Greenwald - A tragic legacy : how a good vs. evil mentality destroyed the bush presidency

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Let me just first tell you that Ive never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions.

GEORGE W. BUSH, September 12, 2006,
speaking to a group of right-wing pundits in the White House

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

T he attacks of September 11 presented George Bush with a rare opportunity of historic proportions. Virtually overnight, he led a suddenly unified and purposeful citizenry that was preparedeven eagerto set aside the petty though intense partisan wars which had plagued the country for the prior two decades, and once again focus on the nations core values and shared political principles, the ones which transcend ideological differences and which make America so worth defending.

The presidents principled and eloquent post-9/11 rhetoric solidified this unity and ensured that the vast bulk of AmericansRepublicans, Democrats, and Independentswould loyally support both him and his policies over the course of the next two years. There are very few periods in American presidential history, if there are any, that compare to the widespread popularity and unchallenged power George Bush amassednot only in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks but also up to, including, and for some time following the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Few presidents have soared as high or commanded such unthwarted power as did the post-9/11 George W. Bush.

And yet, as the end of his presidency approached, historians and political figures from across the ideological spectrumincluding many of his previously most fervent supporterswere speaking of the Bush legacy as one of colossal failure. As President Bush entered his lame-duck term, few presidents in American history had ever been as isolated or as unpopular for such a sustained duration. Democrats and Independents intensely and irreversibly disapproved of his presidency, and droves of previously loyal Republicansboth political leaders and rank-and-fileabandoned him as well.

The sheer scope of the collapse of the Bush presidency is most dramatically illustrated by comparing the two midterm elections that took place during his tenure. In 2002, the Republican Party was able to ride President Bushs potent personal popularity to a truly historic victory in the midterm elections, as it seized control of the Senate and increased substantially its control of the Housean extremely rare feat for a sitting presidents party. Yet the 2006 midterm election produced the precisely opposite outcome for Republicans: a crashing and shattering defeat, universally attributed to the countrys deep dislike of the president and his signature, legacy policythe invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq. The heights to which George Bush ascended in the first few years of his presidency were matched only by the severe depths to which he plunged.

How and why did the Bush administration squander its deep-seated and seemingly intractable popularity? How and why did the president tragically waste the opportunity to restore at least some enduring unity in the American populace and rejuvenate a shared sense of national identity and purpose? This book explores these questions by examining the Bush legacya legacy of profound failure, chaos, and incalculable, perhaps unprecedented, damage to the country.

The Bush legacy is tragic because its outcome was far from inevitable. Historical circumstances created an opportunity for lasting achievement, but the presidents chosen Manichean worldview, accompanied by his suffocatingly rigid conviction in his own Rightness, steered the country on a course of disaster and literally prevented him from modifying that course, let alone choosing another, even as inescapable evidence of his own failures mounted.

The steep and powerful rise of the Bush presidency, and its abrupt and cataclysmic collapse, are examined and documented in chapter 1. As that chapter demonstrates, it is genuinely difficult to overstate the extent to which the country has repudiated George Bush.

Following the resounding 2006 midterm defeat, the presidents approval ratings neared the level of Richard Nixons when he was forced from office in disgrace. President Bushs isolation and abandonment became so severe that even red-state Republican officeholders facing re-election were forced to offer their constituents proof that they vigorously opposed Bush and his policies, and even more tellingly, the movement that was most responsible for Bushs twice being elected as president and that chose him as its standard-bearerpolitical conservatismundertook a full-blown effort to disassociate George Bush from their ideology by suddenly claiming that, all along, Bush was never a real conservative.

Elite political pundits who had supported both the president and his war literally began denying having done so. President Bush became such a radioactive commoditysuch a clear consensus had arisen that he was one of the worst presidents, if not the single worst president, in American historythat disassociating oneself from him became a matter of political survival and a prerequisite for preserving any remnants of credibility.

The core principles and decision-making patterns that drove George Bush and engendered the collapse of his presidency are examined in chapter 2. Despite the continuous and enthusiastic embrace of Bush by the vast bulk of political conservatives, it has long been vividly clear that the president ( just as was true for Ronald Reagan) simply does not govern in accordance with the claimed principles of political conservatism as they exist in their pure, abstract form. George Bush has presided over massive increases in domestic spending, the conversion of a multibillion-dollar surplus into an even larger deficit, the creation of vast new bureaucratic fiefdoms, an unprecedented expansion of the power of the federal government, governmental intrusions into multiple areas previously preserved for the states or off-limits altogether, and a wanton disregard for the rule of law. Whatever political philosophy has propelled George Bushs governance, it is not the abstract tenets of Goldwater/small-government conservatism.

Instead, what lies at the heart of the Bush presidency is an absolutist worldview capable of understanding all issues and challenges only in the moralistic, overly simplistic, and often inapplicable terms of Good vs. Evil. The president is driven by his core conviction that he has found the Good, that he is a crusader for it, that anything is justified in pursuit of it, and that anything which impedes his decision-making is, by definition, a deliberate or unwitting ally of Evil. This mentality has single-handedly prevented him from governing, changing course, and even engaging realities that deviate from those convictions. The presidents description of himself as the Decider is accurate. His mind-set has dominated the American political landscape throughout his presidency, and virtually all significant events of the Bush Era are a by-product of his core Manichean mentality.

Chapter 3 examines how this mind-set led the United States into disaster in Iraq and subsequently ensured a brutal, entirely counterproductive and seemingly endless occupation. Chapter 4 details how precisely this same mind-set, clung to as tenaciously as ever before by the president, has also placed the country on a potentially even more disastrous, and seemingly inevitable, collision course with Iran.