Condi Rice: Bush Is Working For History, Not Headlines

While it has fallen to Karl Rove to be the teller of apocryphal tales in the padding out of President George W. Bush's legacy, Condoleezza Rice is stuck with the heavy lifting. The new mission of the State Department appears to be a charm offensive launched against the Spirits of History, who Rice continues to insist will look back upon the Bush years with kindness. To that end, Rice puts forward an intriguing idea for a policy apparatus:

"This isn't a popularity contest. I'm sorry, it isn't. What the administration is responsible to do is to make good choices about Americans' interests and values in the long run -- not for today's headlines, but for history's judgment."

I have nothing but sympathy where resisting the need to win the snap judgment of the next big headline is concerned, but it seems equally misguided to suggest that policy decisions need to be calibrated against presumed historical reaction. I don't think it's going out on a limb to suggest that most people would prefer their public servants to somehow split the difference, maybe.

John Bolton's getting into the act as well:

"In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he was strong and decisive and that was critical for both the country and for the Western world," believes John Bolton. "In 100 years people aren't going to remember Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib, they're going to remember 9/11 and Bush's reaction to it."

Bolton doesn't seem to understand that Gitmo and Abu Ghraib were essential components of Bush's reaction to 9/11.

Anyway, who knows? Maybe it's true that one possible future for America will be that one hundred years from now, the past eight years will be thought of as a time of peak American policy wisdom and George W. Bush will be hailed as a "magic Negro." I'll be long dead, so good luck with all that, conquering alien hordes of the future!