The Bush Legacy: Haunted By Mistakes

Americans are just finishing up eight years of George W. Bush. Their judgment of him is reflected in Bush's miserable popularity ratings. What remains of the Bush era?

He's the most unpopular president since Harry Truman. Experts and historians constantly give his policies poor grades. The inheritance he leaves his replacement is catastrophic. The name George W. Bush will be forever linked with the terms Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Katrina, water boarding and the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

During the past eight years, America's reputation sank to an all-time low point. Historians will note that Bush failed to institute a new immigration policy and was unable to reform the healthcare system. But the budget deficit nonetheless managed to rise to dizzying heights on his watch.

That said, Bush's presidency, like Truman's, may someday be seen in a milder light. Why? Because in the last two years of his administration, Bush was able to pull off an inconspicuous, but in many ways fundamental, change of course.

The obvious focus of that change is the situation in Iraq. After the congressional elections in the fall of 2006 in which the Republicans lost their majority, he fired his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, thus making a new Iraq strategy possible. With the appointment of Robert Gates to that post, Pentagon leadership changed from military to political control. Gates was able to analyze the situation there in non-ideological terms. Gates in Washington and General David Petraeus in Baghdad steered a course that was the last possible chance for a turning point in the war. Instead of the quick pull-out advocated by many, Bush, Gates and Petraeus tried just the opposite: with a troop buildup and an offer of cooperation from the insurgents, the downward spiral of violence might be broken long enough to allow sufficient time for new policies to work.

At least the level of violence has declined since then. In Baghdad, barriers are now being demolished rather than constructed; a semblance of normality has since returned to many neighborhoods. But many have to find a new place to live. In the once integrated city, Shi'ites and Sunnis now mainly live far apart, families were torn apart, social bonds cut. Still, residents of the city can now go into public areas without fearing for their lives as they did before. Political successes had little to do with that change because the ruling class in Iraq is still having a tough time finding common ground among people in the country.

The fall of Rumsfeld and the change to a new course didn't happen in a vacuum. Bush also got rid of his attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, albeit not without a lot of arm-twisting. His blind loyalty to the White House caused him to overstep boundaries and led to a loss of trust in him, something essential to someone in his position. Bush replaced Gonzales with Michael Mukasey, a federal judge generally respected by both sides.

The appointment of Henry Paulson to be secretary of the treasury was a similar case. The former CEO of Goldman-Sachs proved to be a good choice even prior to the financial crisis. After two lackluster predecessors, Paulson was able to finally give the Treasury Department the right image.

The course corrections in the Bush administration may be best summed up by four points: (1) after years of passive or no action, the administration once again took up the problem of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; (2) in dealings with Iran, the administration toned down its bellicose language; (3) despite the opposition of administration hawks, an agreement on nuclear disarmament was reached with North Korea, and (4) long a point of contention with the Europeans, the administration's rhetoric concerning the environment also changed. Indeed, Bush stuck with his rejection of the Kyoto Protocols, but he did commit the United States to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by the year 2050. What had happened to cause such basic changes in the Bush administration? "I think we learned something in the meantime," answered security advisor Stephen Hadley when asked that question by a reporter in June.

Over the past six years, meanwhile, this learning process has been viewed negatively by a whole host of observers regarding style, content and analysis. In his 2007 book, Jimmy Carter's former security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, described George W. Bush's administration as a "disaster" that resulted in a "historic failure." Speaking for many, Brzezinski bases his judgment primarily on the Iraq war. Regardless of the fact that things look somewhat improved in Iraq, grave mistakes were made in assessing the situation preceding the invasion and mistakes were made post-invasion that have never been corrected. The approximately 4,200 American troops killed in action and some 30,000 wounded must be attributed to George W. Bush. A few subsequently successful touch-ups can't change that.

Even Bush's defenders no longer argue that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, or that Saddam Hussein was in league with al-Qaeda, or that the coalition didn't grossly underestimate the strength of the insurgency. The neo-conservatives who pushed those scenarios and the failed policies resulting from them have since fallen back to a second line of defense: Bush confronted Islamic terrorism, made democratization of the Middle East the focal point of his foreign policy, and kept America free from further terrorist attack after 9/11. Compared to the original justification for going to war in Iraq, however, these pleas appear more meager and diversionary than anything else.

Bush may hope that history will eventually find him right on this or that point. Truman also fought a war (Korea) and developed a doctrine designed to halt the spread of communism throughout the world. But few historians find it easy to imagine that the Iraq war and the attempt to democratize the Middle East will someday be seen as far-sighted.

Comments

[toto42]

Everything that I want to say is right here in this article for the Kansas City Star:
http://www.kansascity.com/273/story/891390.html

It's a hypothetical Junior High class in the year 2040. The teacher quizzes the kids on the Bush legacy...
All those kids deserve an A+

[Oonagh]

History will look at the last eight years and wonder where the citizens of the U.S. were... and why we were so stupid to believe a man who did not have a grip on the facts .. and how we allowed him to take us to war, and gave him a second term..

[kareemachan]

"The neo-conservatives who pushed those scenarios and the failed policies resulting from them have since fallen back to a second line of defense: Bush confronted Islamic terrorism, made democratization of the Middle East the focal point of his foreign policy, and kept America free from further terrorist attack after 9/11."

Haven't any of these people heard the axiom "Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny"?

[Cognomen]

Historians will easily see what is already obvious.

When George Bush realized the experts were right and Iraq had no WMD to justify his determination to invade; he retroactively changed goals.

The "the attempt to democratize the Middle East" was an ass covering rationalization.

Can you imagine Bush trying to sell the war as an "attempt to democratize the Middle East"?

If the spread of democracy were his goal he would have let us shine as an example to the world instead of turning us into a torturing nation.

He may become the first president necessitating psychology as the historians" primary tool; because logic has so little a role in his actions.

As he was a pariah in his family; he has made us a pariah in the world. And if anything he does turns out to be less than catastrophic it will only be because those who follow him have worked mightily to fix what he"s too dense to even realize he"s done.

[tbone99]

The Bushco crew of vampires final act of sucking the last bit of blood from the country and siphoning it to their corporate friends, dealing a final kiss of death to the country before they hand it's corpse over to a Dem President with a shovel, and the remark "You said you wanted it' may not be remembered .

Only because there may be no country left to remember it.

[realpolitic]

To compare Bush and Truman is just a conservatives pipedream. Truman integrated the military, founded the United Nations, instituted the Marshal Plan to rebuild Europe, created NATO, and was among the first to recognize Israel as a country. And Bush's accomplishments? Turning around a war in a country after six years when it took us three weeks to defeat its military. Bush created the very conditions for the insurgency by disbanding Iraq's military and firing all Bathists. Also, violence could eruprt again there at any time. Services, such as access to fresh water and electricity, are still below pre-war levels. It shows that with Bush leaving office the historical revisionists will soon be running rampant.

[davism97]

I believe Bush will go down in history as a disaster. The only thing history is waiting on is a shining example to contrast him against.

[peterkatona]

It's next to impossible to give any credit to the Bush, especially in the immediate aftermath of the historic 2008 election. I'm going to try anyway.

Bush's failings are partly a result of incompetence, but largely a result of over-reaching: Everyone agrees Social Security needs reform, and Bush took it on. His approach was doomed. Immigration policy needs major revision, but if that's a failing of his, he shares it with every president and lawmaker since Reagan, including Clinton and the high approval rating he never risked. If we are going to talk about inheriting problems from one administration to another, Bush inherited a foreign policy that had its head in the sand following eight years of resting on our laurels. Was regard for America positive globally? Sure it was. Being the last man standing after the Cold War and not making any difficult decisions regarding a rising terrorist threat helped improve our popularity the world over.

Bush's legacy is in shambles, and may remain so forever. Iraq and how safe America stays once he is gone will surely help give us pause in the coming years. During the transition and Bush's exit, let's have some historical perspective. Irresponsible lending, immigration, Social Security, Al Queda, failing schools, climate change and our addiction to oil are all issues that, despite the euphoria of the end of Bush's tenure, were around before January, 2001.

Obama's promise isn't only change from Bush, but sweeping change from the past two decades or more.

[tbone99]

The fact that Bush's first act upon taking Office was to make secret presidential papers for a hundred years tells me this was a planned sack of the both the Constitution and the Treasury.

The Repug intention of "Starve the Bast" has been realized. Bush and cronies are dining on it right now.

[peterg76]

In other words, Bush's one accomplishment was "letting" the Democrats win in 2006?

[silverball]

LOL....yes, you are right....what a clever, bastard, eh?.....who would have known he was such an astute political animal.....and it WORKED.....LOL