Quote of the Day
“I think I was unprepared for war.”
That’s President George W. Bush, in a surprising interview with Charlie Gibson.
Bonus:
“I didn’t go into this naively; I knew it would be tough,” he said. “But I also knew that the president has the responsibility to try to elevate the tone. And, frankly, it just didn’t work, much as I’d like to have it work.”
“I think one of the big disappointments of the presidency has been the fact that the tone in Washington got worse, not better.”
There is some part of me, deeply buried, that feels very sorry for President Bush and almost kind of likes him. This interview, where he shows at least a sliver of self doubt and permeates, ever so slightly, his usual bubble, kind of flared that up for me a bit.
It’s sort of telling that one of his biggest regrets was the blowback to immigration reform, and one of his proudest achievements was his effort to combat AIDS and Malaria globally. On both of those points, he’s absolutely right. The former was indeed massively regrettable, the latter is indeed something of which he can rightly be proud.
All in all, I can’t help but think that in some alternate universe where 911 didn’t happen, Bush didn’t carry so much psychological baggage, and didn’t prove so malleable when pushed towards corportaism, police statism, and neoconservatism, he might have been a passable president (probably at best). You have to sift through a lot of manure to find any glimmers of that hope, but they’re there. He wasn’t totally obnoxious in his first 9 months, where he has shown personal interest (immigration, education reform, social security reform, faith initiatives, global AIDs, etc) he’s had pretty defensible instincts, and for the last couple of years has been quietly realigning our foreign policy towards a more pragmatic, moderate stance.
It just goes to show I guess that history has its testing moments. We happened to have a guy in office who couldn’t pass his. We got an F presidency from America’s most famous C- student.
I could see how he got duped, but he did not adjust his policy when it was obvious that he was duped.
That is what I can’t forgive him for.
And elsewhere, England’s “curry king” says a ten year pause in immigration is something that should be considered.
But I guess he is a racist xenophobe too, because there is no amount of immigration and no type of immigrant, that is a ‘bad thing’.
<a href=”http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1090479/Curry-king-Sir-Gulam-Noon-calls-year-ban-migrants.html?ITO=1490
Comment by daveg — 12/1/2008 @ 7:58 pm
As for Bush, I can like him a lot more as a person when he isn’t the President.
Comment by Jerrod — 12/1/2008 @ 10:06 pm
Amen to that.
Comment by Brad — 12/1/2008 @ 10:44 pm
I predict that in many ways that you might like him a lot more as the President when he isn’t the President. Remember I said that.
Comment by James — 12/1/2008 @ 11:32 pm
That’s certainly a statement that has applied to the elder Bush. I wouldn’t have given particularly good odds, at the time he left office, that historians would remember him more favorably than Clinton.
Comment by Rojas — 12/2/2008 @ 12:23 am
I’m not sure historians do. Nonetheless, I think Bush Jr. has significantly softened criticism of Bush Sr. In light of this past eight years of idiocy, particularly as regards foreign policy the father looks like a damned genius.
Comment by tessellated — 12/2/2008 @ 12:28 am
Most of the surveys I’ve seen rank him higher than Clinton. Given the general political orientation of the majority of professional historians, that’s saying something.
Bush is given credit for managing the post-Cold War transition with considerable aplomb, as well as with successful coalition-building. Events since then have suggested that this may not have been as easy as it looked at the time. He was undone by a cyclical recession which would have ended just about as early with him as it did without him.
Comment by Rojas — 12/2/2008 @ 1:24 am
Wow. The man is still the worst president ever but you’re already tickling him and calling him cute. Why are you even talking about ‘liking him’? Are you little girls?
Comment by fred — 12/2/2008 @ 9:24 am
They’re drawing a distinction between him as a President and him as a human being.
I know that our politics thrives on all-purposes demonization, but I think it’s smarter to recognize that people are multifaceted and generally well-intentioned.
Comment by Rojas — 12/2/2008 @ 10:17 am
Yeah, Rojas took the words out of my mouth.
Politics way too often devolves into caricature. I find it an important exercise to sometimes step back for some conscious perspective. Nobody shares your “worst president ever” perspective more than me. But still, he’s not Satan. I think most nights he lays his head down on his pillow honestly believing that he’s doing what he thinks is right for America. But, he’s human—him moreso than most, and even he, every once in a blue moon, gets a sliver of self-insight and you can find some doubt and humility amidst the programmed rose-tinted bullshit. One needn’t hate him as a human being to reject his presidency, anymore than you need to believe all the people who disagree with you politically are trolls or assholes wishing to do harm, a tic which is sadly rather the norm.
But it’s not a lecture. Consider the rare posts like these more my way of checking myself by trying to find the human being behind the political actor, lest I fall into that same ___-Derangement Syndrome trap.
Comment by Brad — 12/2/2008 @ 1:39 pm
“They’re drawing a distinction between him as a President and him as a human being.
I know that our politics thrives on all-purposes demonization, but I think it’s smarter to recognize that people are multifaceted and generally well-intentioned.”
Why distinguish between president and human, with president apparently being the bad role for the man? Were his Human faculties (I suppose you mean stuff like like feelings and reason) put in a safe for the presidency? Did American politics require of him that he was inhuman? Did they even require of him that he accepted this inhumanity when he was really just a kind, normal man?
It’s interesting to see you fall over each other to help the criminal and his useless dad regain their stature. It’s almost like you all have some personal investments there.
“But, he’s human—him moreso than most”
Because he is allowed to make the most depraved decisions without repercussions? Because it’s ever so human to screw the many for the few? Oh, would that we all had the chance to screw up a handful of countries, then we would know what it’s really like to be a Human. Gah.
Comment by fred — 12/2/2008 @ 4:02 pm
Maybe this is more a spiritual principle and less a political one, which is why you might be having trouble with it.
Not a single word in here excuses anything. It has nothing to do with “we should take his policies more lightly because probably, deep down, he likes puppies” or whatever. Just noting that he isn’t a Automaton of Evil, and I think when people draw down political discussions to a level of caricature, it does them and their cause a disservice. Partisanship, as a concept, there is nothing wrong with. It’s when it become more akin to a sport, or soap opera, that it becomes obnoxious, useless, and counter-productive.
To put all this differently: I think, in a way, the caricature of George W. Bush to his critics has made his offenses easier to take and gloss. Because, to that point of view, they’re born of nothing but some overarching aura of evil and incompetence, not, say, a human instinct that we all have to lesser extents and that informs our own politics probably just as much (we just believe that ours are right, as, I’m sure, they do). It’s the same reason, in a nutshell, that the Bushian “good vs. evil” conception of things is so vile and counterproductive. But that sort of conception is certainly employed by his critics too, just in different ways. Something to think about anyway.
Doug Mataconis also takes me to task on this one:
Yeah, but that’s part of my point, I think. It was directionless and mildly obnoxious, but nothing, say, particularly evil about it. 911 did indeed give Bush a direction, and it was the direction he took from that that created a good chunk of the major offenses to reason and decency that his administration profligated. I don’t think he ever could have made a good president. But he might have made just a run-of-the-mill bad one, versus, as we all seem to agree, one of the most destructive and negative in our nation’s history.
There is a difference between a Hoover and a Nixon, for instance, or a T. Roosevelt vs. a Jackson. Or a Bush I and a Bush II. Sometimes, a flawed man meets a bad moment, and his sins become cardinal and legion.
Comment by Brad — 12/2/2008 @ 4:16 pm