Structural Lessons from The Bush Presidency

We often hear personal criticisms of former President Bush. He didn’t listen, was incurious and unintelligent, acted stubbornly, and didn’t know how to manage big egos. These characteristics, supposedly, explain the failures of his presidency. Some of these might be true, but it’s hard to say. Unless you were a Bush intimate, you can’t intelligently speak about the man himself. We can instead look at structural impediments, which might have been the source of his mistakes.

Reelection as a distraction- The Iraq War is and will continue to be a hotly contested war. Was it necessary? Is the realpolitik assertion that Sadaam Hussein impeded Iran from becoming a hegemonic Middle Eastern power true? Will Iraq turn into a democracy? Those questions will not be answered for some time. We do know one thing, however; many consequential decisions concerning the Iraq War were made during 2004—-Bush’s reelection year. Bush, for example, outsourced the choice to disband the Iraqi national army to Paul Bremmer during that time. Many critics cite that singular decision as the reason behind Iraqi violence from 2004 to 2007. Many exit strategies were implemented that year as well. And Abu Ghraib (the torture prison), one of the few mistakes Bush has owned up to, began in 2004. If he did not have to focus on another election, would the US have made so many mistakes in Iraq? Regardless of who the President is, running a presidential campaign in the era of 24/7 news will take away that person’s energies from presidential duties. The only other precedent is Richard Nixon, who made mistakes about Vietnam in 1972. The question is: can the President be an effective commander in chief during politics season? Perhaps not.

Popularity Matters-Bush wore his low approval ratings as a badge of honor. In his mind, it meant that he made bold and courage decisions, eschewing the temptation to be well ephemerally received.. There is certainly some validity behind this thinking. Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, and John Adams were unpopular men who have been vindicated by history. At the same time, Bush’s unpopularity prevented him from using the bully pulpit to tackle objectively bad policy. A prime example of this was last year during a legislative fight over a grotesque farm bill. The US government bought food at two times cost, and then sold them for twenty cents on the dollar to appease  farming constituents. This move not only hurt taxpayers, but it disallowed farmers in Africa to rise out of poverty since they cannot compete with artificially low prices. Bush vetoed the bill, but Congress overrode him easily. If Bush were more popular, then he could’ve waged a stronger fight through favorable media coverage and with the American people’s trust. He was, on the contrary, ineffective. He might’ve been defeated anyway because of lobbyists, but he at least would’ve been able to put a fight. This example also applies to his failed efforts in achieving a Free Trade deal with Colombia and getting immigration reform. So even if Bush were confident in decisions that the media and opposition condemned him for, more humility and gimmicky media appearances might’ve made him more popular to stand up for the things he believes in. Yes he would’ve been “chasing popularity,” but it would’ve been for the right reasons.

Lobbyists will win- Although I just wrote how popularity can prevail over lobbyists, there are some fights that even the most popular President cannot win. The debacle of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac illustrates this very well. On The View last September, former President Clinton said that he, like Bush, tried to reform those mortgage businesses. Just as Bush encountered, he said lobbyists money to congressmen and senators took away his ability to get real reform done. And President Clinton had high approval ratings, so unpopularity clearly had nothing to do with it. The Founders created three somewhat equal branches of government, meaning that some things are neither to the President’s credit nor to his fault.

This piece is not to serve as an excuse for President Bush’s mistakes. I think his immediate handling of 9-11, something most folks accredit him with, is in many respects a function of context as well. Any President would’ve strongly condemned those actions and struck back. I don’t know how exceptionally stellar his performance was. This piece is also not meant to say a President doesn’t have real power to make real decisions. It was ultimately up to Bush to start Iraq just as many other decisions were. But some decisions, or parts of those decisions, transcended the power of the President. Scholars should figure those out, instead of blaming bad decisions on unprovable character attributes.

 

 

 

 

The Irrationality We Should Acknowledge

Turn on the television, read an op-ed, or even listen to that antiquated radio and you’ll hear commentators and citizens alike subscribing to the theory of how unique this moment is in American history. Barack Obama is going to be the first black President in a nation scarred by slavery. But more than that, this economic crisis presents an opportunity for us to come together and finally tackle our nation’s ills. We can create better schools, better hospitals, and a better foreign policy. And Obama, who consistently projects the best in us, will lead the way. It is this sense of possibility that drives a country on the verge of bankruptcy to devote unprecedented resources to experience “history.” For the wealthy, it means spending fifty thousand dollars on a fancy ball to shake his hand. For the less well off, it means doing whatever it takes to be in our nation’s capital. Even if it means sitting far away, it’ll still be worthwhile because at least you can say you were there. Imagine, instead, if all those resources were  spent on carrying out Obama’s aspirations.

If 1.2+ million people were as enthusiastic about solving our nation’s inequities as they were about the inauguration, we’d most certainly  have solved them. No child would starve. No student would be denied entrance to school on the basis of cost. No sixty year old would be turned away from a necessary surgery because he or she made too much to qualify for Medicaid yet was too young to qualify for Medicare. Given this, why will everyone in one form or another give a disproportionate amount of their time to hear a variation of a speech we’ve heard so much that it sounds like a bromide?It’s a complex question, but I’ll take my best shot.

We spend the time hearing someone else tell us how we’ll tackle these infinitely daedal quandaries because we want to feel a part of something. If we spent the time individually helping, we’d feel like we were making a marginal difference at best. Yet if everyone is helping, then we might actually be able to make a difference. If one man takes the helm, we can follow him and finally make genuine progress. Any observer of human history, however, understands the egregious failures of collective action. Our selfishness impedes the potential to create the utopia that philosophers and artists have dreamt of ever since we were capable of thought. Anyone who seriously cogitates about it will inevitably have to laugh at the irrationality of it all. 1.2 million celebrating one man’s ability to navigate the political winds better than his opponents. Come on, how does that personally help anyone who isn’t part of Obama’s team or at least tangentially part of politics? It doesn’t. On January 21st we’ll be as rich or poor, happy or unhappy, God hating or fearing as we were on January 20th. We’ll do better or worse based partly on our merit and partly on life’s randomness, not because of some distant man in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

We do it because, simply, we need faith to believe that tomorrow will triumph yesterday. It’s no different than somebody accepting that Jesus Christ died two thousand years ago  for our sins. It’s no different than believing you were put here for an ad hoc purpose. It’s rooted in a belief that cannot be proven— something we all share in some fashion  or another. Its manifestations vary, but we all share it. Ideally, those who mock liberals for believing so much in Obama would realize that  they, in practice, do the same thing in their house of worship. Conversely, those who believe in Obama should admit that doing so makes as much intellectual sense as religion. Of course the cleavage between both sides will not shrink. But hey, that’s the change I’ll dream about on Tuesday.

P.S. If an Obama like figure were about to embark on the Presidency twenty years ago while Barack was at Harvard Law, would he be in D.C. celebrating? We know the Clintons worked on Jimmy Carter’s campaign in 1976, and Obama never has done the equivalent. Then again, there were no compelling Democratic figures in the 1980s while he came of age.

The Swinging Pendulum: Obama’s Move to Universal Acceptance

In politics, new administrations often try to do the opposite of what their predecessors did. Proponents of this thinking cite Bush’s refusal to play peacemaker between the Palestinians and Israelis as a prime example. For the last few months of President Bill Clinton’s term, he worked extraordinarily hard to get a deal done. Once Bush came in, he arrantly abandoned those efforts. Once again we are confronted with a marked change in approach. For the last few years, President Bush has taken the my way or the highway approach. To his admirers, his actions reflect those of a principled and tough leader. To his detractors, his actions are rooted in stubbornness and delusion. But it is indisputable that Bush alienates a good chunk of lawmakers. Barack Obama, however, is charting a fundamentally different route; he really is attempting to unite everyone around the economic crisis.

Barack Obama’s real economic philosophy is opaque. He frequently appears to be an acolyte of Keynesian economics, where the government has a moral imperative to put equality ahead of efficiency. This was evident when he told ABC News’ Charlie Gibson that capital gains should be raised even if it decreases revenue for the government. This is evident when he tells college graduates to eschew the private sector to join the government to solve our nation’s ills. This was probably most evident when he told New York Times senior economic correspondent David  Leonhardt that one of his favorite quotes concerns the pitfalls of strictly measuring GDP. He spoke affectionately of Robert F. Kennedy’s point that GDP “counts special locks for our doors and jails for those who break them…but not the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.”

There must, however, be cognitive dissonance with his beliefs. He prefaces every economic argument by displaying a healthy respect for free markets. He thinks free markets have no rival in their ability to efficiently allocate resources. He told Chris Wallace of Fox News last spring that deregulation during Ronald Reagan’s presidency positively impacted the middle and lower class because prices came dramatically down. And he said last summer that one of his favorite economic thinkers of the twentieth century is Friedrich Hayek, a man who passionately argued for the minimization of central planning.

His seemingly bipolar views of the economy are in full force with his bailout proposal. A major part of his proposal is stimulating demand; give people money and they will spend it, creating a multiplier effect that stimulates the production of goods and services. This is an inherently Keynesian idea. He also believes the government is prudent and intelligent enough to figure out how much money should be invested in education, healthcare, and alternative energy with very little respect to market mechanisms. This is another Keynesian belief. He, at the time, advocates for many supply side measures to stimulate business. This includes a reduction in certain taxes and a tax credit for hiring or rehiring workers.

The only possible answer to why he wants such a contradictory bill is to maintain or increase his popularity. One of his aides told the Wall Street Journal that he wants at least 80 out of a 100 senators to vote on the bill, even though only 60 would be required to make it law. It is as if the bailout is a direct indictment on presidential power without popular backing. It’s another example of history moving from one extreme to another. Whether it’s the fierce intellectual movements of foreign policy from realism to neoliberalism or free markets to state control, the zeitgeist seems to change in 180 degrees. The execution of these ideologies certainly don’t move with such extremes. President Woodrow Wilson, a President who wanted to spread democracy and liberty around the world, still had good relations with the Ottoman Empire while they were killing millions of Armenians. And the free market Ronald Reagan never cut spending that much, evidenced by the US’ sizable deficits during the 1980s. But the average belief out there, which a President tries to match with rhetoric, always seems to move in extremes. So now it is about the President making good with everyone. But we should remember that President Roosevelt didn’t enter WW2 soon enough because of the country’s protectionist attitudes after WW1. And we should remember how worthwhile it was for President Harry Truman to desegregate the troops even though it almost cost him his reelection. Yes Obama should try to reach across the aisle more than Bush did. But reaching across too much might be counterproductive. The point of a representative democracy is to elect people who we think have good judgment, not to elect people to vote on how we think with our limited views. Let’s hope Obama doesn’t pamper we the people too much.