Here's one for the Bush Haters

A legacy of President George W. Bush will be that he saved 10 million lives around the world.

His critics ignore it, but name another president about whom one can say that with such certainty. It is what historians will say a decade from now looking back. Not bad for a president who leaves office with the lowest approval rating in recent memory. - CNN Story

I was in the first row in the House chamber when three quarters through his State of the Union address, the president boldly said: "I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years ... to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean" and "lead the world in sparing innocent people from a plague of nature."

And lead the world we did. No president in history had made such a commitment against a single disease. Those words and the action that followed meant that instead of another 30 million people dying from HIV infections, maybe just another 20 million will. - CNN

In my annual medical mission trips to Africa during the Bush administration, I saw the cost of treatment for HIV with life-saving antiretrovirals (ARVs) drop from $4,000 a year to $125. The number of Africans on ARVs jumped from 50,000 to 2.1 million. - CNN

And it was more than HIV. Six months ago, Tom Daschle, Mike Huckabee, John Podesta, Cindy McCain and I (yes, we five of different persuasions do work together!) went to Rwanda on a fact-finding trip.

Our visits with villagers all over the country opened our eyes to how Bush's five-year, $1.2 billion effort to combat malaria has provided 4 million insecticide-treated bed nets and 7 million life-saving drug therapies to vulnerable people. Yes, George Bush the healer. - CNN

Before Bush acted, the nation's 43 million seniors did not have affordable access to prescription drugs (the most powerful tool a doctor has to prevent and treat disease) through the Medicare

program. Today, because of George Bush, they do.

Initially, conservatives howled because the prescription drug initiative "cost too much." Liberals hated it because it involved the markets and competition. But today, 23 million seniors live healthier lives, Medicare drug spending has been 20 percent to 30 percent less than predicted for each of the past two years and seniors overwhelmingly give the program enthusiastic reviews. - CNN

Over time, however, it is the foundations he laid for healing. for the most part ignored by mainstream media, that I am confident will be his enduring legacy. - CNN