Remembering a Burning Bush
Published February 26, 2008
GEORGE W. BUSH HAS BEEN LABELED BY MANY AS THE WORST PRESIDENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY:
MAYBE SO, BUT LET’S WAIT AND SEE WHAT AMERICAN HISTORY HAS TO SAY ABOUT THAT
By Max C. Bookman
His ascendance to the Oval Office was forged in a kiln of gripping Floridian controversy and unprecedented judicial action. On a rainy Washington morning, he became the forty-third person to bear the title President of the United States.
America has come a long way since January 20, 2001. We’ve toppled a conniving and despotic regime in Afghanistan. Predictions of a trillion-dollar surplus have given way to alarms of a tanking economy. Gas prices have climbed significantly. New York City’s iconic skyline is short two towers.
And then there’s Iraq.
For us college students, George W. Bush has been the President of our adult lives. He has shaped the decade in which we’ve come of age. The actions of his administration have produced a lasting impact on the world we are soon to inherit.
In less than a year, the final chapter of the Bush story will come to an end. But the book has been effectively closed for a while now. The President, abandoned by his own party leadership, at the will of an uncooperative Democratic Congress, is destined to spend the rest of his time in office trying to pen the last stanzas of his presidency by touring the world as he is now (a symptom of all lame ducks). The defining events of this presidency seem now, finally, to be in the past.
So how will the next generation come to judge such a controversial figure as President Bush? In fifty years, what will you say when your children ask, “what was it like when George W. Bush was President?”
Looking to history may provide us with some guidance.
Harsh words like, “the President must be impeached and convicted, the American nation has never been in greater danger, it is led by a fool who is surrounded by knaves,” sound like they refer to the current occupant of the Oval Office. But when Senator Robert Taft spoke these words, George W. Bush was dodging Vietnam service in the Texas Air National Guard. Taft was talking about the thirty-third President of the United States, Harry S. Truman.
Indeed, George W. Bush is not the first president to be labeled the worst in history during his twilight years in office. President Truman, like Bush, lost the favor of the American people when he got involved in a messy overseas war, this time in Korea, the merits of which were hotly debated.
The issues of the following election of 1952, while nominally unique, were surprisingly similar to those we now see more than half a century later. President Truman, a Democrat, chose not to run, leaving both party fields wide open for contest. At the center of the Republicans’ message: calls to end a bloody and unpopular war, appeals to end corruption in the federal government, and promises to clean up the mess made by the incumbent President. In a word, change.
The American people bought the message of change that candidate Eisenhower promised, and they swept him into office. But change wasn’t only in the air in ‘52 and now in ‘08. Every election is about change. Carter offered a change from the tumultuous years of the Vietnam period. Reagan called for a change from Carter’s largely ineffective term in office. Bill Clinton touted “change vs. more of the same,” promising to change the economy that faltered under Bush Sr. Bush Jr. campaigned to change the colossal size of the government that ballooned under Clinton.
But even if we believe that after the last eight years, change is more necessary than ever before, there surely must have been worse presidents than George W. Bush, right? Take Warren G. Harding, the twenty-ninth president. He is actually consistently ranked as the worst president in history. President Harding spent his twenty-nine months in office playing golf, poker, and fooling around with his mistresses while his cronies plundered the Treasury. Fittingly, his only memorable words were “I am not fit for this office and should never have been here.”
Bush’s approval ratings are currently hovering in the thirty percent range, and there’s no sign that those will change by the time he leaves office in 2009. But don’t be so sure that history will hold him among the likes of Harding.
Remember Harry Truman? He left the White House the least popular president in history, with a twenty two percent approval rating. That’s lower than Nixon’s immediately before he resigned and far lower than that of Bush Jr. at any point. But in every presidential-ranking survey (there’re a few respected ones), he is ranked among the top ten most effective presidents in American history. Later generations of Americans came to appreciate Truman for masterfully accepting the reins of power in the midst of World War II, recognizing the state of Israel, and most importantly for President Bush, halting the spread of Communism on the Korean peninsula even though the war he waged was unpopular at the time.
Yes, the terribly contested war that President Truman engulfed the United States in turned out to shelter a future pro-Western first world democracy, South Korea. The success of South Korea (and the failure of North Korea) has posthumously vindicated Harry Truman. We now congratulate him for his foresight and strength of conviction.
Therefore, the fate of George W. Bush’s legacy is inexorably tied to that of the struggling Iraqi democracy. Despite your position on this quagmire of a war, imagine that in the next thirty, forty, or fifty years, Iraq emerges as a flourishing democracy. Its economy is strong; Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds live and work together in harmony; and Iraq is a beacon light for the now-democratizing nations of the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Bush will then be remembered as the man who stood strong when all others sounded the trumpets of defeat. He will be the president who was tragically berated in office, but whose unwavering support for democracy in Iraq paid off decades later.
Pitfalls like WMD’s, Colin Powell at the UN, Scooter Libby, No Child Left Behind, Guantanamo Bay, and Halliburton will all be swept under the historical rug; footnotes in the legacy of a man of conviction.
While President Bush should hope that history fashions him as a 21st century Harry Truman, the chance of Iraq’s falling to any destructive combination of Islamic fundamentalism, anti-Americanism, or sectionalism is also a very real possibility. If an extremist Iraq becomes a destabilizing factor in the Middle East, Bush’s legacy may fall along the lines of Lyndon B. Johnson, the President who executed the doomed Vietnam War, and whose unfortunate legacy reflects a man who did not have enough prudence to cut America’s losses before they grew too heavy.
Regardless of how Gorge W. Bush will be thought of in our collective national memory, be assured that the current passionate cries for and against him will not be a determinant. Presidents excite people’s most passionate emotions. It’s the nature of the office. There were Americans who thought Bill Clinton was the worst president in history, and there will be those who will think the next president should hold that title.
The epilogue of the story of George W. Bush lies somewhere in the sands of Iraq. When the long, convoluted dance between Uncle Sam and the Cradle of Civilization has finally ended, then we will be able to judge the man who has captivated the national attention for the past eight years. When a verdict is reached on Iraq, we will know the fate of his legacy. George W. Bush: the visionary or the fool.
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