PRAISE TO BUSH

Posted at 8:16 a.m. ET

The press has been utterly stingy about offering any praise to outgoing President George W. Bush.  But his transition team has apparently done an outstanding job of handling national-security issues for the Obama administration.  A New York Times story outlines the threats the Bush people see, and this is important reading for all Americans:

WASHINGTON — The White House has prepared more than a dozen contingency plans to help guide President-elect Barack Obama if an international crisis erupts in the opening days of his administration, part of an elaborate operation devised to smooth the first transition of power since Sept. 11, 2001.

The laundry list:

The memorandums envision a variety of volatile possibilities, like a North Korean nuclear explosion, a cyberattack on American computer systems, a terrorist strike on United States facilities overseas or a fresh outbreak of instability in the Middle East, according to people briefed on them. Each then outlines options for Mr. Obama to consider.

That is responsible, mature planning, for which Mr. Bush will receive no credit.

The contingency planning goes beyond what other administrations have done, with President Bush and Mr. Obama vowing to work in tandem to ensure a more efficient transition in a time of war and terrorist threat.

That really is change we can believe in.  And more:

In addition to the White House contingency memorandums, the Department of Homeland Security said it had given crisis training to nearly 100 career officials who may fill in while Mr. Obama’s appointees await Senate confirmation.

And...

At the same time, senior counterterrorism officials plan to hold personal briefings for their counterparts on the biggest threats they see.

There is a recognition of reality, a reality that sometimes escapes pundits:

The attention to national security in this postelection interim period stems in part from the recognition that terrorists have struck during moments of flux in national leadership before. Al Qaeda’s first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 came weeks after Mr. Clinton was sworn in. A series of bombings on a Madrid commuter train system in 2004 came three days before national elections. And an attack on a Glasgow airport in 2007 came days after Prime Minister Gordon Brown took office in Britain.

Finally...

While Mr. Obama’s national security résumé is relatively thin, many members of his national security team come with deep experience. He is keeping Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and has tapped Gen. James L. Jones, a retired NATO supreme commander, as national security adviser.

Yet returning Clinton veterans have not been in government since Sept. 11. There was no Department of Homeland Security then, no director of national intelligence. The world has changed, and so have the structures to cope with it.

I hope the nation recognizes that Mr. Bush put those structures on place.  Criticize him we may, for many things, but he has taken the security of this nation seriously.

December 17, 2008.