Senator McCain pandered so mercilessly to Republican base voters that he treated them with contempt. Sarah Palin’s attacks on Barack Obama for supposed associations with Rashid Khalidi, who she claimed was a former spokesman for the Palestinian Liberation Organization, was a last-ditch attempt to discredit Obama and derail his campaign. It demonstrated that the McCain campaign knew it faced defeat on election day. It showed that the campaign failed to understand that a change election necessitates appealing to the center, not the base. It also exhibited a condescending attitude toward average Republican voters.
At some point it ceased being the average Republican that the centrist senator was trying to appeal to, but to the cartoon Republican−the white, uneducated, gun-totin’ working class rural voter, the Republican that exists only within the cynical landscape of the McCain campaign. The veteran senator was seeking to appeal to the very worst of Republican instincts and America’s rather more sophisticated electorate expressed its dissatisfaction at the ballot box.
Republican voters were rightly appalled that their representatives regarded them with such contempt. Americans turn a blind eye when the Saudi royal family berates the United States for her stance toward the Palestinians and for her alliance with Israel. We might decry Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s outlandish rhetoric but we understand one important thing−all politics, as long term House Speaker Tip O’Neill once declared, is local.
When we accept this type of rhetoric as inevitable in another domestic political setting, however, there is an implicit assumption that we are better than that. Our politicians do not need to revert to hateful, nationalist rhetoric because we are not hateful and nationalistic, and because our society has progressed beyond all that. That type of politics is neither desirable nor necessary in pluralist America.
So what do we make of the McCain campaign’s attacks on Obama for his connections to sixties domestic terrorist Bill Ayres and Rashid Khalidi? What exactly was the McCain camp trying to imply when it revealed that Barack Obama was reading Fareed Zakaria’s The Post American World? Did the continued reference to Obama being a socialist not sound eerily like McCarthyism? And what of the Country First banner the campaign was flying beneath?
John McCain relied on Republican voters to forget their reservations about their candidate and his dubious commitment to their conservative principles and on independents to enter the polling booths with a subconscious sense of fear. He hoped that the cynical selection of a deeply unqualified VP nominee would help him attract a reluctant base and that her ugly attacks on Obama would resonate with undecided voters concerned about the future.
The McCain campaign tried to make this past election a choice between cartoon Republicans and cartoon Democrats. It was a stark and ugly choice. It was a premise that treated the public as cardboard cutouts, as caricatures. It cast America not as a sophisticated, pluralist country with an eclectic mix of urban and rural, white and black, immigrant and native, religious and secular, but as a backwater of distrust and xenophobia.
Republican voters rejected John McCain’s bid to become America’s 44th president. Not because he did not reflect their values, not because he would not have made a worthy president, and not because he represented four more years of failed Bush policies. But because he campaigned in such a way that treated normal, intelligent Republican voters with contempt. Independents also rejected McCain because he was, as Barack Obama said, ‘an honorable man running a dishonorable campaign,’ one that sought victory by reminding Americans not of those things that bind them, but of those things that divide them. An Obama victory proved to the McCain camp that the American polity−and American society−is far too pluralist and sophisticated for the regrettable ‘domestic consumption only’ politics of the Ahmadinejad variety.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The Bush Legacy
As the Bush presidency comes to an end there is likely to be plenty written about the 43rd president’s failures. President Bush was clearly defiant at his January 12 press conference, describing as ‘disappointments’ some decisions and events most pundits would call mistakes. President Bush is not unaware of the criticisms leveled at his administration and the prevailing wisdom that his has been one of America’s worst ever presidencies. However, history may paint a slightly more nuanced picture of a disastrous first term followed by a courageous and largely successful second term.
President Bush’s first term saw his administration make some catastrophic decisions, the worst of which was disbanding the Iraqi army, implemented in 2003. That one decision, part of an Iraq policy of de-Baathification, was largely responsible for Iraq’s 2004-06 plunge into the sectarian violence that almost destroyed it. In combination with inadequate troop numbers and the outrage that followed the Abu Ghraib abuses, both attributable ultimately to philosophical stances of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, de-Baathification placed the Iraq War so precariously on the verge of failure that many in Washington were drawing comparisons between it and Vietnam.
The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, something Bush awkwardly labeled a ‘disappointment’ in his final press conference, undid much of the justification for the war. America’s refusal to cooperate with the UN Security Council and the widely held view it was pursuing a path of unilateralism meant there was little international support for the US efforts in Afghanistan, despite widespread support for the Afghan mission. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest sections of American society were rightly criticized as a cynical and unnecessary gesture to core Republican supporters. George Bush II’s first term saw his administration bounding from one unmitigated disaster to another.
Bush’s second term began with the disastrous handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 but was to see some significant accomplishments. The surge strategy rescued Iraq from the brink of chaos and was a decision Bush made despite overwhelming opposition from even within his own party. The speed with which he and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson introduced their financial market rescue package, especially considering how significantly it violated the president’s free market ideologies, will in time, prove to have possibly prevented a slump comparable to the Great Depression. There are no immediate prizes in politics for averting disaster. Bush’s cooperativeness with the incoming Obama administration will also one day be seen as a gracious exit by a president with his nation’s best interests at heart. The impacts of these actions will not properly be understood for a number of years.
Unfortunately for the Bush legacy many of his second-term accomplishments were only necessary because of first-term mistakes. The surge was, after all, a measure that only reversed the mishandling of the war in the first place. The bailout may not have been required had the government heeded the warnings the 2001 Enron bankruptcy sounded about the state of America’s regulatory environment. Had he not so dramatically divided the public, ruined his party, jeopardized America’s standing in the world and significantly dented the nation’s ability to prevent the economic downturn by running massive deficits, Bush’s cooperation with the incoming administration would not have been as crucial as it was (and he may have been ushering in a Republican president instead).
The Bush presidency is not yet remembered for the two million people in Africa on antiretroviral medication, for the No Child Left Behind policy, for Libya’s abandonment of its nuclear weapons ambitions or for America’s help in preventing full scale civil war in Liberia. It is seen as a presidency bookmarked by an atrocious attack on American soil and a financial crisis, punctuated by a hurricane and ripe with mistakes. It will probably be regarded by history as a first term marred by blunders and arrogance followed by a second term characterized by a more reflective and wiser president still with the conviction to make politically unpopular decisions, but also with the wisdom to act in spite of his ideological instincts.
In Bush’s hawkish response to the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and in his preparedness to intervene in the financial sector in 2008 he showed both his flaws and his attributes; a tendency for ill-considered decisiveness yet an ability to learn from past mistakes and to act contrary to his ideological worldview when necessary. President Bush made a number of catastrophic errors. But he is right to have confidence that history will view his legacy in a more positive light than many contemporary pundits. Most of his accomplishments will take some time to achieve their desired effects, whereas the impacts of his failures have already been felt.
President Bush’s first term saw his administration make some catastrophic decisions, the worst of which was disbanding the Iraqi army, implemented in 2003. That one decision, part of an Iraq policy of de-Baathification, was largely responsible for Iraq’s 2004-06 plunge into the sectarian violence that almost destroyed it. In combination with inadequate troop numbers and the outrage that followed the Abu Ghraib abuses, both attributable ultimately to philosophical stances of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, de-Baathification placed the Iraq War so precariously on the verge of failure that many in Washington were drawing comparisons between it and Vietnam.
The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, something Bush awkwardly labeled a ‘disappointment’ in his final press conference, undid much of the justification for the war. America’s refusal to cooperate with the UN Security Council and the widely held view it was pursuing a path of unilateralism meant there was little international support for the US efforts in Afghanistan, despite widespread support for the Afghan mission. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest sections of American society were rightly criticized as a cynical and unnecessary gesture to core Republican supporters. George Bush II’s first term saw his administration bounding from one unmitigated disaster to another.
Bush’s second term began with the disastrous handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 but was to see some significant accomplishments. The surge strategy rescued Iraq from the brink of chaos and was a decision Bush made despite overwhelming opposition from even within his own party. The speed with which he and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson introduced their financial market rescue package, especially considering how significantly it violated the president’s free market ideologies, will in time, prove to have possibly prevented a slump comparable to the Great Depression. There are no immediate prizes in politics for averting disaster. Bush’s cooperativeness with the incoming Obama administration will also one day be seen as a gracious exit by a president with his nation’s best interests at heart. The impacts of these actions will not properly be understood for a number of years.
Unfortunately for the Bush legacy many of his second-term accomplishments were only necessary because of first-term mistakes. The surge was, after all, a measure that only reversed the mishandling of the war in the first place. The bailout may not have been required had the government heeded the warnings the 2001 Enron bankruptcy sounded about the state of America’s regulatory environment. Had he not so dramatically divided the public, ruined his party, jeopardized America’s standing in the world and significantly dented the nation’s ability to prevent the economic downturn by running massive deficits, Bush’s cooperation with the incoming administration would not have been as crucial as it was (and he may have been ushering in a Republican president instead).
The Bush presidency is not yet remembered for the two million people in Africa on antiretroviral medication, for the No Child Left Behind policy, for Libya’s abandonment of its nuclear weapons ambitions or for America’s help in preventing full scale civil war in Liberia. It is seen as a presidency bookmarked by an atrocious attack on American soil and a financial crisis, punctuated by a hurricane and ripe with mistakes. It will probably be regarded by history as a first term marred by blunders and arrogance followed by a second term characterized by a more reflective and wiser president still with the conviction to make politically unpopular decisions, but also with the wisdom to act in spite of his ideological instincts.
In Bush’s hawkish response to the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and in his preparedness to intervene in the financial sector in 2008 he showed both his flaws and his attributes; a tendency for ill-considered decisiveness yet an ability to learn from past mistakes and to act contrary to his ideological worldview when necessary. President Bush made a number of catastrophic errors. But he is right to have confidence that history will view his legacy in a more positive light than many contemporary pundits. Most of his accomplishments will take some time to achieve their desired effects, whereas the impacts of his failures have already been felt.
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