A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency (7 page)

During the years of 2002 through 2004, George Bush was venerated like few other presidents, spoken of in terms so reverent that at times it seemed almost improper to criticize him. And it was American conservatives leading these virtual canonization rituals. Such a sudden “recognition” that Bush is not a true conservative, then, is transparently prompted by the collapse of the Bush presidency, by the collective realization that he has been an epic failure, and the consequent desire to shield conservatism from the toxic fallout.

Independent of the abstract debate as to whether George Bush has governed as a “conservative” in some theoretical, academic sense of that term, the near-complete reversal in how right-wing leaders speak of George Bush is simply remarkable. The fundamental reversal reveals the extent to which the Bush presidency has become so politically poisonous that even his own supporters now fear being held responsible for its legacy.

DESTROYING THE REPUBLICAN BRAND

T
he abandonment of the president is so cataclysmic that it is actually reshaping the American political landscape. A March 2007 Pew poll revealed some truly startling findings. George Bush’s unpopularity was literally driving Americans away in droves from the Republican Party. Bush was single-handedly coming close to destroying the Republican brand. Whereas in 2002 the percentage of Americans who identified or leaned toward one of the parties was split almost evenly (43–43 percent), Democrats had opened up a huge gap after six years of the Bush presidency. According to Pew, 50 percent of Americans now identify as or lean toward the Democratic Party, while Republicans attract only 35 percent. As the
Los Angeles Times
put it in reporting on the Pew findings:

Public allegiance to the Republican Party has plunged during George W. Bush’s presidency, as attitudes have edged away from some of the conservative values that fueled GOP political victories, a major survey has found.

The survey, by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People the Press, found a “dramatic shift” in political party identification since 2002, when Republicans and Democrats were at rough parity. Now, 50% of those surveyed identified with or leaned toward Democrats, whereas 35% aligned with Republicans….

“Iraq has played a large part; the pushback on the Republican Party has to do with Bush, but there are other things going on here that Republicans will have to contend with,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Center. “There is a difference in the landscape.”

Political journalist Rod Dreher is as conservative as an individual can be—a longtime contributor to
National Review,
a self-described “practicing Christian and political conservative,” and a columnist for the
Dallas Morning News
. Yet his rejection of George Bush
and
Bush’s vision of America is now complete, and the reasoning that led him to that point is shared by many other Americans who previously supported the president.

In January 2007, Dreher recorded an extraordinary oral essay for National Public Radio in which he recounts how the conduct of President Bush (for whom he voted twice) in the Iraq War (which he supported) is causing him to question, really to abandon, the core political beliefs he has held since childhood. Dreher, forty, explains that his “first real political memory” was the 1979 failed rescue effort of the U.S. hostages in Iran. He states that he “hated” Jimmy Carter for “shaming America before our enemies with weakness and incompetence.” When Reagan was elected, Dreher believed “America was saved.” Reagan was “strong and confident.” Democrats were “weak and depressed.”

In particular, Dreher recounts how much, during the 1980s, he “disliked hippies—the blame-America-first liberals who were so hung up on Vietnam, who surrendered to Communists back then just like they want to do now.” In short, to Dreher, Republicans were “winners.” Democrats were “defeatists.” On September 11, Dreher’s first thought was: “Thank God we have a Republican in the White House.” The rest of his essay recounts his political transformation as a result of the Bush presidency:

As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool’s errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.

But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool.

In Iraq, this Republican President for whom I voted twice has shamed our country with weakness and incompetence, and the consequences of his failure will be far, far worse than anything Carter did.

The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness of our government’s conduct of the Iraq War have been shattering to me.

It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. Not under a Republican President.

I turn forty next month—middle aged at last—a time of discovering limits, finitude. I expected that. But what I did not expect was to see the limits of finitude of American power revealed so painfully.

I did not expect Vietnam.

As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.

I had a heretical thought for a conservative—that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take presidents and generals at their word—that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot—that they have to question authority.

On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn’t the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?

Will my children, too small now to understand Iraq, take me seriously when I tell them one day what powerful men, whom their father once believed in, did to this country? Heavy thoughts for someone who is still a conservative despite it all. It was a long drive home.

Dreher’s essay is extreme and intense but also increasingly commonplace and illustrative. The unparalleled magnitude of the disaster that President Bush has wrought on this country will carry a profound impact on American strength and credibility for a long, long time to come and also on the views of Americans—including many conservatives—toward their political leaders and, almost certainly, toward the Republican Party.

Yet another illustrative example is
Newsweek
’s Fareed Zakaria, who was not only a supporter of the war in Iraq but also one of two journalists invited to a secret meeting with senior Bush Defense Department officials in November 2001 at which the participants strategized on ways to persuade the president of the need to invade Iraq. But by 2006, Zakaria had turned against the administration almost completely, and by the middle of the year was issuing sweeping condemnations of both Bush and the legacy of his presidency:

Leave process aside: the results are plain. On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq—troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani—Washington’s assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world.

Whether he wins or loses in November, George W. Bush’s legacy is now clear: the creation of a poisonous atmosphere of anti-Americanism around the globe. I’m sure he takes full responsibility.

The enormity of the damage Bush has done to America is reflected by the palpable change in the content as well as the tone of our political dialogue. By the end of 2006, op-ed themes such as historian Douglas Brinkley’s in the
Washington Post
became commonplace. Brinkley is a highly regarded presidential historian, having written books about Franklin Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, and John Kennedy.

In his first paragraph, Brinkley recounts a meeting he had with Reagan biographer Lou Cannon: “Like many historians these days, we discussed whether George W. Bush is, conceivably, the worst U.S. president ever.” While Cannon “bristled” at the idea, he did so, according to Brinkley,
not
because anything in Bush’s presidency thus far precludes such an assessment, but only because, with two years left, declaring Bush “the worst” was premature. After all, unforeseen events could unfold in such a way as to improve Bush’s standing.

But Brinkley had no such qualms, barely qualifying his ready conclusion about Bush’s place in history:

But we live in speedy times and, the truth is, after six years in power and barring a couple of miracles, it’s safe to bet that Bush will be forever handcuffed to the bottom rungs of the presidential ladder.

In February 2007, Al Neuharth, founder of
USA Today,
the newspaper with the highest circulation in the country, announced that he had reconsidered his view of Bush’s place in history. Headlined “Mea Culpa to Bush on Presidents Day,” Neuharth wrote:

Our great country has had 43 presidents. Many very good. A few pretty bad. On Presidents Day next Monday, it’s appropriate to commemorate them all….

A year ago I criticized Hillary Clinton for saying “this (Bush) administration will go down in history as one of the worst.”

“She’s wrong,” I wrote. Then I rated these five presidents, in this order, as the worst: Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant,

Hoover and Richard Nixon. “It’s very unlikely Bush can crack that list,”

I added.

I was wrong. This is my mea culpa. Not only has Bush cracked that list, but he is planted firmly at the top….

Bush admitting his many mistakes on Iraq and ending that fiasco might make many of us forgive, even though we can never forget the terrible toll in lives and dollars.

The collapse of the Bush presidency brings to mind the plight of the Greek tragic figure Icarus, whose father built wings made of feathers and wax to enable them to escape from their exile on Crete. Intoxicated by hubris and uncontrollable sensations of his own potency, Icarus exceeded his limits and flew too close to the sun, which melted his wings and caused him to plunge helplessly into the sea.

One can draw a straight line between the unprecedented heights reached by George Bush in his post-9/11 glory days and the hubris-and arrogance-driven collapse—now sustained and total—of his presidency.

By any measure, things have not gone well for the United States over the first six years of the Bush presidency. Is there anyone who really claims otherwise? In any area, what metrics could possibly be adopted, what achievements invoked, in order to argue that the interests and welfare of America have been enhanced during this administration?

As Brinkley points out, while Bush and Lyndon Johnson both presided over a deeply unpopular war, Johnson’s place in history is vastly improved by substantial “major domestic accomplishments to boast about when leaving the White House, such as the Civil Rights Act and Medicare/Medicaid.” By stark contrast, Brinkley pointed out, “Bush has virtually none.”

It appears highly likely, even inevitable, that until Bush leaves office on January 20, 2009, the United States is going to be saddled with a failed president, one who is lost, aimless, weak, and isolated in the extreme. Yet he continues as inflexibly as ever to be driven by a worldview that has come to be almost universally rejected as useless, even dangerous, for dealing with the challenges facing the nation.

A failed, lame-duck president, with nothing to lose, can either accept his impotence and passively muddle through the remainder of his term or do the opposite—move furiously forward on an extremist course, free of the constraints of facing the electorate again and convinced that he is on the side of Good and Right. Such a conviction can lead to the belief that his unpopularity is not an impediment, but a challenge, even a
calling,
to demonstrate his resolve and commitment by persisting
even more tenaciously
in the face of almost universal opposition.

The embrace of that latter course renders public opposition and all other forms of outside pressure irrelevant, even counterproductive. It is human nature that when one is rejected and condemned by contemporary opinion, a temptation arises to reject that contemporary opinion as misguided and worthless. One instead seeks refuge in other less hostile metrics of success—universal moral standards, or the judgment of a Supreme Being, or the future vindication of history.

It has long been evident that the president’s worldview compels such refuge. Convinced that his core beliefs are preordained as Right, he will reject any measurement that rejects his beliefs and embrace any that affirms them. What matters to him now is not the judgment of contemporary politicians, journalists, or even the majority of American voters. The rightness of his actions are determined not by public opinion polls or editorials or even empirical evidence but instead by adherence to what he perceives to be objectively moral notions of Right and Wrong, Good and Evil. As the president himself has made expressly clear, his calling is to wage war against Evil on behalf of Good—as he conceives of those concepts—and he will not be deterred in that mission, not even slightly, by pragmatic impediments, whether they be political pressures, resource constraints, ongoing failures, or the objections of American citizens.