EXCERPT:
HAASS: "I think his legacy in foreign policy is on one hand the importance of American leadership, that the world does not organize itself without the United States, but also the importance of multilateralism. He didn’t do it alone, he did it with others. Whether it was the peaceful end of the Cold War, bringing Germany — a united Germany into NATO, the entire management of the Gulf crisis after Saddam Hussein conquered Kuwait, the way Bush brought together this unprecedented international coalition and liberated Kuwait. Any number of other things, he was the one who negotiated the NAFTA agreement, did all sorts of work also on environmental issues, and also here at home perhaps just as important was his willingness to reach across the aisle, to show that you could be a bipartisan president and get things done, particularly if you didn’t put your own short-term political interests paramount. My guess is — and we’re already seeing it — history will see him as not just the most successful one-term president in American history, but I actually think history will see him as one of the better presidents in American history and one who really played a pivotal moment when the world was transitioning from the era of the Cold War to all that has come after."