Evaluating the Presidency of George W. Bush

Before Tuesday’s Presidential inauguration of Barack H. Obama, it seems appropriate to look at the legacy of the 43rd man who held the office and to assess his accomplishments and failures on the eve of his final flight aboard Air Force One. I have broken down Mr. Bush’s performance into a few critical areas that the outgoing U.S. President, like all of his predecessors, needed to display peek performance in. Before getting into these areas though, it’s also important to note that Mr. Bush entered the office nearly eight years ago with a lot of his work cut out for him (or about to be cut out for him). We didn’t know during that January past, but few would’ve relished the job President Bush had to perform during both of his terms. The same applies for Mr. Obama as he assends to the office, although for different reasons. It may be somewhat counter-intuitive, but the outgoing and incoming Presidents may very well share more in common once the history books are written and analysed than either would share with their respective partisan predecessors (Bush Sr. and Clinton), who both governed in times of peace.

Category 1: Leadership
Grade: D-

If there was one crucial area that Mr. Bush needed to get together if all the others were to come into place, it had to be leadership. On this front, President Bush often faltered. Certainly, he had moments of great eloquence and really looked the part of the most politically powerful man on Earth, but these sadly were the exceptions to the rule, wherein Mr. Bush opted to go about governing without consulting or appealing to the governed. High points that spared Mr. Bush an F in this ranking included his determined and appropriate response after the darkest day of his terms, 9-11-2001, and his his State of the Union address in February, 2003 where he put forward his most convincing and passionate address on why America needed to get rid of Saddam Husein’s murderous regime in Iraq. Ever since his re-election in 2004 though, Mr. Bush has basically been asleep on the job — going through the motions, press conferences and visits but more or less AWOL either on setting an agenda for the nation or going to the people in order to articulate a vision. Had Bush done better, not only would he now be seeing the new President (Democrat or Republican) continuing on with his objectives, but his inability to control and lead his staff to execute the War on Terror would not have led to the major setbacks the war saw recently.

Category 2: Vision
Grade: B

If there was an area that was hampered by President Bush’s lack of will to actually lead, this would be it. People with long memories might correctly point out that Mr. Bush came into office looking quite content to be a caretaker President who talked a lot, but did little. When 9/11 occurred though, that all changed and for a few years we saw his administration embark on what looked to be an impressive attempt to clean up the foreign affairs mess left behind by former US Presidents like Clinton, Reagan, Carter and Nixon, and Eurocrats during the past fifty years. Bush correctly pointed out what FDR noted during World War II — if the United States was to survive as a liberal democracy, it was going to have to harness and seed liberal democratic values around the globe. In FDR’s day, this was because of the Japanese and Germans; in Bush’s, it clearly was militant Sunni states and the old Cold War adversaries like China and Russia. Sadly, while the vision was badly in need of delivery, it was going to be a long and gruesome process if properly executed. Between Bush’s poor leadership and his administration’s bungling of the first fronts on this objective, it became clear shortly into his second term that America will either need a better advocate to sell this plan, or be destroyed for its failure to execute.

Category 3: Economic Policy
Grade: C-

Sadly, this area will be a lasting legacy of Mr. Bush’s and it will likely hurt the Republican Party for at least the next decade’s worth of elections. While Mr. Bush is not responsible for the wholesale selling out that his GOP colleagues in Congress conducted during the first six years of his term, he certainly fed the fire by shoring up spending on useless and damaging programmes such as No Child Left Behind or the sub-prime mortgage expansion. We’ve seen the results of the latter, but the former will take another generation. While liberals were rightly critical of Bush’s over-spending during his presidency, these were crocodile tears at best (as I believe the next four years will certainly show); however, this has allowed the Democratic Party to position itself as the party of fiscal prudence, a ridiculous notion to anyone who lived in the last half of the 20th century. It might be fair to point out that many of Bush’s disastrous fiscal policies were merely continuations of his predecessors or that his tax cuts earlier in the decade spared America an earlier market collapse, but when you’re the guy in the big office, it’s still your responsibility when the house comes crashing down. Bush would’ve learned well by studying the deskplate of one of his predecessors as it relates to the resting place of a dollar bill.

Category 3: Social Policy
Grade: A-

Perhaps the best area of Bush’s work, although a soon-to-be-irrelevant effort due to bungling in other areas. Bush held firm in the wars waged on the family during his term, and even scored a few victories — a few young lives exist today that wouldn’t have if Al Gore had been President. The overall culture war is a tricky area for any President to navigate though since it is becoming more and more clear that two Americas exist today and neither wants anything to do with the other. This not only puts political pressure on a President, but largely negates any point solutions they propose. As such, Bush’s successor is likely to undo any of 43′s reforms, leaving only the appointments Bush made to the bench as any sort of true legacy. On this front, it remains to be seen how his decisions will impact the nation, although the initial survey indicates that Bush had a golden opportunity that family advocates were waiting decades for and he blew it as the clock was winding down to zero. There will certainly be an influence on the courts thanks to Bush, but certain appointments suggest that things could’ve been much better than they now are.

Category 5: Legal Policy
Grade: C

While this category can encompass both domestic and foreign policies, I’ve said my peace about the latter in previous categories. Bush the domestic President was a curious study. The lasting laws he passed included moving daylight savings time in include more of the calendar year, or tinkering with internet laws. His administration was rightly taken to task for restricting the freedoms of U.S. citizens after 9/11, although it would be difficult to see how any other President would’ve acted differently had they been in his shoes. The whole design of the War on Terrorism justice system will likely be debated for decades to come, although Bush was a trendsetter in that he started to build on just how the U.S. government will deal with foreign nationals which commits crimes against its citizens and territory. Perhaps this category, because it is the actual implementation of everything else Bush represented for the last eight years, is the most telling since it was muddled, contradictory at times and downright mediocre on the whole.

On that note, perhaps, when people look back at the Bush presidency, they will see a few shining moments, surrounded by an agenda of confusion and with a world of turmoil and darkness. However, before history judges George Bush too harshly, it’s equally important to remember the alternative: between Al Gore and John Kerry, it is difficult to see how America would’ve avoided the financial meltdown of 2008 or faced the dangers of a world that won’t be satisfied until America is, like Bush, is just another page of history.

Overall Grade: C