Wednesday, January 24, 2007
(BN ) Bush Iraq Plan May Be Last Chance to Avoid History's`Dustbin'
Bush Iraq Plan May Be Last Chance to Avoid History's `Dustbin'
2007-01-21 19:01 (New York)
By Catherine Dodge
Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) -- George W. Bush came to power in 2001
vowing to make his mark on history by overhauling taxes, pensions
and schools. Instead, an item not on the original agenda -- the
war in Iraq -- may consign him to the bottom tier of U.S.
leaders.
That's the view of a number of historians and presidential
scholars, who say that unless Bush's decision to inject some
20,000 more troops succeeds in quelling sectarian violence, he
risks joining the ranks of such poorly regarded American leaders
as James Buchanan and Warren G. Harding.
``Iraq has done enormous damage'' to Bush's standing, says
Robert Dallek, the biographer of Presidents John F. Kennedy and
Lyndon B. Johnson. Bush, he says, will rank ``somewhere at the
bottom.'' Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University
of Texas in Austin, says Bush's effort to reverse the course of
events in the war is ``his last chance to avoid the dustbin of
history.''
As Bush puts the finishing touches on tomorrow's State of
the Union address, the chaos in Iraq is emboldening political
opponents and putting his presidency under siege. In a
Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll conducted Jan. 13-16, 49 percent
of respondents said Bush will be remembered as a poor or below-
average president, with 28 percent ranking him as average. Only
22 percent said Bush will be judged a success.
In January 1999, when President Bill Clinton was being tried
in the U.S. Senate after his impeachment, 35 percent said he
would be viewed as a poor or below-average leader, with 23
percent rating him average and 37 percent calling Clinton above
average.
Premature Judgment
Some historians are reluctant to give Bush flunking grades
just yet, saying Iraq is just one battlefield in a multi-front
war on terrorism and cautioning that it's premature to declare
the intervention a failure.
``Were there to be palpable signs of progress by the end of
his administration or even if it occurred in the early time of
his successor, people will say, `Wow, he persevered,''' says Marc
Landy, a political scientist at Boston College and co-author of
the book ``Presidential Greatness.''
Bush ``will not end up among the worst presidents,'' says
John Fortier, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a
Washington research organization that favors limited government.
``The war on terror will be a longer-term effort where he'll be
seen as important.''
Truman's Travails
Presidents who make tough decisions, especially amid
wartime, often look better with the passage of time. A prime
example is Harry S. Truman, who endured approval ratings as low
as 23 percent near the end of his term, and left office with
jeers like ``to err is Truman'' ringing in his ears.
Bush himself has taken an interest in Truman; references to
the nation's 33rd president pop up regularly in his speeches.
Many people thought Truman's policies were ``hopelessly
idealistic,'' he said in a Chicago speech last spring. ``But he
had faith in certain fundamental truths.''
Several scholars, though, say parallels between Bush and
Truman may not be apt. Comparisons ``don't make sense,'' says
Sean Wilentz, a Princeton University history professor. ``Though
Truman was unpopular, he had more political support for what he
was doing.''
Hobbling Future Presidents
Truman, by virtue of the Marshall Plan, aid to Greece and
Turkey and his drive to create NATO, built a network of alliances
to contain communism's advance. In contrast, Bush has pursued a
largely unilateral approach to the war on terror that, critics
say, weakened U.S ties with its allies and may hobble future
presidents if international support is needed to confront a
nuclear Iran or another threat to peace.
Charles Calhoun, a historian at East Carolina University in
Greenville, North Carolina, says that due to Bush's ``Lone
Ranger'' foreign-policy approach, ``trust in the U.S. is at a
very low point overseas, and future presidents will be hard-
pressed to rebuild those bridges.''
Political scientists have debated presidents' historical
standing since at least 1948, when historian Arthur Schlesinger
Sr. undertook the first informal attempt at a ranking. While
there's no agreement among scholars on the worst U.S. president,
many lists include Buchanan, scorned for failing to preserve the
union on the eve of the Civil War, and Harding, whose 1920s
administration was rocked by oil-lease bribes in what became
known as the Teapot Dome scandal.
Pierce, Hoover, Nixon
Many lists also include Franklin Pierce, another pre-Civil
War leader; the unlucky Herbert Hoover, president at the onset of
the Great Depression; and Richard M. Nixon, tarred by the
Watergate scandal and the only president to resign.
Bush, in a Jan. 14 interview with CBS correspondent Scott
Pelley, said he isn't worried about how history will judge him.
``I really am not the kind of guy that sits here and says, `Oh
gosh, I'm worried about my legacy.'''
If that's true, it makes him the exception rather than the
rule among presidents heading into the twilights of their
tenures.
Clinton, tarred by a House impeachment vote, intensified
peace initiatives in the Mideast and Northern Ireland to burnish
his image. Ronald Reagan surprised many in his party by pushing
an ambitious second-term agenda of arms control with the Soviet
Union and sweeping bipartisan reform of the tax code.
Bush's Options
Bush's options are more limited than many of his
predecessors', since nothing short of a turnaround in Iraq can
rejuvenate his presidency, many analysts say.
``If the Iraq venture fails, so also will he fail in terms
of the ranking of his administration,'' conservative commentator
William F. Buckley said in a March interview. ``There is nothing
conceivable, in my judgment, that could rescue him if we proceed
toward disaster in Iraq.''
Iraq has already overwhelmed what might otherwise have been
Bush's signature moments: rallying the nation after the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks; three rounds of tax-cutting; a national
student-achievement program; and the Medicare prescription drug
benefit.
``He'll be remembered for his eloquent speech in the
immediate aftermath of Sept. 11,'' says Wilentz. ``He'll be
remembered for rallying the country and the world behind him. He
very quickly thereafter blew it.''
`Very, Very Mistaken'
Erwin Hargrove, a retired political scientist at Vanderbilt
University in Nashville, Tennessee says that ``historians will
see the decision to invade Iraq as a very, very mistaken
decision.''
Hargrove predicts Bush will probably go down in history as
``one of our worst presidents,'' his reputation dragged down by
Iraq in much the same way that Vietnam consumed Lyndon B.
Johnson's. But unlike Johnson, who is credited with the Great
Society web of social-welfare programs and for advancing civil
rights, Bush, Hargrove says, ``has nothing to counter-balance
Iraq.''
While a 2004 poll of 415 presidential scholars conducted by
George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, found 81 percent
deemed Bush's presidency a failure, several scholars say things
might have turned out differently but for Iraq.
Wilentz says the invasion squandered an opportunity to unite
the nation behind a concerted anti-terror strategy focusing on
the pursuit of al-Qaeda. Hargrove says that ``if Bush had decided
to govern from the center, fight in Afghanistan and not Iraq, and
reform Medicare and Social Security, he could have been a highly
successful president.''
Edwin Meese III, U.S. attorney general under Reagan and now
a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington group that
backs small government, says such judgments are too harsh.
History, he says, ``will think well'' of Bush ``for taking on and
leading the country in the global war on terrorists.''
Bush ``had no choice but to go into Iraq and to topple the
dictator Saddam Hussein, since all the intelligence reports, even
though erroneously, warned that Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction,'' Meese says. ``It's going to take the perspective
of history to really determine what his place is.''
--Editor: Walczak (rxj/scc)
Story illustration: For more of the day's top government and
politics stories, see {TOP GOV <GO>}.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Catherine Dodge in Washington at +1-202-624-1828 or
cdodge1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Michael Forsythe at +1-202-624-1940 or mforsythe@bloomberg.net
[TAGINFO]
NI GOV
NI US
NI GREET
NI FEA
NI GEN
NI EXE
NI IRAQ
NI WAR
#<545561.500134.1.0.32.28506.25>#
-0- Jan/22/2007 00:01 GMT
2007-01-21 19:01 (New York)
By Catherine Dodge
Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) -- George W. Bush came to power in 2001
vowing to make his mark on history by overhauling taxes, pensions
and schools. Instead, an item not on the original agenda -- the
war in Iraq -- may consign him to the bottom tier of U.S.
leaders.
That's the view of a number of historians and presidential
scholars, who say that unless Bush's decision to inject some
20,000 more troops succeeds in quelling sectarian violence, he
risks joining the ranks of such poorly regarded American leaders
as James Buchanan and Warren G. Harding.
``Iraq has done enormous damage'' to Bush's standing, says
Robert Dallek, the biographer of Presidents John F. Kennedy and
Lyndon B. Johnson. Bush, he says, will rank ``somewhere at the
bottom.'' Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University
of Texas in Austin, says Bush's effort to reverse the course of
events in the war is ``his last chance to avoid the dustbin of
history.''
As Bush puts the finishing touches on tomorrow's State of
the Union address, the chaos in Iraq is emboldening political
opponents and putting his presidency under siege. In a
Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll conducted Jan. 13-16, 49 percent
of respondents said Bush will be remembered as a poor or below-
average president, with 28 percent ranking him as average. Only
22 percent said Bush will be judged a success.
In January 1999, when President Bill Clinton was being tried
in the U.S. Senate after his impeachment, 35 percent said he
would be viewed as a poor or below-average leader, with 23
percent rating him average and 37 percent calling Clinton above
average.
Premature Judgment
Some historians are reluctant to give Bush flunking grades
just yet, saying Iraq is just one battlefield in a multi-front
war on terrorism and cautioning that it's premature to declare
the intervention a failure.
``Were there to be palpable signs of progress by the end of
his administration or even if it occurred in the early time of
his successor, people will say, `Wow, he persevered,''' says Marc
Landy, a political scientist at Boston College and co-author of
the book ``Presidential Greatness.''
Bush ``will not end up among the worst presidents,'' says
John Fortier, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a
Washington research organization that favors limited government.
``The war on terror will be a longer-term effort where he'll be
seen as important.''
Truman's Travails
Presidents who make tough decisions, especially amid
wartime, often look better with the passage of time. A prime
example is Harry S. Truman, who endured approval ratings as low
as 23 percent near the end of his term, and left office with
jeers like ``to err is Truman'' ringing in his ears.
Bush himself has taken an interest in Truman; references to
the nation's 33rd president pop up regularly in his speeches.
Many people thought Truman's policies were ``hopelessly
idealistic,'' he said in a Chicago speech last spring. ``But he
had faith in certain fundamental truths.''
Several scholars, though, say parallels between Bush and
Truman may not be apt. Comparisons ``don't make sense,'' says
Sean Wilentz, a Princeton University history professor. ``Though
Truman was unpopular, he had more political support for what he
was doing.''
Hobbling Future Presidents
Truman, by virtue of the Marshall Plan, aid to Greece and
Turkey and his drive to create NATO, built a network of alliances
to contain communism's advance. In contrast, Bush has pursued a
largely unilateral approach to the war on terror that, critics
say, weakened U.S ties with its allies and may hobble future
presidents if international support is needed to confront a
nuclear Iran or another threat to peace.
Charles Calhoun, a historian at East Carolina University in
Greenville, North Carolina, says that due to Bush's ``Lone
Ranger'' foreign-policy approach, ``trust in the U.S. is at a
very low point overseas, and future presidents will be hard-
pressed to rebuild those bridges.''
Political scientists have debated presidents' historical
standing since at least 1948, when historian Arthur Schlesinger
Sr. undertook the first informal attempt at a ranking. While
there's no agreement among scholars on the worst U.S. president,
many lists include Buchanan, scorned for failing to preserve the
union on the eve of the Civil War, and Harding, whose 1920s
administration was rocked by oil-lease bribes in what became
known as the Teapot Dome scandal.
Pierce, Hoover, Nixon
Many lists also include Franklin Pierce, another pre-Civil
War leader; the unlucky Herbert Hoover, president at the onset of
the Great Depression; and Richard M. Nixon, tarred by the
Watergate scandal and the only president to resign.
Bush, in a Jan. 14 interview with CBS correspondent Scott
Pelley, said he isn't worried about how history will judge him.
``I really am not the kind of guy that sits here and says, `Oh
gosh, I'm worried about my legacy.'''
If that's true, it makes him the exception rather than the
rule among presidents heading into the twilights of their
tenures.
Clinton, tarred by a House impeachment vote, intensified
peace initiatives in the Mideast and Northern Ireland to burnish
his image. Ronald Reagan surprised many in his party by pushing
an ambitious second-term agenda of arms control with the Soviet
Union and sweeping bipartisan reform of the tax code.
Bush's Options
Bush's options are more limited than many of his
predecessors', since nothing short of a turnaround in Iraq can
rejuvenate his presidency, many analysts say.
``If the Iraq venture fails, so also will he fail in terms
of the ranking of his administration,'' conservative commentator
William F. Buckley said in a March interview. ``There is nothing
conceivable, in my judgment, that could rescue him if we proceed
toward disaster in Iraq.''
Iraq has already overwhelmed what might otherwise have been
Bush's signature moments: rallying the nation after the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks; three rounds of tax-cutting; a national
student-achievement program; and the Medicare prescription drug
benefit.
``He'll be remembered for his eloquent speech in the
immediate aftermath of Sept. 11,'' says Wilentz. ``He'll be
remembered for rallying the country and the world behind him. He
very quickly thereafter blew it.''
`Very, Very Mistaken'
Erwin Hargrove, a retired political scientist at Vanderbilt
University in Nashville, Tennessee says that ``historians will
see the decision to invade Iraq as a very, very mistaken
decision.''
Hargrove predicts Bush will probably go down in history as
``one of our worst presidents,'' his reputation dragged down by
Iraq in much the same way that Vietnam consumed Lyndon B.
Johnson's. But unlike Johnson, who is credited with the Great
Society web of social-welfare programs and for advancing civil
rights, Bush, Hargrove says, ``has nothing to counter-balance
Iraq.''
While a 2004 poll of 415 presidential scholars conducted by
George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, found 81 percent
deemed Bush's presidency a failure, several scholars say things
might have turned out differently but for Iraq.
Wilentz says the invasion squandered an opportunity to unite
the nation behind a concerted anti-terror strategy focusing on
the pursuit of al-Qaeda. Hargrove says that ``if Bush had decided
to govern from the center, fight in Afghanistan and not Iraq, and
reform Medicare and Social Security, he could have been a highly
successful president.''
Edwin Meese III, U.S. attorney general under Reagan and now
a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington group that
backs small government, says such judgments are too harsh.
History, he says, ``will think well'' of Bush ``for taking on and
leading the country in the global war on terrorists.''
Bush ``had no choice but to go into Iraq and to topple the
dictator Saddam Hussein, since all the intelligence reports, even
though erroneously, warned that Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction,'' Meese says. ``It's going to take the perspective
of history to really determine what his place is.''
--Editor: Walczak (rxj/scc)
Story illustration: For more of the day's top government and
politics stories, see {TOP GOV <GO>}.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Catherine Dodge in Washington at +1-202-624-1828 or
cdodge1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Michael Forsythe at +1-202-624-1940 or mforsythe@bloomberg.net
[TAGINFO]
NI GOV
NI US
NI GREET
NI FEA
NI GEN
NI EXE
NI IRAQ
NI WAR
#<545561.500134.1.0.32.28506.25>#
-0- Jan/22/2007 00:01 GMT
# posted by I Dislike GWB @ 10:59 AM 
