One of the few times George W. Bush was mentioned at the Republican National Convention came during a speech by his brother, Jeb Bush, who said this about the last GOP president: "He is a man of integrity, courage, and honor, and during incredibly challenging times, he kept us safe."
Is there any bigger caveat to that statement than 9/11?
What people mean when they say he kept is safe seems to be that there wasn't another terrorist attack like 9/11. By that standard, he kept us no safer than Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama. And even leaving out 9/11, for reasons that are never explained, Bush was president during the anthrax attacks, the Beltway sniper incident, the Los Angeles airport shooting, the Mohammed Reza SUV incident, the Seattle Jewish Federation shooting, and the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina. Again, I don't blame Bush for the victims of those incidents, but to harken back to his tenure as a time when the president kept America safe is ahistorical.
The Republican ability to have amnesia around the fact that 9/11 happened on his watch...(and he had warnings and didn't heed them)...is always astonishing to me.
