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Judging President Bush's performance as president is a difficult and arduous task. The man has obviously made mistakes, but questions arise about if the mistakes are understandable, if his motivation was just, and if the nation is better off overall than it was when he came to power.

The president has done some useful things, cutting taxes on everyone to get the economy moving after it slowed to a near halt after September 11th comes to mind. However, most of his decisions and programs have been failures, good intentions or not.

Following September 11th the US went into Afghanistan to capture and/or kill Bin Laden. Problem is, we never did that, we overthrew the Taliban and Bin Laden escaped. Afghanistan was turned into a democracy, which is nice, with input from even women allowed. Unfortunately, the country to this day is still battling the Taliban and has problems with warlords as well as poverty. Afghanistan on the whole cannot be said to be a failure or success, but losing Bin Laden is definitely a mark against the president.

The No Child Left Behind Act is something that I thought I might be able to get behind. However, looking at the mechanics of it and how it works, it's not a good idea at all. It's well known poorer schools tend to do worse on standardized tests, and this gives money to schools that do well. In a way, NCLB just gives more money to places that don't need it near as much, and takes money from the places that do. Also, according to Freakonomics, many teachers in poorer areas have been encouraged to cheat since their pay depends on it. While I am glad that the President at least tried to help with education, the program he got behind was not one of the ones he should have. Not mention it did not get the funding that certain Democrats expected it to get.

Iraq is a terrible mess. Still a war going on there, an unofficial civil war, and just now the president is reversing what he has been saying all along and working to get our troops out of there. There are allegations of war crimes being brought up against the Secretary of Defense Donal Rumsfeld - who at this point has given his resignation and will give up his position as soon as someone is approved to take it. The war is will at least cost a trillion dollars by the time it comes to a close, and some extreme estimates say it could cost up to two trillion dollars. There are thousands of dead soldiers and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis. All for weapons that did not exist.

Then there's the CIA leak, the handling of Katrina, the Pre-9/11 handling (documents were given that said Bin Laden wanted to hit the US, and may do it by suicide plane bombings) and all the lies about the connection between Iraq and 9/11, the questionably stolen re-election - the list goes on and on.

Overall, the President has not done this country a service, and the recent election shows that people are losing faith in the Republicans (for reasons other than just President Bush of course - but he is a large part).

Thanks for the tax cuts Mr. President. Unfortunately, the cost of your wars could have paid for 4 years of college education for 16+ million students (according to costofwar.com) or the hiring of millions of new teachers for public schools. That would have been more beneficial for the future of our country than a war nobody wanted.

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