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Go Home Lessons from Bush 43

POLITICS NOVEMBER 9, 2010

Lessons from Bush 43

BY JESSE SINGAL

Humankind is, roughly speaking, divided into neurotic and non-neurotic people. Some people stay awake at night obsessing over every decision they’ve made, endlessly pondering intractable problems and existential quandaries—and some people don’t. George W. Bush is firmly in the latter category.

We’ve long known this. So, when Bush sat down for an interview with Matt Lauer on Monday night—the day before the release of his memoir, Decision Points—it’s not as though anyone expected him to be particularly chastened or introspective. Still, the hour-long special was anticlimactic; it hammered home the reality that Bush just isn’t a very interesting figure. Even after two terms in which he embodied liberals’ worst fears and aroused their most righteous passions, there’s little the ex-president says that’s worth analyzing—and, on his own, there’s little he can teach anyone about American politics.

To recap: Bush admits to few mistakes, seems to take pride in not learning from them when he does, and, well into his seventh decade of life, doesn’t see the need to address even the most complex situations with anything approaching nuance. Yes, these are old, tired complaints. College freshmen were making them in 2002. But, in talking to Lauer, Bush confirmed every one of them.

“I’m a deliberative person,” he told Lauer. But he isn’t. Deliberative people can smoothly handle follow-up questions, and follow-up questions remain the proverbial mice to Bush’s lumbering elephant. He said he was sure he was for waterboarding, but, when Lauer asked if he’d be OK with a foreign country waterboarding Americans, Bush dodged the question, instead saying that people should read Decision Points. He was absolutely certain about that Iraq intelligence, he assured Lauer, but, when asked if he’d make the same decision to go to war again, all Bush said was that Iraqis are better off without Saddam. He referenced his bailout-era “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system” line with something like pride, but, apparently, he’s never taken the obvious next step and asked himself whether the meltdown should spur a full reexamination of his thoughts on the free market. (He assured Lauer that a lack of regulation wasn’t responsible for the crisis.)

The interview was like an all-you-can-eat buffet for Bush’s critics, from his defense of the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad to his claim, “We didn’t have any intelligence that said that, you know, ‘Get ready, they’re going to fly airplanes into New York buildings.’” Then, there was the contrast, highlighted by the very gentle Lauer, between Bush’s take on Katrina (it “affected [him] deeply”) and his take on Kanye West’s accusation that he doesn’t care about black people (“It was one of the most disgusting moments of my presidency”).

But this has all been so endlessly rehashed and reheated that there are globs of Iraq stuck to the microwave tray; splatters of tax cuts for the rich splayed across the door. At this point, most people have very strong feelings, one way or another, on the subject of George W. Bush. They’re set—and unlikely to change.

So maybe the takeaway here isn’t the sort of thing we saw scrawled angrily on placards during Bush’s presidency, but rather, a simpler lesson: When you are in a position of power and you are not neurotic, you’ll be relentlessly shaped by the forces around you. That’s not to say any president is immune to  this—Obama, after all, is quite neurotic, and he is buffeted by forces over which he has little control—but, if nature abhors a vacuum, political power abhors one even more. Bush was mostly a vacuum. A good-natured, privileged vacuum, perhaps, and one with a bit of inspiration in his biography (hasn’t had a drink since 1986, he said), but a vacuum nonetheless.

Those who study his presidency, then, won’t find a huge amount in the man himself. They’ll try to reach out and touch Bush the man, the thinker, the politician—and accidentally punch through a cardboard cutout. Behind the cutout? People who had been wanting to invade Iraq forever and got their way. People who had wanted to cut taxes for the rich forever and got their way. People who had been waiting forever for lucrative Pentagon contracts and got their way. The list goes on and on. The story of Bush will be much more about the myriad ambitious thinkers, ideologues, charlatans, and capitalists who threw themselves gleefully into the president’s orbit than it will be about the man himself.

“I’m gonna be dead, Matt, when they finally figure it out,” Bush told Lauer, when asked if he was worried about his legacy. Indeed, Bush isn’t the sort to sit up in bed at night wondering about things that will happen after he dies.


Jesse Singal writes for The Boston Globe‘s opinion pages. He can be reached at jsingal@globe.com.

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13 comments

Where were the questions about flying the Bin Laden family out of the US while all flights were grounded after 911? What about letting Bin Laden waltz over to Pakistan so that we could invade Iraq? What about the half a million weapons that disappeared in Iraq? What about Paul Bremer's deBathification of Iraq, easily the worst tactical decision since allowing the Trojan Horse into the city? I don't personally dislike the man, but his ineptitude was second to none.

- pdougherty

November 9, 2010 at 6:21am

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I learned something that I can put on a Christmas list. We wasted our time and the U.N.'s time and the sanctions and everthing else about the WMD's because it turned out to be the right decision to blow up Iraq even without the WMD's. We have the Bush Doctrine. We decide if someone is good or bad for the world and, if bad, at least according to whoever is making the list, then we take them out. I am making my list before someone puts me on their list.

- Nusholtz

November 9, 2010 at 8:20am

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I watched parts of the the interview and the attendant discussion on MSNBC's Morning Joe. They compared the interview with Obama's recent interview on "60 minutes" and they all agreed that Bush came through as a much more authentic, involved and caring than his successor. All in all, there was a general air of agreement that history would see him in much greater favour than the denizens on this website would allow. Joe Scarborough said something very interesting in comparing the two presidents. That Bush had a natural feel for and sympathy with the working classes that is absent in Obama, and that Obama had a natural affinity with the "elites" that is absent in Bush. They both suffer from these competing blind spots that handicap their leadership. Perhaps a guideline is tucked somewhere in this insight when the American people go to elect their next president. President Clinton had these two blind spots covered, so one is inclined to believe that the American people can recognize a good thing when they see it.

- noga1

November 9, 2010 at 10:45am

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And who says irony is dead. My impression of W is that he came across as authentic, somebody you could trust. He is a true American, daring all of us to be great. His detractors will never understand his appeal to the working class. Because he gives working class folks the opportunity to succeed. Not telling them they can't succeed, but telling them that they will succeed. We need more people like W. Glen W. Turner, a man with a natural affinity for the working class. How I miss him.

- rayward

November 9, 2010 at 12:10pm

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Why would anyone say that irony is dead when your own comment stands to illustrate the greatness of dramatic irony? (Definition: Dramatic irony is when the words and actions of the characters of a work of literature have a different meaning for the reader than they do for the characters. This is the result of the reader having a greater knowledge than the characters themselves.) Said discussion took place on MSNBC, not Fox. I would say, time for you to start worrying.

- noga1

November 9, 2010 at 12:31pm

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Huh. I had that Morning Joe discussion on this morning, and I heard Joe & Mika talking about how appalling it was that he was wholly unapologetic about the Iraq war. They discussed, at some length, things that he should have said but didn't, like "I was wrong." I may have simply missed it, but I also didn't hear any comparison with Obama's interview. If there was one, the claim that that bunch of pundits unanimously found Bush authentic, caring, and involved, and Obama none of those things, is laughable. Perhaps you were watching a Fox-affiliate-filtered version of MSNBC?

- janus

November 9, 2010 at 12:53pm

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janus, I assume there was only one "Morning Joe" this morning. Maybe you were eating your cereal and the crunching prevented you from hearing what was being said. I also wouldn't put it past viewers like you to block out completely that which does not sit well with your pre-conceptions. Anyway I assume highlights from the programme will be available on line sometime to day or tomorrow. "I heard Joe & Mika talking about how appalling it was that he was wholly unapologetic about the Iraq war." They talked about the war in Iraq but there was nothing even remotely close to your characterization in that show. What Joe said was that in 10 years the Middle East will look very different, that there is no way he can tell whether it will be good or bad, but however it turns out, it will be attributed to Bush. There was however a very interesting conversation between the two about another subject. If you watched the show, you would know what I mean. Here is a clue: it involved a text message from Joe's wife.

- noga1

November 9, 2010 at 1:22pm

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Here's Morning Joe's November 9 Bush interview segment: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/#40087297

- noga1

November 9, 2010 at 1:41pm

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Noga1, I saw Morning Joe and my memory is the same as Janus, that they thought Bush should have admitted he was wrong, but that it turned out okay and each of them tried different versions of making that statement. I tried to check your reference but couldn't find it.

- Nusholtz

November 9, 2010 at 3:53pm

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I would have to say, nosthulz, unsurpsisingly enough, that it takes a talent to not find things. It is called "disowning knowledge".

- noga1

November 9, 2010 at 4:38pm

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Hey nobrain, I think I can out insult you, but you don't deserve the quality of my services.

- Nusholtz

November 9, 2010 at 5:06pm

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I am uninterested in whether Joe Scarborough did or did not say something that is laughably divorced from reality. If he did, it wouldn't have been the first time. Rayward, your irony was somewhat disguised by punctuation. I went off to Google looking for someone named "W. Glen W. Turner." Got it eventually.

- agentzero

November 9, 2010 at 6:20pm

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"Hey nobrain, I think I can out insult you, but you don't deserve the quality of my services." Exactly what I meant to point out. You have nothing to say as you have no interest in knowing. As for your insults, we can see the quality of their great poetic originality from the "nobrainer" spitball. "He has to learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and that insolence is not invective." Benjamin Disraeli

- noga1

November 9, 2010 at 6:35pm

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