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Go Home Exit, Pursued By History

POLITICS JANUARY 14, 2009

Exit, Pursued By History

BY MICHAEL SCHAFFER

George W. Bush’s first day of retirement from electoral politics will look just like his days as a politician. Upon leaving Washington on Inauguration Day, the former president’s first stop will be at a rally in his childhood hometown of Midland, Texas. As unnatural as a Bush rally may seem these bleak days, the plan ensures that news coverage of Barack Obama’s triumphal arrival will include at least a few clips of his predecessor addressing a joyous crowd.

Officially, the event is being dubbed a “welcome-home event” meant to bookend a send-off gathering held in the same spot eight years and three days earlier. But the real parallel is with another rally, one that took place even as the 43rd president’s 2001 inaugural parade was preparing to head up Pennsylvania Avenue. After watching Bush get sworn in, Bill Clinton headed to Andrews Air Force Base, where a crowd of supporters had gathered to cheer him. “So you see that sign there that says ‘Please don’t go’?,” an exultant Clinton asked after listing his presidential accomplishments one last time. “I left the White House--but I’m still here.”

The Bush administration knew it, which is one reason that--despite the new president’s inaugural address “commitment to principle with a concern for civility”--his presidential staff kept trashing Clinton as if it were still campaign season. Within days, stories leaked about Clintonites swiping White House silverware on their way out the door. The accounts turned out to be mainly untrue. Of course, no one noticed the clarification, since Clinton’s non-vandalistic exit behavior gobbled up the headlines. Still, the Andrews rally and the stolen-stemware stories underlined the terms of that succession: There’d be no grace from the new guy, and no deference from the old.

Eight years later, with another new president promising another new age of civility, and another departing chief executive staging one more rally for posterity, will things be different? On the face of it, Obama might have less incentive to knock his predecessor off his presidential pedestal. Clinton ended his term with approval ratings in the sixties; even after Marc Rich outrage hardened into a season of Clinton fatigue, the public could compartmentalize tawdry behavior from competent presidential management. Bush, by contrast, is Mephistophelian in his unpopularity. Could some leaked post-inauguration allegation about his leaving the seat up in the executive toilet really do any more damage?

It wouldn’t hurt to try. Obama should save the civility shtick for Republicans he’ll have to work with. As for the guy retiring to Texas, the new administration should ensure he remains the useful foil he was during the 2008 campaign. That starts with letting nothing--not public amnesia, not nostalgia, and certainly not a statesmanlike gesture from the White House--lift him from the PR cellar. When the new crew opens up the books on Bush’s government, they ought to let every embarrassing detail out. And whenever there’s an international event that calls for dispatching an ex-president, they ought to steer clear of 43. (How did Bush use his well-respected, youthful predecessor during his first term? Other than making him a member of the U.S. delegation to East Timor’s independence party, not much at all.)

There’s no guarantee Bush will remain this loathed forever. After next week, bad employment figures and reports about failed initiatives land on Obama. Historically, feelings about presidential performance tend to rise as the performances drift further into the past. Obama’s successes--at extricating us from Iraq, or stabilizing the economy, or at tamping down the political vitriol--could wind up rehabilitating Bush precisely because his failures might no longer seem like failures (and, as John Heilemann pointed out recently in New York, because Obama would be retaining at least some of Bush’s late-stage policy changes with regards to Iraq.) It’s a paradox, because the strength of Obama’s appeal as an energetic, thoughtful, and smooth operator depends in large part on voters contrasting it with his passive, rigid, incompetent predecessor.

Democrats ran against Herbert Hoover for decades; Republicans kicked around Jimmy Carter for a dozen years. If Bush’s successors play their cards right, Democrats could use his legacy as a thumb on their side of the scale for a generation. After all, Bush represents a perfect synthesis of failed presidencies past. Like Hoover, he’s blamed for inaction in the face of economic crisis. Like LBJ, he’s tied to an unpopular war and the government dishonesty that maintained it. Like Nixon, he’ll go down as a polarizing dirty trickster. Like Carter, he’s shunned by his own party. And with a week to go, there’s still a chance that he’ll leave office in a blaze of controversial pardons like Clinton.

As Obama prepares to take the oath, his supporters speak of him alongside Lincoln and FDR. Aspiring to the company of the immortals is admirable. For the shorter term, though, it might be helpful to have people think of Obama next to Bush. And, as they do so, to remind them of just how disastrous the 43rd president really was.

Michael Schaffer is the author of the upcoming One Nation Under Dog.

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33 comments

Screw you, Mr. Schaffer and your ugly, hateful commentary.

- Charles Jackson

January 14, 2009 at 4:20am

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Michael Schaffer. I am looking forward to Obama's Inaugural and I trust him to overcome the fase claims by the Republicans and move towards restablishing the US as a good nation like my nation here, Australia, which I am waiting for it to become a Republic when it grows up.

- Clifford M Dubery

January 14, 2009 at 9:45am

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Exactly what "competence" was in evidence during the CLinton administration -- other than displays of moral sleaziness?

- Mandy

January 14, 2009 at 9:57am

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I read TNR because it's largely populated by responsible liberals who actually look at the issues and evaluate each on its own merits, not by kneejerk hatemongers like this writer. There's a world of difference between the egotistical grandstanding that Clinton engaged in while still in Washington, and a welcome home affair that will be provided to Bush when he gets home. Presidents are supposed to leave town quietly. Clinton certainly didn't, and I trust that Bush will. Bush respects the office! Schaffer clearly must have failed symbolism 101. Bush's entire approach to the transition has met or exceeded the highest ideals of the office. Even the true believers on Obama's staff have acknowledged that.

- Bruce

January 14, 2009 at 11:22am

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Michael Schaffer: Your visceral hatred of President Bush has blinded you to the realities of the world. I hope it keeps you busy for some time. Meanwhile, the rest of us will get along just fine by moving ahead while you continue to write your ultra liberal, leftist, radical, iconoclastic, Marxist, blather.

-

January 14, 2009 at 11:26am

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This strategy has a couple of major problems with it. First, the Obama team hasn't actually done much of anything yet except pick some appointees. Of these, Bill Richardson has quit, and Geithner is under serious fire. The record of competence so far is not surpassingly stellar, so there's no basis in fact for saying how they will be so much more competent than Bush. Second, if, God forbid, there is another terrorist attack in the US, the Bush presidency might start looking pretty good. It wouldn't help Obama to be constantly denigrating the Bush presidency, and then be unfavorably compared to it by the media.

- Kevin Clark

January 14, 2009 at 11:34am

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Obama doesn't need to poke Bush with a sharp stick. Bush is already down, no sense kicking him. The only possible outcome of such behavior is that Obama looks churlish and lacking perspective. History will take care of Bush and his miserable eight years in power. Obama can rise above it all and actually look like a statesman. Not a bad way to start.

- K. Grant

January 14, 2009 at 11:35am

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Stay classy.... Oh, sorry! I guess I have the wrong post.

- robertl

January 14, 2009 at 11:38am

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I really want Obama to do well, but this toilet level rhetoric is only going to make that more difficult.

- Billslayer

January 14, 2009 at 11:47am

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I don't think W would leave the seat up.

- Merv

January 14, 2009 at 12:06pm

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I hope President-Elect Obama proves to be a bigger man, as he has already demonstrated, than to espouse the partisan rancor and pettiness that you seem to recommend Mr. Schaffer. The message "Screw civility" actually says more about you.

- David C.

January 14, 2009 at 1:05pm

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$775 billion: Expected cost of the economic stimulus plan. $1.2 trillion: Projected federal deficit for 2009. $30 billion: Annual shortfall to end world hunger. Political priorities by the numbers. Read more about it on the Borgen Project website (borgenproject.org)

- Alenka

January 14, 2009 at 2:04pm

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Mr. Jackson, after WWII, we allies, with the US in the forefront, declared that attacking a country that did not attack us was a War Crime. WE SAID THAT, loudly, and we signed treaties to affirm we meant it. G. Bush violated his oath of office and should be tried for treason for his unconstitutional, lying adventures in Iraq, which had nothing whatever to do with Al Qaeda. Iraq did not attack us. This is my country, and I don't accept lying from politicians, and I don't accept oath-breaking. All the yap about 'Clinton' doesn't change G. Bush's lying and oath-breaking. The man is a small-minded, ugly, dishonest disaster for my nation. He has also violated just about everything the Christ very explicitly told us to do.

- Bret Waldow

January 14, 2009 at 2:26pm

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I love hearing the argument "He did it so why can't/shouln't I?" That's one I have not heard since my eleven year old brother tried it on me this morning. People love to claim that Obama will bring about the healing of the nation, but that is hard to do when you start pouring salt on an open wound. If Republicans are so bad, why is it being advocated that Democrats act like them?

- sasha

January 14, 2009 at 3:34pm

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Mr. Waldow: You're filled with nonsense so screw you too and your inaccurate reading of history and the Constitution. Was the U.S. attacked by North Korea (Truman)? North Vietnam (LBJ)? Serbia (Clinton)? No. Your comments are laughable dribble.

- Charles Jackson

January 14, 2009 at 4:27pm

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President-elect Obama should read this vicious screed as a reminder of where his real problems will come from: the rabid left, which remains unfettered by scruples or human decency.

- Bill Ireland

January 14, 2009 at 5:13pm

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This is the same childish partisanship that Obama appears to be avoiding and, hopefully, he does. Waldow apparently doesn't quite grasp that a nation that shoots down our military aircraft and tries to assassinate our former presidents is "attacking us." Not to mention the whole concept of international alliances and standing together when one is attacked (Kuwait).

- reb

January 14, 2009 at 7:03pm

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This isn't a comment but a message to the people who moderate the comments. Could you please respect the paragraph separations in the submitted comments? When you cram everything together it loses the structure that the writers intended to convey and diminishes their clarity.

- Bruce

January 14, 2009 at 8:14pm

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Mr. Schaffer and some of his allies seem AFRAID that President Bush's legacy will be a fine and proud one - so much so that he is recommending President elect Obama spend time trampling on it? The level of vitriol gets worse even as President Bush leaves the stage; my guess is that it won't be long before their fears will come true.

- Carroll Hoke

January 14, 2009 at 8:15pm

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Clearly the presure of having to print original opinion articles every day means that every now and then TNR is forced to fill up space with absolute *rap.

- JohnB

January 14, 2009 at 8:51pm

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You can see here how winning an election, while clear but not a landslide is very much like a tech stock with few earnings hitting a peak. The hubris factor has become transformed in the left almost instantly. While always arrogant, pompous even while largely reduced since the Reagan reform efforts much of the public now gets what the left really thought the code message "change" really meant all along. Just as "compassionate" meant the promise of endless pandering to liberal interest groups and compromise out the gate the implied meaning of change means "radical collectivist expansion and the establishment of authoritatian socialism". Of course a good part of the population understood this while the swing 10% either was hoping for a short-term vacation from the recent pains of war and economic jolts. As for the core in control there will still be a portion who will see the evil among themselves and their wishes now in power. It will all start to slide away from this moment, the backlash has begun in record time. Buyers remorse like none other and eventually even the shill media be forced to explain. First making excuses then turning on the Messiah himself. On a whole the left can't control itself and isn't fit for a majority rule. While I would give Obama half a chance to rule it's clear how far the democrat of today has sunk. Most of the people who would have even supported FDR or Kennedy would leave this current culture of vile hate. In the end and very quickly the romance with global socialism will be rejected. It's all nostalgia for the true conservatives of this culture; the spoiled children from the 60's teamed with the naive young pining for a fantasy boom built on post WW II socialized perks and promises of government backed social security that can't be afforded. Private sector growth is the only real solution and confidence will only be restored as examples of these malcontents are fully marginalized. If Obama can't do it or if he himself is among this sort of fringe it will a very short honeymoon indeed. Perhaps we should get the "he's not my president" bumper stickers ready and show the same sort of civility the left has shown in many degrees over the past 30 years. While the blundering on the economy is great you're fools if you don't think the loss of confidence and crashing sales isn't at least in part of the angry left demonstrating itself across its universe. This too happened during the FDR transition as the private economy capitulated during the election cycle. There would be a recovery, ironically a very strong stock rally but from very low and narrow bases that didn't serve many people well. It's important that we note FDR had far more accumulated resources to abuse; a real currency to weaken, a world in conflict, a naive population that would buy-in to the soft soap socialism. We are far more developed and a substantial population while not in majority form at the moment aren't quite ready to go the way of Cuban middle class under Castro.

- Chris H

January 14, 2009 at 8:59pm

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I am french, i am an artist for 54 years, and will never understand how the so call left, can be so stupide, the democrat have been in power for over 46 years, and they always find a way to stop a law to help artists, they never want to spend their money always some one eslse money, Bush has been the best friend the democrat ever had, he show incredible leadership, to go after the terror, AMERICAN MUST LEARN THEIR BIGEST ENNEMY AFTER ISLAMO FASCHIST ARE LAWYERS, look at this mess in the banking world, that is not Bush creation he try to cut the mess and was treated like he have the poor, the democrats make Madoff look like a saint,yesterday iwas watching a tape at the europeen parlement showing exactly how the democrats stop Bush every effort to stop the bleeding, if us europeen can see this, you all must be OBAMESQUE. leftwin democrat should read more specialy Andre MALRAUX, the left are the master of mass murder, they love Stalin, 32 millions people kill, Mao 132 millions people kill,Sadam Husein 4 millions kill, Chavez, Putin ect....they hate culture and all form of arts, please visit thoses country and see with your own eyes.

- francois

January 15, 2009 at 11:26am

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The reason that this advice from Mr. Schaffer will most likely be ignored is that Mr. Obama, just like Mr. Bush, is a decent man. He (President-Elect) Obama understands the behaviour that Mr. Schaffer asks for only makes himself look bad. Obama, unlike President Clinton, actually seems to have control over his worst instincts. Mr. Shaffer's political onanism will have to find a different outlet.

- jwinklhofer

January 15, 2009 at 11:42am

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Partisan, hack commentary. Obama has continualy shown an ability to rise above the mudslinging, be it from Mrs. Clinton, Mrs. Palin or any other source. Competence in office will be the key to any re-election; focusing on the real problems he has inherited from a generation of mismanagement will require more than PR succeses and appearing better than the worst President of our lifetime.

- Terry Finnegan

January 15, 2009 at 12:09pm

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It is quite possible that each of the people you name did indeed also commit a crime - that stands on it's own. In order to have a country that is "of the People, by the People, and for the People" we must follow the rule of Law, instead of the rule of Opinion. Nothing about that excuses G. Bush's own lies. Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were mortal enemies, and Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center. Nothing. G. Bush and his people have broken their own sworn oaths, killing many innocent people as a result, and deserve their own trials for those crimes. And it's STILL the American People who said those actions are crimes. "He did it too!" isn't an excuse - that was another matter the US dealt with at the Nuremburg Trials. WE SAID THAT. If you allow liars to get away with lies, you will get even more lies, and there is no freedom in lying.

- Bret Waldow

January 15, 2009 at 12:19pm

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Yes, for god's sake Obama shouldn't mention anything about Bradley Schlozman's lying or the fact that we can no longer prosecute a 9/11 hijacker because we tortured him. To say anything about these or the myriad other failings would be very uncivilized.

- Cherokee

January 15, 2009 at 1:19pm

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Reelection bid in 4 years? You dumbasses have the historical attention span of a fruit fly. By 2012, you wouldn't even remember who Bush was. Much like it is widely believed that the Iraq war is the absolutely bloodiest war we've ever fought, bar-none and Bush is absolutely the worst. Just like Obama is absolutely the best. Much like Cheney has caused irreparable harm. And that Armageddon from global warming is going to set in next Tuesday. Lack of perspective is endemic on the idiots who voted for obama and the ones suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome.

- jwl2672

January 15, 2009 at 2:08pm

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This is a great look at how the transition works on many levels. I trust historians to remind us of the reality of this administration, even if public opinion sweetens over time. I don't think Obama has it in his personality to do much skewering of Bush. His agenda is relentlessly hopeful and forward-looking, much to the dismay of some (myself included at times). I thought the idea that Obama's successes will shine on Bush's legacy was a sharp insight of Schaffer's. Still, I won't bemoan this side effect, if it's the price we pay for being redeemed from the mess of the Bush administration.

- Anna L.

January 15, 2009 at 3:27pm

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Mr. Schaffer, your piece reeks of raw partisanship and gutter politics, and more importantly, demonstrates a nauseating combination of arrogance, ignorance, and small mindedeness. Certainly not the best intellect the left has to offer.

- Robert L. Madok

January 15, 2009 at 8:00pm

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Reading dishonest right wing writers blather on about civility reminds me of a man whose wife has been raped. When the husband finally catches the rapist, the rapist asks, "Can we be civil about this?" Of course, they want civility when they are out of power; they do not want anyone to treat them the way they treated the democrats. It's a sucker's game, because as soon as the republicans are back in power they'll return to politics as a blood sport.

- gc wall

January 16, 2009 at 12:31am

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Obama did win in a landslide if one considers the fact that seventeen percent of voters said that they would not vote for a black man. If one understands that Obama had a seventeen percent handicap his victory was one of the strongest in U.S. history. If McCain and Obama had only tied it would have meant that Obama made up a seventeen percent deficit.

- gc wall

January 16, 2009 at 12:43am

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#30 You have some disconcerting obsession with rape, don't you? What civility do you think there'll be? The civility between left and right is the same as the imaginary "civility" between countries that the left so values. Oh, we have to be an "international citizen" lest we offend the French. There is no civility. Decisions are made by parties and nations based on what is good for the party/nation. Democrats will do what they want for their party ideals. And on the national level, countries will do what is good for their interests. Only idiots care about "the other's" concern. So go ahead and go nuts. When the pendulum swings back in 4 - 8 years, we'll do the same.

- jwl2672

January 16, 2009 at 5:07pm

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Because I believe that the W administration, which thank goodness leaves power within 24 hours, was one of the worst in American history, I agree with Michael Schaffer's advice to the Democrats to remind the American public of the disastrous, sometimes illegal and often immoral conduct of the nation's affairs by Cheney and W. And yes, I agree that that memory should be kept fresh for at least a generation, because a like amount of time may be needed to undo the grievous harm to the USA that Cheney et al have done. Several comments are correct to insist that Obama not be crass and obviously insulting to W. Nevertheless, eye-catching headline aside, I do not believe that is what Schaffer is suggesting. He is stating simply that Obama in particular, and Democrats in general, should not allow their distaste for the rancorous political style of the last 8 years to permit their desire for civility to overcome the absolute necessity for facing the ugly facts of Cheney/Bush maladministration. Further, insisting that the ugly facts be brought into and kept in the light is not 'Bush-hatred': it is, instead, the essential moral accounting which must be done to make possible the avoidance of at least some of the same errors in the future. Our nation cannot afford another such incompetant administration anytime soon. I do not understand why jwinklhofer uses the term 'political onanism' for Schaffer's article. Who is the 'wife' of the dead W administration that Schaffer is trying not to--or advising Obama not to--impregnate? Is it us, the American public? Just what sort of misbegotten political offspring will result if Obama or Schaffer or both insist upon inseminating us? And, honestly, jwinklhofer, haven't we been screwed enough already? Finally, I vigorously agree with bruce's comment(#18). Allow our spaces and paragraphs to remain (within reason). I have trouble enough being clear with paragraph structure, let alone without it, and you are also erasing the lessons I learned in junior high school composition class!

- shimmiyankl

January 19, 2009 at 10:45pm

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