At this point, it’s a virtual certainty that George W. Bush will leave the presidency with a very low public approval rating. Though I’m sure that hurts, I believe he’s wise enough not to take that too seriously. The president who would govern well does so not for the opinion polls but for history (which is why the Founders hoped for citizen politicians rather than the professional political class we ended up with), and sometimes that leads to the choice between the popular course and the best course. Say what you will about the President, he’s never hesitated to be unpopular if he thinks it’s the right thing to do (though he’s often hesitated to defend himself effectively for doing so); in that respect, he’s a lot like another man who left the office wildly unpopular—Harry S Truman. Like President Truman, though not to the same extent, I believe President G. W. Bush will fare much better in the judgment of history than in the judgment of journalism.One reason for this is that Iraq is turning out well. As I noted a while ago, it’s the only real bright spot in this administration’s foreign policy, and even this only comes after several badly-handled years—one of the ironies of the Bush 43 administration is that it owes this victory in large part to John McCain—but when it’s all said and done, unless Barack Obama wins and manages to throw it all away, the last several years will have seen Iraq transformed from a nation suffering to enrich a bloody, terrorist-funding tyrant to a stable democracy and a potentially invaluable ally in the Middle East. That’s an ally we’ll need badly when the inevitable collapse of the Saudi ruling family finally comes. Unless you have an a priori commitment to pacifism—a commitment I respect, when it’s truly principled, but do not share—that’s clearly a good thing.I suspect, though, that history’s judgment of President G. W. Bush will rest equally heavily on two things not much considered now: the two great domestic political failures of his administration. The first is the attempt to reform Social Security—this, not the Iraq War, was the political disaster that wrecked so much of his second term. Our struggles in Iraq certainly didn’t help, but they only carried the force they did because the President had spent so much of his political capital on this issue. Put me down as one who thinks Social Security is doomed, and that this administration’s initiative, politically stupid as it was, was nevertheless noble (in a Quixotic sort of way) and very important. Twenty or thirty years from now, I suspect the narrative on this one will be “man of foresight brought down by the forces of reaction.”The second is the failure to pass a comprehensive energy policy. As Investor’s Business Daily notes,
When the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007, and oil was $50 a barrel and corn $2 a bushel, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised an energy plan. We’re still waiting for it. Today, crude oil is $134 and corn is $6.50.It’s pretty clear who’s to blame: Congress. In fact, House and Senate Democrats have obstructed any progress in America’s fight to regain some semblance of energy independence.
But that’s been the pattern. This administration started trying seven years ago to implement the kind of energy plan the Reid-Pelosi leadership said they would deliver; it didn’t happen, in large part, because of Rep. Pelosi and Sen. Reid. If it had, we wouldn’t be looking at $4-a-gallon gasoline, and our economy would be in much better shape; we’d also have critically important work underway to modernize and revamp our national electrical grid, and programs in place alongside them to shift our electrical production away from fossil fuels and toward other energy sources. The Democrats in Congress killed it, and so we are where we are today. Again, I suspect the future will blame the President much less than does the present.As a side note on energy: nuclear power plants have worked well for decades in Western Europe without any significant problems, while ongoing improvements in drilling technology mean we can open up massive new oil reserves—in ANWR, the continental shelf, the Green River Basin, and the Bakken Formation—with minimal consequences. I agree that both these things need to be approached with strong concern for environmental preservation—but they can be. I believe we need to set aside the hysteria and the absolutist positions and try to come up with workable compromises.HT (for the IBD editorial): Carlos Echevarria
Like any public figure, Bush’s history will depend on who is writing it and when. There are people who think that Reagan is the Second Coming, and people who blame him for propping up dictatorships in Latin America and putting mentally disabled people on the street.
Dubya’s history will depend on who is writing it. I’m sure that if Sean Hannity writes a book about the Bush years, it’ll be a halcyon work of inspired hymnody – and it might not be all lies (some sarcasm there). If, however, one wanted to write a book making the case that Bush is one of the worst presidents in our history, I honestly think they’d have plenty of material to put between the covers as well. I’m not here saying Congress has been anything but abysmal on almost every count, but I’ll be excited to see the end of Dubya.
There’s obviously truth to that. However, your response serves to illustrate my point: in the partisanship of the moment, the President is judged on partisan standards. In the long view of history, however, those partisan standards fall away. In most cases, a general consensus comes together. There are figures on whom that doesn’t exactly happen, of course–Thomas Jefferson is a tricky one, for instance–and then too, history goes through its fads, depending on whatever the ideological wave of the moment happens to be; but the fads pass, and usually without any major changes in the long-term consensus. The fact of the matter is, your view of this man and mine are all tied up in our issues; if this rock is still spinning as is a hundred years from now, or two hundred, nobody alive then who’s looking back at our time is likely to care about our issues.