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.