re: What is your outlook on the economy?

Well first, I assume you mean 2005-07, which were years of nearly complete gridlock on Capitol Hill when it took serious logrolling to even continue war funding. But that's not the main point.

To this day, no President has ever done more to try to transform the federal entitlement problem than Bush. Not only did he do it, but he spent the first 6 years of his presidency attacking this problem on every major front--education, health care, Social Security, & immigration.

In every single case, he went beyond the headline grabbing issues that get superficial talking heads fired up, and sought instead to solve the larger term problems. In every case, he tried to find ways to gradually build greater choice into the system.

The goal of standardized testing for schools was to provide a metric that would allow for increasing voucherization.

The goal for the MMA of 2003 was to build market choice into the system so that eventually the Behemoth of federal health care could be tamed by similar voucherizations. He had to twist every arm to get that bill passed, and it ended up watered down and compromised, but then so did everything else during his terms, because he never had very much solid support from his own party for the things he was trying to do.

He went into 2005 with almost zero public support for Social Security reform, and right from the start, that's what he put all his energy into. It had no traction with his own party, so he had to give it up. Ditto for immigration reform in 2006 & 2007.

I mean, my God, look at some of the GOP senators who were holding that tenuous majority together from 2003 to 2007. There is no way in hell they were ever going to come out in favor of serious entitlement reform.

Meanwhile, there's a couple of wars going on (and thank God we entered the one in Iraq, because the entire world would be shite out of luck right now if we hadn't), a stock bubble to recover from, global warming and campaign finance zealots and corporate governance campaigners in his own party to make compromises with, etc., etc., etc.

In other words, he had no political capital to do anything more than what he was barely able to do as it is. He tried as hard as anybody could possibly imagine a person in that situation doing, and one might even criticizing him for wasting too much effort on trying entitlement reform schemes that had no chance of working.

In any case, in terms of U.S. politicians taking serious steps toward resolving the entitlement behemoth since WWII, there is George W. Bush, there is Paul Ryan, and then there is nobody else. Bush in particular pretty much marched up the hill and stormed the castle without anyone else at his side (outside of people at think tanks) to help him lead the charge. Maybe Hensarling deserves a mention, but I can't really think of anyone else.