Another Reason to Admire Dubya

Gregg Easterbrook has another terrific article over at Slate. This time he analyzes Bush's record on the environment and how it has been systematically mis-represented in the press.

He writes:

Last week Bush proposed something environmentalists, energy analysts, greenhouse-effect researchers, and national-security experts have spent 20 years pleading for: a major strengthening of federal mileage standards for cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks.
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This should have been Page One headline material—PRESIDENT CALLS FOR DRAMATIC MPG REGULATIONS. Instead, most news organizations pretended Bush's mpg proposal did not exist, or buried the story inside the paper, or made only cryptic references to it.
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What's going on? First, mainstream news organizations and pundits are bought and sold on a narrative of Bush as an environmental villain and simply refuse to acknowledge any evidence that contradicts the thesis. During his term the president has significantly strengthened the Clean Air Act to reduce air pollution caused by diesel fuel and diesel engines, to reduce emissions from Midwestern power plants, to reduce pollution from construction equipment and railroad locomotives, and to reduce emissions of methane, which is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. You'd never know these reforms even happened from the front page of the New York Times, which for reasons of ideology either significantly downplays or fails to report them.
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Less than a week after botching its coverage of the mpg improvements Bush proposed, the New York Times banner-headlined a story saying Saudi Arabia now wants to keep petroleum prices relatively low at $50 a barrel. Have the oil sheiks decided they are making too much money? The sheiks don't want the United States taking real action to reduce our dependence on Persian Gulf oil, so they hope to lull Capitol Hill into thinking oil will stay cheap and mpg improvements won't be needed. The media may not have understood Bush's mileage proposal. The Saudi princes surely did.

Read the whole thing here.

We're not dealing with a rational and informative press, folks. Bush Derangement Syndrome is now so deeply entrenched and so widespread in the MSM that rational discussion is next to impossible. A negative image of our President has been constructed and disseminated that has little to do with reality, and that is a tragedy, not just for the administration, but for the country and indeed the world.

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- George W. Bush is a far, far better man than his critics, and one of the best Presidents this nation has ever had.