Not to kick the president on his way out the door, but he was wrong when he told White House reporters at a wistful, nostalgic news conference yesterday that "there is no such thing as short-term history." It’s true that some presidencies look different after a few decades. But it’s also true that presidential acts can have immediate consequences – and that George W. Bush will leave office next week as a president whose eight years in office are widely seen as a nadir from which it will take years to recover.
"I strongly disagree with the assessment that our moral standing has been damaged," Bush said in perhaps his most spirited response of the session. "I disagree with this assessment that, you know, people view America in a dim light." Has he been paying attention? Did he not notice that both President-elect Barack Obama and his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, felt the need to promise to restore America’s honor and standing in the world? Or does Bush believe they were just joshin’?
Asked to identify the biggest mistake of his presidency, Bush gave a curious answer that had more to do with public relations than presidential decision making. He mentioned the "Mission Accomplished" banner that prematurely announced the end of major conflict in Iraq – but not his decision to invade Iraq in the first place. He mentioned his failure to visit New Orleans at the height of the devastating, deadly flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina – but not the decision to entrust the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the hapless and ineffective Michael Brown.
In Bush’s mind, the revelation of shocking prisoner abuse by U.S. military guards at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was "a huge disappointment" — but he doesn’t take any responsibility, as commander in chief, for the atmosphere of lax training and supervision that allowed the abuses at Abu Ghraib to happen. The failure by U.S. forces to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq qualifies only as "a significant disappointment" – even though the administration’s apocalyptic rhetoric about WMD was what sealed the deal for an invasion and occupation that never should have taken place…
What we know so far isn’t enough. I understand Obama’s reluctance to conduct criminal investigations of the Bush years – and I realize that Bush might well pardon everybody in advance anyway. But it’s important to convene an investigation and learn the truth, all of it, so that no president is tempted to take such liberties again. History, both short-term and long-term, will be grateful.
WASHINGTON — As he leaves office, President Bush is passing on to his successor two wars and a growing economic debacle. What a way to go! Because of Bush’s policies, the U.S. also is complicit in the Israeli attack on the Palestinians on the Gaza Strip by providing a "made-in-America" high-tech arsenal for the assault and blocking a ceasefire for nearly two weeks, a move intended to help the Israelis consolidate their hold. Not to worry, Bush says he isn’t concerned about how history will view his militant eight years in the White House, telling ABC News that he "won’t be around to read it." Well, they say that journalism is the first draft of history. So I am going to predict that those future historians will not deal kindly with the Bush presidency.
It’s true — as Bush and company point at their proudest achievement– there have been no new terrorist attacks on the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001. But they fail to acknowledge administration mistakes before and after that fateful day, starting with the fact that White House and security officials ignored significant early warnings of an imminent strike against the U.S. The second half of the double 9/11 mistake was the trampling of our constitutional system and American values by the administration’s infamous torture policies, illegal interrogation practices, including water boarding (simulated drowning), secret prisons abroad and U.S. run jails at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. Post- 9/11 Bush strategy also nurtured a climate of fear that enabled the self-styled "decider" to lead the country into a senseless war against Iraq, a calamity still underway as he leaves office almost six years after the invasion. Add the administration’s pathetic response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and you have basis to dub Bush’s eight White House years as the "Bush error"…
Bush is not about to admit that his costly inhumane attack on Iraq was a mistake. How could he tell grieving families of more than 4,000 American service members that their loved ones had died because of his error? In addition to the flawed decision to attack Iraq, Bush and Co. used the aftermath of 9/11 to take wholesale swipes at our civil liberties, including warrantless wiretapping.So those future historians will have a clear view of the 43rd president as they look back on the early years of the 21st century. A list of Bush’s accomplishments also should include his efforts to pay more money and political support into helping victims of AIDS and malaria in Africa. And he is proud of his controversial program "No Child Left Behind" to upgrade public school students by imposing national standards on an education system that had none…
Bush must have a sense of relief in giving up the presidential burdens. He is confident that those future historians will vindicate him and his presidency. But no one is expecting him to wind up on Mount Rushmore.
In 2000, he was elected as a generic figure to fill the slot of the Conservative, Religious Right surge of his time – if he were really even elected at all. He was then thrown into the crisis of September 11th, and his only resources were the Neoconservatives that Cheney had recruited from the ranks of the American Enterprise Institute. They lead him to ruin down a disastrous path informed by the anachronistic Nixon and Reagan years and an out of control financial elite, letting him pretend to be leading. Why America didn’t figure out that he was a Dunce before 2004 will haunt us forever. Re-electing Bush just because the country was in a Conservative mood and willing to be influenced by the trickey of Karl Rove is our darkest hour.
Eugene Robinson mentions Bush’s argument that our standing has not been damaged in the eyes of the world. Well, America’s standing has been damaged in my eyes. I’m ashamed of what we’ve done. I’m ashamed that the television sets play Fox News in public places and that an irresponsible bully like Rush Limbaugh is what comes over the radio waves. I don’t have a felt sense of security in the guarantees of our Constitution. While I hope we can get back what I thought we had [even in the dark days of the Civil Rights Movement or our other bad war], I sure don’t feel like we have it right now. I’m bitter about this financial crisis, because I’ve learned enough about it to know that this corrupt and inadequate government not only allowed it, but shepherded it along the way.
Bush and Cheney are focused on how history will view their years. I doubt they are what history will even talk about – superfluous ideologues. I think history will look at this period and explore what happened in America that led us to let these people throw away our principles and our spirit with such abandon. This will be the placemarker from which we either recovered with a new purpose, or died. Bush is already history. It’s our story that’s still being written.
If Bush had the decency to call on Helen Thomas at his last press conference,I would have said somewhere in his being there is a little piece of humility but he didn’t do it. There must be something in the Bush DNA that says one must never show humility because it might be preceived as weakness.