This is the last weekend of the Bush Presidency. KagroX notes the Politico’s bafflement at people thinking Bush sucked. I recently had an exchange from one of my Republican friends where he said something along the lines of “at least Republicans respect the office of the Presidency even if they disagree with the President.”
This notion of “respecting the Office” has always confused me a bit. (Never mind that I didn’t note a whole lot of ‘respect for the Office’ when the umpteen thousand frivolous Clinton investigations were ongoing.) When I heard “respect the office” during the Bush presidency, it usually seemed to be code for “shut up and take it.” The best I can do is take “respect the office” as the equivalent of “give him the benefit of the doubt.” I respect that — but only to the extent there is doubt.
Now, if Bush had done the usual Republican thing — thrown out some tax cuts for the rich, ballooned the deficit, and doled out pork for defense contractors — I wouldn’t have been happy with his Presidency, but it would have been a low level disgruntlement. But, Bush had to kick it up a notch or two. I won’t pretend I was on board with the Bush presidency at any time. I wasn’t. I opposed his Presidency because I thought tax cuts before paying off the debt was idiocy. (During the 2000 election, my Republican friends told me that we ran the risk of “paying off the debt too fast.” Guess we dodged a bullet there.) I also opposed him because his chief qualification for office seemed to be that he had been born to George H.W. and Barbara Bush. Then he came into office on the strength of a sketchy Supreme Court decision. Then we had a summer of rolling blackouts in California where Enron and other energy suppliers were manipulating the markets but the oil men in the executive branch were telling the Dept. of Energy to look the other way.
But then came 9/11. That didn’t bring me over to the column of Bush supporters, but it certainly dampened my opposition. I even had brief hopes that we could all rally around a great cause, root out the religious extremists ruling Afghanistan, and turn the place into a place that was free and prosperous. I had read that Afghanistan was a much better place in the late 60s, early 70s and thought maybe we could return it to that kind of state as an example of what happens when Americans bend their will, energy, money, and military might to a noble cause. That was probably naive on my part. But, we had the world on our side, and as a country, we were united.
The big elephant in the room when discussing the Bush Presidency and when discussing how we pissed away all of that post-9/11 support and unity is, of course, Iraq. The decision to invade and occupy that country is the defining act of Bush’s presidency. That decision led to the corresponding decisions to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq beyond anything realistic. You had Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Rice assuring the American people they knew where the WMDs were and scaring the American people with the threat of a nuclear holocaust if we didn’t invade Iraq. This was nonsense, of course. And if the likes of Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Rice didn’t know it was overhyped nonsense, they were wilfully ignorant. They wanted to go to war with Iraq anyway, of course. The neo-cons had stated their desire to invade Iraq has part of their Project for a New American Century during the Clinton administration. 9/11 and the WMDs were a pretext. In fact, 9/11 wasn’t a very good pretext inasmuch as none of the hijackers were from Iraq, instead they were from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, primarily. Al qaeda and Iraq never had much use for one another. Sadaam Hussein was a megalomaniac concerned first and last about his own secular power. Al qaeda’s religious zeal would only undermine that power. None of which stopped an ongoing effort by the Bush administration to link 9/11 and Iraq together in the public mind. Viewers of Fox News, as it turns out, were particularly susceptible to such a false message.
The campaign of disinformation was the critical piece of the undertaking. Had the Bush administration waited until the occupation of Iraq could be properly planned and executed, that campaign would have fallen apart as better information became available and as the true expenses of the undertaking (10 – 100x the projected expense) became apparent. International support, weak at its best, would have only gotten weaker as Hussein was increasingly revealed to be a paper tiger instead of a legitimate threat. That’s why we had to go with “the Army we had” instead of the force necessary to do a proper job of occupying Iraq.
Iraq had already hollowed out the support for the Bush administration. Terri Schiavo and Hurricane Katrina would supply the finishing blows. The Schiavo affair seemed to be the last straw for many moderate Republicans — the sorts of folks whose conservatism was more about money and limited government than the ravings of the religious right with whom they had always been uncomfortable bed fellows. You had Bush coming back from vacation early to sign special legislation whereby the federal government was injecting itself into the hospital room of a brain dead woman because of the religious sensibilities of a politically influential minority. This kind of political intervention into private matters for religious regions was intolerable to many otherwise good Republicans.
Katrina zeroed out Bush’s support from non-Republicans. As the nation watched a city drown, they saw a President willing to remain on vacation and do little to nothing. When he did come back, he uttered the immortal words “heckuva job, Brownie” to the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency; a guy who was doing a demonstrably lousy job. Then, it came to light that this guy wasn’t remotely qualified to lead FEMA. He had been a commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association. Bush had campaigned on the idea that government was incompetent and seemed determined to prove it through inept, political appointments. With Katrina, it came crashing home to folks that we *need* government for some things and so long as that’s true, we need leadership that would do its level best to make government as effective as possible.
These are just the highlights. There have been any number of lesser or included offenses: political prosecutions and staffing decisions for the Department of Justice; torture; suspension of habeas corpus; yellow cake in the State of the Union; outing Valerie Plame; no-bid contracts; warrantless wiretapping; etc. etc. etc. So, any doubt for which he was entitled to a benefit was long ago erased, and “respect for the office” almost compels disrespect for the man who executed the duties of the office so poorly. Whatever sort of job President Obama may or may not do, the nation will benefit from the end of the Bush Presidency. Good bye and good riddance.
If Bush hasn’t sucked, then no one has ever sucked.
Well done Doug!
I believe Hurricane Katrina was also the moment Generation X and younger started looking for a new American course.
Good Job Doug!
I’m no great fan of Bush – but Doug, this has a ‘cut and paste’ flavor that seems odd, coming from you.
Better edited than many examples of that genre – but still, a ‘cut and paste’ vibe comes through pretty strongly…
For good or bad, I wrote it all myself.
This was a great post. You included everything I would have, except the smirking, so you are probably nicer than I am.
Took special note of this:
“(Never mind that I didn’t note a whole lot of ‘respect for the Office’ when the umpteen thousand frivolous Clinton investigations were ongoing.)”
More times than I can count I was told “but you can’t criticize the president because it’s not respectful” by people who had no compunction about saying disrespectful things about Bill Clinton. And I mean Before the Intern incident. But I wonder if they weren’t somewhat incited to do so by the media – you know the early-on reports of Hillary allegedly throwing a lamp, etc, continuing all the way to the W transition – the false reports of the “missing Ws” on keyboards. The media will not likely treat the Obamas this way, and I wonder why. What did they learn, or what has changed?
Agreed.
And well written.
d
Have you guys given any thought as to what you’re going to rail against after Tuesday? It’s gonna be some mighty dull blogging for ya’ll then isn’t it?
I’m guessing that no matter what happens, government isn’t going to perfect itself. And, absent such perfection, political malcontents — or “citizens,” as I like to call them — will have something to complain about.
Bush did enough damage that we will have things to rail against for years.
d
Excellent summary of eight miserable years. When one thinks of bad presidents one usually thinks of neglectful presidents like Buchannan or corrupt ones like Nixon or Harding. Bush stands out because he proactively enacted policies that were anti-government, unconstitutional, dangerous, bankruptive and will have lasting disastrous effects on America.
BRAVO!
A good rundown Mr. Masson.
Let’s not forget Bush’s downright rude treatment of Helen Thomas, John Ashcroft covering up nude statues, and of course Dick Cheney shooting an old man in the face. They may seem like trivial events, but it all adds up in the end doesn’t it?
Oh yeah, a little place called Abu Gharib, lasting symbols of a degenerate regime
Now I would like to see a point by point refutal of everything Doug posted by an english-fluent Bush suppporter.No references allowed of terms such as liberalism,communism, socialism,or any references to what our upcoming president might do ‘bad’ that GW BUSH was protecting us from for these long 8 years….
From Delroy Murdock comes this analysis:
“Bush is the Republican Jimmy Carter. This weak, ill-prepared bumbler let Washington eat him alive. Far worse, his apostasies bankrupted America and bombed the GOP into Dresden (often while an equally unprincipled, profligate Republican Congress navigated). The principled, fiscally responsible free-market/conservative movement is hobbled for its association with Bush, despite his serial violations of its tenets. The Right now must spend years scrubbing away Bush’s stain with brushes and Ajax.”
Time magazine has an article called “George W. Bush’s Eight Most Significant Economic Mistakes”.
More than anything else, this will likely form the foundation of his legacy.
Totally agree, VG. Bush trashed the economy, and while he may have wanted ‘preventing another terrorist attack’ as his legacy, he doesn’t get to decide that, and he left a whole lot of evidence that anyone can observe and go, “yup. That’s bad”.
That said, my greatest trepidation about the Obama Administration isn’t what it might do that is new. It is about what obviously bad from the Bush Administration that will be continued. As Doug identified, Bush was a tax cut borrow & spend man. So what is Obama if not the same thing, at least by what the cards he has shown us thus far with his ‘stimulus’ package?
Bush did exactly the same thing, for the same stated reason: stimulus. It didn’t work. For from it. Why is there so little observation of this for the incoming Administration? Are we going to start with our country so elated to be done with Bush that we will have rose-colored glasses for Obama? I get the former, but not the latter.
Had the Bush administration waited until the occupation of Iraq could be properly planned and executed, that campaign would have fallen apart as better information became available and as the true expenses of the undertaking (10 – 100x the projected expense) became apparent.
Disagreed, in that I don’t think such concerns were ever on their radar; “finishing the job with Saddam” was, from 1999. And it was scheduled according to the demands of re-election. I think the record’s pretty clear.
Assuming you were standing there in 1999, looking at the 2001-2004 window of opportunity, you’d eliminate moving too fast (which was precisely the “mistake” Bush Senior made, leaving too much time for his popularity to fade over other concerns). You wouldn’t move too late, and leave yourself open to charges of Wagging the Dog, not to mention the possibility of something going wrong in an election year.
Remember, it’s the Stinkin’ Desert; if you imagine the whole thing’s going to be over, and you gone, in Six Months, Tops, with the bulk of the fighting over in weeks, you don’t invade in summer (140º) or winter (dust storm and cyclone season). Meaning you pencil in somewhere between Spring 2002 (too early, unless Hussein goes off his nut in the No-Fly Zone; doesn’t give you time to use the ’02 midterms to bolster a war resolution) to Fall 2003 (which is cutting it a bit close). Leaves you with March, 2003, as your ideal, and explains why we were in such a friggin’ hurry to invade after 9/11 almost screwed the timetable up irrevocably. (Bush, by the way, mused to Tony Blair in January, 2003, about the feasibility of painting one of our planes UN robin’s-egg blue and flying over Baghdad in an attempt to draw fire. Obviously he hoped it might be an RAF plane, and not another piece of evidence pointing at him.)
That is, it explains better than the post-facto observations about it taking a year to build a coalition (the administration thought the Russians and all of Western Europe would jump on board the oil-based gravy train once it was clear we were going in), the need for sufficient troops (absent a big international contingent, which the administration did not want, there was no way we could come up with 400-500,000 troops in ten years, let alone one or two), or concerns over the story falling apart as Saddam Hussein decidedly did not attack anyone with nuclear/biological weapons and further inspections showed no program activity. The last was the very least of their concerns; as here, as always, the Big Lie trumps just about anything.
Mike, the problem I fear is that President-elect Obama is going to rely on people from Harvard (and the rest of the Ivy League) just the same as all the previous administrations have.
Sure, they will have come from a different political perspective, but the academic culture they have learned within is just the same.
Result? More of the same.
So, that is my current projection. Four years of more of the same (lame) solutions put forth to solve our problems.
Too bad Presidents fail time and time again to realize that some really competent people go to universities outside of the Ivy League.
That would be the best way to bring fresh perspectives into an incoming administration. But, I for one, won’t be holding my breath.
As a general rule, three things to remember:
Republicans didn’t suddenly shut up when Bush was inaugurated.
Fresh perspectives don’t magically come from doing something different from others.
The “more of the same” argument is just a way for people to insert prblems where there aren’t any.
That is all.