I’ve been suffering from a bit of an illness, lately. It’s a pesky, annoying, cynical little monkey on my back. I’ve come to call it B.D.S.: Bush Disillusionment Syndrome. I supported Bush back in 2000 (even though, to be honest, I wasn’t the most informed and up to date 9 year old in the world), and I supported him a lot more consciously and strongly in 2004.

But here we are, nearing the end of 2007, and George Bush’s presidency is a little over a year away from ending. It’s taken a bit of a toll on the man, you can tell by looking at a picture of him in 2000 and looking at a picture of him today. That happens to all presidents, of course, but Bush has had to endure a beating worse than most. He was no media darling like Ronald Reagan, and he didn’t have the luxury of a boring, uneventful and prosperous 8 years like Bill Clinton did. No, George Bush has presided over the country in some of its more trying times, and the media (indeed, the country) has not loved him much more for it. Actually, he’s gotten more flak for things mostly out of his control than any other president could imagine getting: if you listen to some people, you’d think that George Bush paddled down to the Carribbean Sea and personally started hurricane Katrina, then steered it into New Orleans because he’s a racist. You’d also think that he secretly likes to eat children because he plans to veto this new S-chip bill, that he loves the fact that American soldiers are dying in Iraq, that he personally started the California wildfires, and, finally, that he rigged 9/11 as an excuse to get to go into the Middle East and help out his rich oil buddies.

All of those things I listed there are ridiculous, of course, and I don’t believe any of them. Yet still, I find myself with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth for George Bush, and if you asked me to rate the president on a 1-10 scale, I’d probably give him a 6.5. He gets points for what so far look like excellent judicial nominations. He gets points for saying that the best defense is a good offense against terrorists. He gets points for the excellent leadership of this country after 9/11. He gets points for cutting taxes, points for attempting to fix social security, and points for his stubborn insistence that democracy is the best form of government.

Now, then, that’s a fairly impressive list. Why am I suffering from B.D.S., then? Because George Bush, while I agree with him on almost every issue, has proven to be a less than appetizing executor. His first and foremost failing is his inability to realize that every successful president in United States history, from the Civil War-onward, has had to work the bully pulpit of the president relentlessly. They made their political enemies and foreign enemies fear them. They made the people of the United States love them, respect them, and support them. For instance, Will Rogers once joked that “if Franklin Roosevelt burned down the White House, people would say, “well, at least he started a fire!” (Whether you agreed with Roosevelt’s policy or not, there’s no denying that he was extraordinarily effective at policy implementation.) With George Bush, on the other hand, if he saved the city of New York from an imminent nuclear attack, people would say, “look how long it took him!”

Part of this is the media’s fault, you might say, and I agree completely. Today’s mainstream media is inadequate, rabidly liberal, shallow, and elitist. Tony Blair summed them up well when he compared them to rabid pack animals looking for a meal. Nonetheless, they have not always hated Bush (and I feel that anyone who tells you that it's all the media's fault that Bush is a bad communicator is just scrambling for excuses), and his secrecy and continued insistence to not take them seriously has them angry.

I’ve heard it said that Bush has “too much respect for the office [of the President] to get into the political fray.” Sounds like a likely story, to me. I suppose I can respect it, in normal times. But these aren’t normal times; and Bush knows this. When America faces a ill-defined, decentralized, flexible enemy like Islamic terrorists, then it is President Bush’s duty to define them as much as he can, to explain why America is doing what America is doing, and to call out those who seem to not realize who the real enemy is. (I’m thinking of John Edwards saying “we… cannot give this president one inch, not one inch!” If only he would show Al Qaeda the same tenacity, and if only Bush would call him out on it).

Conservatives, and specifically those of us who really take Islamic terrorism seriously, have long waited for that big campaign, led by George Bush with the help of other Republicans and conservatives, to explain why exactly we cannot leave Iraq for our own interests, not just for the worry of genocide or ethnic cleansing. And I don’t mean just explain it a few times, spread out over the course of months: I mean launching a campaign like Bush did with the social security issue a few years ago, where he really pounds the point. It might be too late for that, now that the media already has its heart set against him so much. Even if it isn’t, though, I doubt we’ll see it.

If you find yourself disagreeing with my B.D.S. and thinking that I’m probably the only one, I really don’t think I am. Why does Rudy Giuliani continually lead polls in the Republican party despite his questionable stands on gun control and abortion? I think the reason for that is that his executive record is quite unmatched anywhere, and his reputation, which is quite well earned, is that of a man who means business. He’s an aggressive (to the point of being accused of “overkill” in his time as a federal prosecutor, I’ve heard), tough, relentless leader with seriously impressive results; not just ideas and fuzzy but hopeless optimism. A lot of Republicans are convinced right now that Rudy Giuliani is the man to redeem this country after an embarrassing spending spree along with an embarrassing war. A war that should have been won years ago; a war whose second stage should’ve been sold as effectively as its first.

Don’t get me wrong: I still respect George W. Bush a lot, he is still my president, I still support him, and he was a much, much better choice than Al Gore or John Kerry. He still has most of the right ideas. George Bush, any way one slices it, is a good president.

I’m simply disappointed that such seemingly small flaws, that mean so much, hold him back from being a great president.