Early Evaluations of the Bush Presidency

Always, the U.S. presidency is an enigma wrapped in swirling waves of controversy. This controversy, over policy, politics, and sometimes more, is the accessible surface. It dominates the headlines, the commentary, and the campaigns. Controversy activates partisan politics, and it brings ideology into play. Behind all the conflict, however, are the institution of the presidency and the person of the president. Our view of them is far less clear, especially in their times, before the oral histories and archival records can be mined and longer term consequences become apparent. Nevertheless, the current Bush presidency has spawned a rash of books covering myriad aspects, from the conflicts to policy processes to the psyche of the president himself. Virtually any sample of these books will tell us something about the presidency, but more likely these works will raise rather than answer fundamental questions about this particular administration.

In a would-be transformative presidency such as George W. Bush's, policy controversy was inevitable. The events of September 11, 2001, gave Bush and his administration a new focus as well as a new rationale for policies many officials would have sought in any case. Numerous of these efforts were intensely conflictual and figured prominently in the 2004 campaign. Two books from that period, written from apparent opposite ends of the political spectrum, serve to illustrate the intensity of the policy and ideological controversy Bush's initiatives sparked.

The Bush Betrayal would typify the comprehensive policy criticism emanating from the opposition camp were it not for one thing: James Bovard is not a liberal but rather a libertarian whose values, he argues, Bush betrayed. The author's indictment is comprehensive, covering many of the Bush administration's first-term policies. Yet Bovard's laments fall mainly into two categories. First, the president used wasteful and unconservative programs such as No Child Left Behind, farm subsidies, and drug programs like DARE to, in effect, buy votes. This, of course, is a commentary on Karl Rove's strategy of creating a Republican majority through popular programs, although without increasing taxes or showing much concern about paying the bills. As Bovard correctly notes, this is scarcely small-government conservatism of the sort a libertarian could endorse. The growing schism in the GOP between Bush backers and fiscal conservatives testifies to the importance of Bovard's arguments.

Second, in the aftermath of 9/11, itself a Bush failure in Bovard's eyes, the federal government under the leadership of Attorney General John Ashcroft proceeded to abuse individual liberties, drop "an iron curtain around the federal government" (2), and pursue policies Bovard characterizes as "protecting democracy from freedom" (215). Although surveillance and secrecy are the predominant concerns, the Iraq war comes in for particular condemnation in a concluding chapter wonderfully titled "Iraq: The Iron Fist of Freedom."

Bovard sees Bush as a would-be emperor with a self-described mandate from God, and thus unusually dangerous. Yet the author has little more sympathy for the Democrats' "portrayals of government as an engine for uplift" (275). So the options Bovard could see for 2004 and beyond were hardly choices at all. "Trying to end misgovernment in Washington merely...