Bush’s Legacy
Filed under: George W. Bush, Iraq, United States — Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief on January 29, 2008 @ 1:57 pm CET
Although I agree that George W. Bush hasn’t exactly been one of the best presidents in US history, or even modern history at that, I find this to be a gross exaggeration: “after the last seven long years that this son of the Texas oil patch really didn’t know what hit him, still doesn’t know what hit him and still won’t know what hit him when he heads home one year hence to his ranch to search among the scrub brush for his squandered legacy.”
And then:
This is not to say he can be forgiven for his innumerable excesses, but that deer-in-the-headlights look we saw again last night as he give his eighth and (Praise the Lord!) last State of the Union speech was a reminder that seldom has a president been so utterly overmatched, and certainly no one comes close in modern times.
Frankly, I think I watched an entirely different State of Union than my distinguished former colleague. I saw a man on top of his game, feisty, who knew what he wanted to say and said it well… especially considering his limited oratory talents.
But the debate about Bush’s legacy is an interesting one. At the end of a President’s term, people start talking about what his legacy will be. Will he be considered a good, acceptable or bad president? What were his good decisions, what were his right decisions?
I think that Bush will be considered:
1. A bad president by liberals (they’ll probably give him a 2 out of 10)
2. Insufficient material by moderates (5? out of 10)
3. OK, but far from perfect president by most reasonable conservatives (7?)
4. A very good president by the far-right (8-9)
I’m somewhere with the American moderates and reasonable conservatives. I think that he wasn’t half as bad as his liberal opponents want to have people believe, but I also think that he wasn’t (isn’t) exactly a great president. He made too many errors, he knew too little about foreign policy, and he cared more about ideology than about solutions that might actually work. Aside from that, his - and especially those of his advisers his VP and his supporters - rhetoric was counterproductive.
Bill Clinton is often referred to as a president who made more enemies than friends, but - in my opinion - Bush tops that list easily. Sometimes undeservedly so, but all too often deservedly so.
The BDS sufferers show that they’ve got little to no ability to look at Bush in an objective way, that’s for sure though. His legacy won’t be all defeat and won’t be all lousy. He did some good things. Or take the following into consideration:
Even the debate about Iraq hasn’t ended yet. The US is still there and recent developments are positive. If Iraq turns out a-okay, the opponents of the war may repeat the mantra that Iraq was a failure - or that Bush didn’t handle it well (which is true for the first few years) - as often as they like, but that won’t make it any more true. In fact, the decision to invade Iraq was a very bold one. If it turns out alright, Bush’s legacy will be saved and, far more importantly, Iraq will be saved from a horrible despot who killed thousands of his own subjects every year, just because they dared to disagree with him.
1 Claudia
January 29, 2008 @ 2:16 pm CETMichael, can you explain what you think Bush did right? I mean yes, the country didn’t explode and we only lost one major city, but I wouldn’t classify that under achievement.
Seriously, it simply doesn’t occur to me what his achievements are, what he did right. What do YOU think he did well?
2 Snooper
January 29, 2008 @ 2:42 pm CETFirst off, the United States hasn’t lost a city to anybody and to my knowledge, there haven’t been any cities declared AWOL, either.
He rallied the country together immediately following 91101 and saved the country from itself.
He rallied the economy up to its current stature…lowest unemployment in recent history; lowest mortgage rates in recent history; historical levels of new job and new business growth; has collected historical levels of tax revenue due to the tax cuts that MUST be made permanent, to name a few.
He made it so we were not attacked on this side of the pond hence 91101.
He has failed miserably at communicating what he has accomplished. He has failed miserably at border security and the recent travesty of adding $150B to the deficit for a stimulus package that is not required for a recession that we are not in is something I cannot figure out…except for vote pandering.
3 A NEWT ONE
January 29, 2008 @ 2:43 pm CETPresident Bush Delivers Blinding Blow to Doom and…
~Snooper~In the State of the Union address on 28 Jan 2008, President Bush let all of th ……
4 C Stanley
January 29, 2008 @ 3:04 pm CETIt’s way too soon to know what his legacy will be, because most of the sweeping policies he put in place are still playing out.
He has been a strong president in the sense of using executive power to it’s utmost rather than being passive. This creates enmity, and if you use that power to get short term results then you might succeed in winning over enough people to cancel out the negativity of your enemies. But Bush has staked his reputation on several things which we won’t know the outcome of for years, perhaps decades. So he’ll be pretty reviled for a while, and then eventually his reputation will either be redeemed or the negative opinion will be ratified by the historians’ views.
Examples of policies of which the actual longterm results are still unknown:
North Korea (there’s no doubt his insistence on regional talks was a good change from the past, but will it ultimately produce a complete capitulation?)Iraq- obviously a tenuous situation, but when he went all in with the short stack on the surge he made the right decision and if the next president is able to finagle the diplomatic resources to work the regional powers, it may actually turn out much better than it appeared a year ago.Afghanistan- mixed success so far, could turn either wayIsreal/Palestine- like Bill Clinton, he’s staking a lot of his legacy on a late fourth quarter play which doesn’t appear very likely to work well for him, but who knows?Shifting alliances in Europe- seemed very bad during most of his presidency, yet we’re already seeing a less anti-American stance from France. History may show that the tensions and competing interests simply came to a head during his tenure and that it wasn’t necessarily bad to force the issues and lance the boilRussia- who knows what’s brewing thereIran- hard line approach with some recent softening- history will tell whether or not this will be effective; much probably depends on the rest of the regionImmigration- he forced the issue toward a more moderate place, which is the only way it’s ever going to get solvedEconomy- mixed- he kept the economy from heading south in 2001 but probably ignored other looming crises like the housing market and subprime loansSocial security- failure so far unless he miraculously forces something from the 110th congress this yearHomeland security- presided over a difficult birth of a new beaurocracy- very mixed results as to how it’s functioning and it’s cost effectiveness, but no more attacks have occurred since 9/11Intelligence agencies- likely that history will show that he didn’t do enough to fix our broken intel capabilities. He’s also presided over the FISA battles, a necessary debate no matter whether or not you agree with his stance
5 C Stanley
January 29, 2008 @ 3:04 pm CETHeh, my captcha comments there were "Mr behind"
6 Alan Stewart Carl
January 29, 2008 @ 3:07 pm CETBush has been an average president during extraordinary times. During his presidency, we suffered the worst attack on American soil and the nation’s worst natural disaster — neither was preventable by the president (although a lot of people like to argue otherwise). Both could only be responded to and that’s how Bush is and will be judged. He did great after 9/11 and then that trailed off in the lead up to and invasion of Iraq. He and everyone else did poorly after Katrina. My guess is a lot of our presidents would have had a similar performance with errors befitting their own weaknesses.
I’m no Bush fan. But as much as I’m looking forward to moving on with a new president, I’m just as much looking forward to no longer having to hear the hyperbolic critiques and unhinged yelps by Bush’s liberal critics.
7 Claudia
January 29, 2008 @ 3:10 pm CETMaybe you ought to tell that to the people of New Orleans.
What you mean the deficit? Or do you mean the value of the dollar (now almost $1,50 per Euro)? Or maybe it’s just the overall success?
8 C Stanley
January 29, 2008 @ 3:13 pm CETI agree with ASC. He didn’t always rise to the occasion, but few people could and probably no one could have met all of the challenges without some failures.
What I found most frustrating with Bush was the way he chose his battles. He decided to coapt some centrist positions that I found really inappropriate and unhelpful, and for the most part those are his biggest failures (No Child Left Behind and the Medicare act were passed and are pretty lousy, and on immigration he failed to get his more moderate proposal passed)
Then on other issues he tacked quite far to the right and alienated a lot of potential support.
Just doesn’t seem like he knew when to hold em and when to fold em.
9 PatHMV
January 29, 2008 @ 3:14 pm CETThere are any number of things, Claudia, which don’t seem real apparent to you and others simply because they’re the things that should have happened anyway. Also, you don’t see them because the left is often entirely blinded by the frequent comparisons of the Bush Administration to the Nazis.
Take the reaction to Muslims after 19 Muslims killed 3000 of us on 9/11. After Pearl Harbor, the nearest similar historical event, the president interned all the people who were from the same nationality as the people who attacked us. President Bush had very public meetings with Islamic leaders and went very far out of his way, in his speeches and in his conduct, to make the point that those who attacked us had a perverted view of Islam, that our battle was not with all Muslims.
Many on the left disparaged that, they claim it was belied by the rush to war in Iraq, but that’s crap. If the Iraq war was a cover for a war against Muslims, we would have pulled out the day after we found Saddam, and left them to stew in their own juices. Bush has risked his entire Presidency trying to put the pieces back together again, something which, while of benefit to the American strategic interests, is also of great benefit to the Muslim world, certainly the Muslims who live in Iraq.
How many incidents of American on Muslim vigilanteism did we have after 9/11? Almost none. The few that did happen made the news precisely because they were so rare. This is in no small part to the extreme efforts President Bush took to make clear that our fight was with those who would pervert Islam into a violent religion, not with the millions of worshippers of peaceful Islam.
What else did he do right? His tax cuts were well-aimed and well-timed. We’re bringing in more tax revenue now, with lower rates, than we were before the tax cuts, because the tax cuts stimulated the economy and caused significant GDP growth. The economy has in fact been purring along quite nicely during the Bush Administration. Look at the numbers, and it compares extremely favorably to the economy during the Clinton years, particularly given the economic downturn Bush had to face right when he took office.
So those are just a few things off the top of my head. There are plenty more.
10 PatHMV
January 29, 2008 @ 3:16 pm CETAlan, I hate to be cynical, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up about things getting any better in the next administration. The Bush Hatred has nothing to do with Bush and everything to do with the distorted view of history and reality held by the people who suffer from it. With Bush gone, they will transfer it to the next guy or gal.
11 Michael van der Galien
January 29, 2008 @ 3:32 pm CETYes, those are among the things I would cite as well. You have to keep in mind that he was president when the economy had trouble, yet he was able to turn it around. Low unemployment, good revenue, constant economic growth… it all happened.
Under his watch.
Seriously, if you can’t think of anything he did well, you’ve been reading too many liberal blogs and bloggers. He did more than one thing right - I think that Alan put it quite well. An average president in extraordinary times.
12 Claudia
January 29, 2008 @ 3:37 pm CETPat, I will give Bush credit for keeping the country calm and under control in the aftermath of 9/11. In fact I think he did great right up to when the war in Afghanistan was well under way and Iraq started to be trumped up as having WMDs. Don’t mistake me for a peacenik, I’m not. I was and continue to be for the war in Afghanistan. The Taliban were hiding and aiding the perpetrators of the worst terrorist attack in our history, in addition to brutalizing their own people in one of the most fearsome theocracies in the world. I agreed with his decision to invade, though I really wish he had actually finished the job there instead of high-tailing it to Iraq instead, going after fictional WMDs and mushroom clouds.
13 C Stanley
January 29, 2008 @ 3:41 pm CETThe ‘finished the job in Afghanistan’ really annoys me. Agree with Iraq or disagree (there’s ample reason to disagree) but if anything, the fact that we were backed into a corner in Afghanistan (unable to cross into Waziristan) means that it made more sense to open the front in Iraq, not less. We didn’t fail to make more progress in Afghanistan because troop resources were diverted- we failed (so far) because of the tenuous political situation in Pakistan and the ungovernable terrain along that border.
14 Rudi666
January 29, 2008 @ 3:43 pm CETPat - Nice job of tieing the Nazis and Japs into one nice neat little Goodwin’s Law package. The Christian Puerto Rican terrorists, civil rights and riots, the Bay of Pigs and Rosenberg’s giving away nuclear secrets also happened. It’s a wonder the Fox special on Sunday night forgot to link Bush and Truman, the Lincoln/Bush comparison was a hoot.
Maybe a trackback to Komrad SM is appropraite…
15 mdd4696
January 29, 2008 @ 5:21 pm CETSnooper said:
He rallied the country together immediately following 91101 and saved the country from itself.
Why does everyone keep saying this? I don’t think Bush rallied the country at all! I certainly don’t recall ever being motivated or comforted by anything Bush said. I never felt optimistic about his leadership or the direction in which he was taking the country.
Does anyone have any evidence that Bush rallied the country? Any evidence that we even needed "saving from ourselves"?
16 Alan Stewart Carl
January 29, 2008 @ 6:03 pm CETPat, yes, probably true. But maybe the screaming hordes can get some fresh catch phrases.