Taking the Measure: The Presidency of George W. Bush

Chapter 1. Studying the “W”: Either You Loved Him ....

chaPTer 1 studying the “W” Either You Loved Him .... Donald R. Kelley T here wasn’t much ambiguity about the way people reacted to George W. Bush, the forty-third president of the United States. Either you loved him or you hated him, at least at first. The sharp dichotomy touched on everything he did: decisions on foreign and domestic policies; the choice of a vice president; his efforts that seemed to unite the country while actually dividing it; his handling of Katrina; his Texas-bred sense of self-assurance and swagger; and his troubled relationship with the English language. Even his most important moment as chief executive—rallying the nation in the first days after September 11—quickly deteriorated in an increasingly bitter and partisan argument over protecting US interests abroad and a new sense of “homeland security,” whatever that meant. Whatever else the commentators could disagree about concerning his presidency, almost all could agree that “W” left office as one of the most controversial chief executives in recent history. To some, “W” was a reasonably talented man, born to privilege into a family with a long-standing history of public service, who found himself in the oval office at an important turning point in US history. And many would add that he rose to the occasion quite nicely. Facing the devastation and uncertainty that followed September 11, he rallied the nation, redefined the world around us, and shaped our military, ideological, and institutional response along lines now defined by the “Homeland Security State.” In rising to the occasion, he provoked controversy, which then evoked deep emotional responses and drew 2 • donald r. kelley a clear line between those who stood with him—and with the nation itself, as he saw it—and those who would not follow. Some did follow quite willingly, seeing in “W” a reincarnation of feisty Harry Truman, who shaped America’s initial response to the cold war. Near the end of his second term, the near meltdown of the US economy again permitted him to put his stamp on the future. Now the focus was essentially internal but with significant implications for the global economy. The bailout ofWall Street and what remained of the banking industry fundamentally changed the relationship between Washington and the private sector. It was doubly significant both for what it did and did not do: while it established the government as the lender of last resort, it failed to rescue the economy as a whole. To use the popular image that summed it all up, Wall Street got rescued , and Main Street did not. While, for the most part, the bankers and other significant aid recipients such as the auto industry eventually recovered and even prospered, the average worker or homeowner faced growing problems. In contrast, to others “W” was in over his head virtually from the moment he took the oath of office. Even if his early initiatives in education and tax reduction were technically well executed, they were wrong headed and narrowly partisan in both form and substance. Worse, his efforts to rally the nation after September 11 missed the mark. At the intellectual level, the new Bush Doctrine lacked nuance and sophistication; like the oft-cited Truman Doctrine, it launched a crusade rather than a proportional response, evoking a frightening new centralized national security state and provocative yardsticks for action such as preemptive responses to “gathering” threats. At the operational level, the invasion of Afghanistan eventually morphed into an embarrassing search for weapons of mass destruction and terrorist connections in Iraq. Neither war went well either on the ground in the Middle East or in the political world at home. It seemed that the administration was increasingly being drawn into a quagmire at home and abroad; in many ways, “W” had become his own worst enemy. The passage of time since “W” left the White House has permitted the dust to settle a bit and brought a new and presumptively very different president to office. With that thought in mind the Fulbright Institute of International Relations and the Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society, both at the University of Arkansas, brought together some of the most prominent experts on the US presidency in the spring of 2011 to offer their perspective on the Bush administration and the elements of continuity or change that separate it from his successor, Barack Obama. All who took part in the conference accepted the notion that sufficient time had passed to...