My good friend Steve surprised me recently when he officially bailed on Bush. His declaration of such to the world can be found here. Steve makes good points. It's easy to be frustrated with this administration or, more accurately, the lack of control this administration has exhibited over its intelligence services and world affairs. Most of Steve's reasoning comes from Peggy Noonan's column "Too Bad" which also makes good points.But I've been giving this some thought and I am hereby declaring that...well, nothing new. I'm not changing my opinion of President Bush. I'm not blindly declaring him the greatest statesman ever, but I'm not ready to predict that history will remember him a massive failure, either.
Noonan's assertion is that Bush has squandered an enormous opportunity to be popular. And she doesn't like him for that.
Bush the younger came forward, presented himself as a conservative, garnered all the frustrated hopes of his party, turned them into victory, and not nine months later was handed a historical trauma that left his country rallied around him, lifting him, and his party bonded to him. He was disciplined and often daring, but in time he sundered the party that rallied to him, and broke his coalition into pieces. He threw away his inheritance. I do not understand such squandering.I understand her point, but it troubles me that she doesn't give me a cause greater than popularity to defend.
He sundered the party that rallied to him? This doesn't break my heart.
He threw away his inheritance? Hmm. Oh well. Hope he had a reason.
Should Bush have compromised to conserve the coalition of supporters and defend his high approval rating? Noonan declares that both Bushes (41 and 43) squander "political inheritance."
One of the things I have come to think the past few years is that the Bushes, father and son, though different in many ways, are great wasters of political inheritance. They throw it away as if they'd earned it and could do with it what they liked.After some thought, it strikes me that this is exactly what I want in a politician! Someone who places little stock in "chits in the game". Someone who is decisive and willing to take risks. Someone who leads on principal, rather than follow the latest polling data. It seems to me that people in America either love Bush or hate him, which may be the greatest testament to his success as a statesman. If everyone could take him or leave him, we'd have to question his mettle. We'll never question that with 43.
But the points I've made so far may seem of little consequence when considered against the thousands of U.S. dead and wounded from the quagmire that is Iraq. Indeed, Iraq will always rank in the top two - along with 9/11 - as the most weighty and legacy-shaping issues of this administration. So let me address Iraq.
I, like many of my conservative brethren, didn't care much for Bill Clinton. Still don't. Nor his wife. But I always wanted to be careful not to slander him where he didn't deserve (after all, he gave us plenty of fodder for things he did deserve - no reason to dig up more). If Bill Clinton were in the White House for Bush's term and had invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and faced the same quagmire that Bush now faces - and I know this is easy to say since he isn't - I would not lay the blame for the deaths of American soldiers at Clinton's feet. Here's why.
I think both 9/11 and the strength of the insurgency in Iraq were both Black Swans. No one saw them coming. Indeed, no one ever would have. But in hindsight it becomes easy to think that someone should have. We think, "Someone should have known this would happen. Maybe not me, but someone in that arena. Who should have known and stopped this? TSA? Airlines? CIA? The military? The president? But such blame-gaming is both useless and senseless. If Iraq naysayers are so convinced that this war was a bad idea from the beginning, then where the hell were they at the beginning? The standard answer to that is that the country was in a patriotic frenzy following 9/11 and they didn't want to appear unpatriotic. They didn't want to rock the boat. To which I say, it's too bad they didn't share the president's lack of concern for popularity and save us from this mess!
I'll grant that it would have been better if America had the human intelligence network in place in the Middle East to warn us that Iraq was not ready - not socially, intellectually or morally capable - of welcoming democracy. If we had invested millions in intelligence in the region for decades before, then we might have had a clearer crystal ball to know that our actions there would not help bring peace and democracy but sectarianism and civil war. We also might have had the right answers about the existence of WMDs. But alas, we didn't have that knowledge. The knowledge we did have was flawed. And, again, blaming Bush for acting on the knowledge he had, now that we know what he didn't, seems like so much geopolitical armchair quarterbacking to me. "He shouldn't have gone for it on fourth down! Why? Because he didn't make it!"
Noonan's final paragraph - the summary of the damage this nincompoop president has done - is about squabbling within the Republican Party. About how Bush's actions have disappointed some in his own party. Again, it doesn't break my heart. I have trouble hating Bush for that. And I find it a little telling that Noonan can't help but call the president disciplined and daring while doing her best to insult him.
Our president is not a terrific public speaker. He hasn't proven to be a very good coalition builder (which was a big point in his first campaign - how he built cooperation and coalitions across the aisle as governor). He has made mistakes and he has rushed into decisions. But I won't go as far as to call him an idiot or a war monger as seems to be the case with a growing number of Americans. In fact, I have no doubt that America would face the same problems with Iraq - or possibly other problems, different but just as dire - had Al Gore or John McCain or John Kerry or anyone else had been in office for these two terms. Notice that none of those men are saying differently. No one but no one is daring to say that they would have acted differently, that they would have saved us from Iraq if they had been in office, because they know better.
Every president has his problems.
Bush has been overeager to strike back at terrorism.
Clinton couldn't keep his pants zipped.
Bush Sr. reneged on "no new taxes."
Reagan...well, I can't think of anything Reagan did wrong because he was freaking awesome!
But you get my point. So I'm not bailing on Bush. I, like the president, am staying the course. You may call it stubborn. I call it "strategery."
