity and his leadership made the difference. Morally and ethically it was the right thing to do. I firmly believe that historians will look back on the Bush era quite differently than how the politics of 2008 now view this era. Bush has made some very bad decisions and his leadership skills are often wanting. But the firmness and consistency of his “Doctrine” are exemplary. His Doctrine has three pillars—the preemption of emerging threats, the encouragement of responsible self-government and the promotion of development and health as alternatives to despair and bitterness. It is the latter objective that PEPFAR and his Malaria Initiative fulfill. Both are ethically the right thing to do. For that reason alone, historians will be much kinder to President Bush than most Americans today are. That is the way history often works—its puts things into a larger perspective. PEPFAR and the Malaria Initiative will be part of that perspective.
See Gerson's wonderful editorial in the Washington Post (30 July 2008).
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