The Bush Legacy

George W. Bush is about as popular with Americans as a funeral director visiting a nursing home. The most reviled president in American history, however, is dead certain he’ll be vindicated by posterity. Several prominent pundits – Robert Kagan, Fareed Zakaria, and David Frum – wrote recently that history might go easier on the forty-third president than liberals imagine. They argue, for instance, that the surge is working, liberals are in denial, and Bush has succeeded in his most important responsibility: protecting the nation against another attack. However, an overwhelming body of evidence suggests that Bush’s tenure will almost certainly rank at or near the bottom of American presidents.

When Bush leaves office the world (and most Americans) will breathe a collective sigh of relief. There is no doubt that the next chief executive will inherit the most formidable domestic and foreign policy challenges any American leader has ever faced. The American financial system is on the precipice of the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, the U.S military is stretched to brink in two indecisive wars, and ecological and weather-related events are taking their toll on America’s resilience and infrastructure as never before. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden is on the loose and the threats stemming from nuclear proliferation and “loose nukes” is growing more urgent by the day. To make matters worse, the precipitous decline in Bush’s short-lived Pax Americana is occurring at the same time that authoritarian regimes like China and Russia appear to be on the rise.

On the economic front, Bush’s supply-side policies have been a complete bust. The administration’s policies have engendered the weakest job growth in the past sixty years, inflation is rising at the most torrid pace in nearly thirty years, and the country is drowning in debt. As Al Gore trenchantly observed some years ago, we’ve been borrowing money from China in order to keep buying Middle Eastern oil, thus mortgaging our future to a rising rival while transferring wealth to a region brimming with anti-Americanism.

The Bush administration has come close to bankrupting America morally too. The so-called “enhanced” interrogation techniques codified by Cheney’s legal scriveners have decimated America’s moral authority. Put simply, Bush’s decision to unilaterally suspend the Geneva Convention when it came to the War on Terror has proven as unwise as it was unlawful. America’s Constitution refers to the inalienable rights that belong to all persons. Thus, Bush’s efforts to deny a certain category of persons – enemy combatants – all due process and legal rights is nothing less than an assault upon the most cherished and fundamental of American values.

Bush is the first American president to hold an MBA, but his management “skills” makes Drew Carey seem like CEO material in comparison. The bungled mishandling of post-war Iraq and post-hurricane New Orleans shattered America’s image as a can-do nation. Bush’s installation of political hacks at FEMA, the Justice Department, and the reconstruction efforts in Iraq corroded the competencies of institutions Americans count on. And Bush’s gut instinct has proven disastrous when it comes to picking subordinates (e.g., the axis-of-incompetents: Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, & Michael Brown) or sizing up world leaders (Vladimir Putin and Pervez Musharraf).

Bush’s apologists and enablers claim that “victory is within sight” in Iraq. It may be possible to win a phyrric victory in Iraq (“one more victory like that and we are doomed”), but America is sacrificing its global strategic position to “win” in Iraq. How long can the United States afford to spend $10 billion dollars a month in Iraq, essentially paying Sunni insurgents to shoot at al-Qaeda instead of us? It may seem like a bargain, except that al-Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq until after we invaded, and the Sunni militias are likely to start shooting at us and/or the Shiite government if their U.S. taxpayer financed monthly stipends are ever cut off. Meanwhile, Iran’s regional ambition, which include acquiring nuclear weapons and dominating the Persian Gulf, have been furthered because the U.S. toppled the Mullahs’ main enemy, the Baathists, and then got bogged down in Iraq where U.S. soldiers would essentially become 160,000 hostages should America attack Iran’s nuclear program.

The invasion of Iraq set a dangerous precedent because the U.S. came to be seen as a rogue nation. Conservatives have a hard time absorbing this, convinced as they are of America’s exceptionalism. But the Bush administration’s attempt to establish a Pax Americana has instead led to a steep decline in America’s power and prestige. Sensing this, Russia and other authoritarian countries are likely to ally themselves against American interests and cite U.S. hypocrisy to cover their own unilateralism and aggression. Russia’s foray into Georgia is likely just a prelude to an era where the “strong do what they can and weak suffer what they must.”

Scrapping the Geneva Conventions, unilaterally abrogating the ABM treaty, heaping scorn upon the Kyoto Accord, trashing the UN, and ignoring international law was in keeping with the Bush administration’s mind-set, namely that “might makes right.” The concept that peace and stability might be promoted through collective security, international legitimacy, and soft power seemed inconceivable for the ideologically rigid reactionaries that made up the administration. Bush has demonstrated greater flexibility, including an increased emphasis on diplomatic suasion, in his second term, but much of the administration’s energy has been consumed undoing the damage wrought during the first term.

It would be hard to pick the most despicable aspect of Bush’s failed presidency. But certainly, Bush and Cheney’s willingness to let a low-level military personnel take the heat for abusive practices approved at the highest level is especially loathsome. Top legal advisors to the president and vice-president (David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, and John Yoo) crafted torture memos that codified barbarism, sexual sadism, and psychological cruelty. These legal scriveners did for the law what Arthur Anderson did for accounting; they made a mockery out of the ideals their respective professions stand for. For Bush and Cheney to deplore the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo that their policies legitimized is cowardly, hypocritical, and dishonest.

Few thinking Americans take the Bush administration seriously anymore. Bush’s rhetoric has been so at variance with reality that most people sensibly ignore what he has to say. Bush’s greatest accomplishment -- prior to his 5 to 4 win in the Supreme Court, which effectively overturned the will of the majority of American voters – was overcoming his chronic alcohol abuse. Power has a way of revealing character – or lack thereof – and so does history. That’s why I wouldn’t bet a wooden nickel that George W. Bush will look much better once the dark recesses of his shady administration are exposed to the light of history.

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