Earlier this week, the New York Post in conjunction with Quinnipiac University ranked the best and worst U.S. presidents since World War II. Of the 12 men that have held the office since Franklin Roosevelt's sudden passing in 1945, the unscientific poll ranked Barack Obama as the worst of the dozen. The choice wasn't a landslide; combined, the last two presidents earned 61% of the "worst president" vote, with Richard Nixon a distant third.
In late 2008, I wrote a two-part essay grading the George W. Bush administration. It was part retrospective and part moratorium, written three weeks before our 43rd president was to leave public life and well after any impact could be made to alter the legacy of his flawed presidency. I did not anticipate writing a similar essay about Barack Obama until December 2016 or January 2017, when our current Commander in Chief is expected to hand over the reins and segue into private life. Rest assured, 2 1/2 years from now I will write a similar essay in structure if not necessarily tone, and as far as I'm concerned that missive is only two-thirds written.
In all honesty, I've grown to accept the Obama administration for the mixed bag that it has truly become. I feel that for the near-constant criticism he has faced in the last 18 months, maybe half of the vitriol is justified. The progress he has made in support of energy regulation and LGBT rights certainly maintains his credibility in liberal social circles. Obama's steady hand in bolstering the economy and gradually creating job growth in the wake of the 2008-09 recession --without much help from a polarized Congress, mind you-- has been overlooked by the partisan fight over health care reform, questions about domestic privacy, and his aloof approach to foreign policy. At this time, Obama will rank in the middle of the pack, if not slightly below the average. If Martin Van Buren, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan have taught us anything, there have been far more incompetant leaders in our nation's 238-year history. If you want to rank just the presidents that won reelection, it's hard to argue that Obama was worse than the rudderless, scandal-plagued 8 year stint of Ulysses S. Grant. Or the aforementioned Tricky Dick. Or, if I dare suggest it, Bush 43.
It would be easy for me to dismiss this poll as meaningless, but at the same time hindsight is 20/20. As I stated not quite six years ago, we can't really analyze the legacy of a president until he's been out of office for a few years. If this poll were taken eight years ago, those surveyed would have chosen Bush 43 by a sizable margin. On top of that, Bush 43 and Obama are the first two presidents whose administrations were fully ingrained in the internet era, where anyone can say anything within the alleged anonymity of modern technology, and trolls and haters can repeat the same meme ad nauseum. The president's flaws have been magnified, every apparant blunder scrutinized to infinity.
It feels weird defending someone I have mixed feelings about. At the same time, the only people that are declaring President Obama a failure are the same critics that wished he would crash and burn six years ago. They take something that wasn't totally his fault --a Solyndra here, a Benghazi there-- and feast on it like ribs at a street festival. Most of the issues he has faced in office --immigration, Iraq, gun control-- are still lingering from past administrations. I voted for Obama in 2008, not because of the naive optimism that swooned my peers, but simply because he appeared to be the stronger of the two candidates. Begrudgingly, I did the same thing in 2012. The legacy of our 44th president is a hodgepodge, but also still up for interpretation, and not beyond repair. I just hate to imagine what the next guy will be up against.
Other notes:
+ I'm sure some of you might have noticed the name change above. After nearly two years of inconsistent blogging --about three entries a month-- it didn't make sense to call this "Stu's Weekly Updates" anymore. As much as I love the challenge of writing a new blog entry once a week, my hectic schedule simply doesn't permit it anymore. I'm not going anywhere, I'm just accepting my current reality.
Next Week: my third "Seasons of Love" TV essay.
Showing posts with label George W. Bush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George W. Bush. Show all posts
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Random Notes, April 2013
Varying thoughts on current events:
+ The state of South Carolina has a memory as long as their political rhetoric leans right. With that said, the state GOP's nomination of disgraced ex-governor Mark Sanford for a vacated U.S. House seat is more confusing than amnemonic. A recent stunt where Sanford "debated" a cardboard cutout of Nancy Pelosi evoked memories of Clint Eastwood at last year's RNC, and he is failing to gain ground on his opponent, moderate-left Democrat and celebrity sibling Elizabeth Colbert Busch. The anamoly of a liberal congressman in an unabashedly conservative state doesn't seem as much of a reach now. Busch doesn't come across as a rising star, so I would blame her imminent victory on the usual Republican hubris. And they say an elephant never forgets.
+ The unexpected rise in former President Bush's approval rating can be attributed to the passage of time and his relative silence since leaving office four-plus years ago, not a reconsideration of his presidency. Any positive vibes sent toward the opening of his presidential library this past week were based upon goodwill and little else. Just for fun, here's a quick refresher on Bush 43's flawed presidency.
+ Family Update: My father's brain surgery was postponed until May 11th; the surgeon came down with the flu, so it was pushed back three weeks. Here's hoping the growth hasn't spread in the interim. Meanwhile, three months after having her gallbladder removed, my mom seems to have a recurring stomach virus. She was already in the hospital about two weeks ago after having an allergic reaction to her antibiotics, so her medications were switched out. Hopefully, this remedies her situation. Again, please send good vibes.
+ Improv Update: This weekend I'll be finishing Level 4 of the esteemed Second City Conservatory program, with Level 5 beginning next week. For those of you who are in or near Chicago or will be between now and September, I'll keep you posted on future student shows.
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Tuesday, January 6, 2009
The Last Eight Years, Part 2
If President Bush had a domestic shortcoming, the first option that most of his critics would choose is Hurricane Katrina. There's no doubt in my mind that Bush was unprepared for such a catastrophe, but so was the state, county, and city government. Was the president's choosing a horse breeder to lead FEMA a greater mistake than the State of Louisiana short-cutting the construction of the levees? If anything, Bush, Governor Blanco, and Mayor Nagin are all at fault to a specific extent; no one in the state, national, and local governments prepared for this disaster, even though they knew the threat was imminent and there was plenty of time and expendable resources.
When looking back at the presidency of George W. Bush, no discussion can overlook the Valerie Plame controversy. This might be the one bullet point of his legacy where the president was more passive than aggressive; the Plame affair was the fault of his administration, and Bush merely hired and appointed the guilty parties. To publicly identify Agent Wilson as a covert CIA officer in retaliation for her husband's New York Times op-ed piece was ten different levels of stupid. I. Lewis Libby earned his punishment (sort of), but Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, and Richard Armitage are still under suspicion to this day.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if the generalized public perception of our 43rd president was some bizarre postmodern performance, as if his malapropisms and occasional bungling were an act for the media. President Bush made it clear from day one that he would take a more casual approach to the highest office in the land, but to what extent did his rough edges help or hinder his legacy?
Emily (one of my regular readers at the other site) made a good point regarding Part 1; people tend to forget that 20+ years ago, the media ridiculed Ronald Reagan the same way they did with our current president. Where Dutch was portrayed as senile and aloof, especially during the Iran-Contra controversy in early 1987, Dubya was illustrated as a cowboy poseur, a trust-fund milquetoast, a manipulative huckster, and/or some combination of the three. Our 40th president had his share of critics in the media, but it pales to the scruntiny and vilification Bush received; what began as a soft, skeptical hum in January 2001 progressed into a tinnitus-like ringing in the ears by late 2008. On top of that, Reagan left office with a 63% approval rating and never sank below 46% during his eight years in the White House; President Bush's approval ratings have been consistently in the low 30s and high 20s since late 2005, and that number probably won't budge before January 20th. In comparison, Richard Nixon resigned with only 24% of the people behind his back, and Jimmy Carter's one term ended with a 34% rating.
Whatever criticism President Bush had to dodge and occasionally justify in office goes hand in hand with the average conservative's favorite punching bag, the American media and its "blatant" liberal bias. To me, partisan journalism has always existed in the same universe as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. The news is inherently impartial until it hits the bottom line; the people draw an opinion on a topic, and the media sways toward said opinion for the sake of ratings and selling newspapers. The purpose of the media is to research, investigate, and question the status quo; no media figure is immune from perlustration. Where Republicans will remind us that Reagan was treated unfairly in the press, Democrats will counterclaim by pointing out the media's treatment of Bill Clinton during Whitewater and Monicagate. Every elected official has drawn criticism, it's just that Bush's critics were a bit louder than others. Simply put, pointing out a liberal bias is like chasing windmills; the media is the mirror image of the public's uncertainty.
One theory that's gone mostly untested is whether or not the core of the Republican Party failed Bush and not vice versa. After all, the GOP more or less abandoned him after the 2006 midterms, and John McCain wasn't exactly clammering for Bush's endorsement in the election. Maybe the Republicans got carried away in their power and attempted to create a society where reason, empathy, and basic decency were derided as elitist qualities by a loudmouth extremist minority that pretended to represent good ol' American values, where anyone who disagreed with said extremists was labeled an unpatriotic socialist, and that President Bush was merely doing his job in the aftermath of 9/11, providing some level of stability as the economy tanked and our nation's well-being hung in the balance. I haven't decided yet if I want to subscribe to this hypothesis, but it's certainly something to think about.
In the last few weeks, some pop culture writers have attempted to give the Bush Administration a letter grade, a broad yet theoretical report card for one of the most controversial world leaders in recent memory. I don't expect to see too many A's, talk radio apologists like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh will probably give a him a high B, and most everyone else will suggest a failing grade. I would give George W. Bush a D+, though there might be enough time to budge that up to a C-. A lot can happen in two weeks; maybe he'll get out of his chair and do something about Israel, who knows?
When looking back at the presidency of George W. Bush, no discussion can overlook the Valerie Plame controversy. This might be the one bullet point of his legacy where the president was more passive than aggressive; the Plame affair was the fault of his administration, and Bush merely hired and appointed the guilty parties. To publicly identify Agent Wilson as a covert CIA officer in retaliation for her husband's New York Times op-ed piece was ten different levels of stupid. I. Lewis Libby earned his punishment (sort of), but Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, and Richard Armitage are still under suspicion to this day.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if the generalized public perception of our 43rd president was some bizarre postmodern performance, as if his malapropisms and occasional bungling were an act for the media. President Bush made it clear from day one that he would take a more casual approach to the highest office in the land, but to what extent did his rough edges help or hinder his legacy?
Emily (one of my regular readers at the other site) made a good point regarding Part 1; people tend to forget that 20+ years ago, the media ridiculed Ronald Reagan the same way they did with our current president. Where Dutch was portrayed as senile and aloof, especially during the Iran-Contra controversy in early 1987, Dubya was illustrated as a cowboy poseur, a trust-fund milquetoast, a manipulative huckster, and/or some combination of the three. Our 40th president had his share of critics in the media, but it pales to the scruntiny and vilification Bush received; what began as a soft, skeptical hum in January 2001 progressed into a tinnitus-like ringing in the ears by late 2008. On top of that, Reagan left office with a 63% approval rating and never sank below 46% during his eight years in the White House; President Bush's approval ratings have been consistently in the low 30s and high 20s since late 2005, and that number probably won't budge before January 20th. In comparison, Richard Nixon resigned with only 24% of the people behind his back, and Jimmy Carter's one term ended with a 34% rating.
Whatever criticism President Bush had to dodge and occasionally justify in office goes hand in hand with the average conservative's favorite punching bag, the American media and its "blatant" liberal bias. To me, partisan journalism has always existed in the same universe as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. The news is inherently impartial until it hits the bottom line; the people draw an opinion on a topic, and the media sways toward said opinion for the sake of ratings and selling newspapers. The purpose of the media is to research, investigate, and question the status quo; no media figure is immune from perlustration. Where Republicans will remind us that Reagan was treated unfairly in the press, Democrats will counterclaim by pointing out the media's treatment of Bill Clinton during Whitewater and Monicagate. Every elected official has drawn criticism, it's just that Bush's critics were a bit louder than others. Simply put, pointing out a liberal bias is like chasing windmills; the media is the mirror image of the public's uncertainty.
One theory that's gone mostly untested is whether or not the core of the Republican Party failed Bush and not vice versa. After all, the GOP more or less abandoned him after the 2006 midterms, and John McCain wasn't exactly clammering for Bush's endorsement in the election. Maybe the Republicans got carried away in their power and attempted to create a society where reason, empathy, and basic decency were derided as elitist qualities by a loudmouth extremist minority that pretended to represent good ol' American values, where anyone who disagreed with said extremists was labeled an unpatriotic socialist, and that President Bush was merely doing his job in the aftermath of 9/11, providing some level of stability as the economy tanked and our nation's well-being hung in the balance. I haven't decided yet if I want to subscribe to this hypothesis, but it's certainly something to think about.
In the last few weeks, some pop culture writers have attempted to give the Bush Administration a letter grade, a broad yet theoretical report card for one of the most controversial world leaders in recent memory. I don't expect to see too many A's, talk radio apologists like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh will probably give a him a high B, and most everyone else will suggest a failing grade. I would give George W. Bush a D+, though there might be enough time to budge that up to a C-. A lot can happen in two weeks; maybe he'll get out of his chair and do something about Israel, who knows?
Sunday, January 4, 2009
The Last Eight Years, Part 1
Originally posted on TV.com on December 16th, 2008
On January 20th, Senator Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States, making the end of two crucial eras in American political history, the Reagan Revolution and its daffy offspring, the Bush Administration. The presidency of George W. Bush was one of the polarizing in American history, derided for being too partisan and imperialistic, though his dwindling number of supporters and apologists would suggest a growing political bias in the media and that Bush did the best he could leading the country in the wake of several unfortunate and devastating events. Considering that, what is George Walker Bush's place in history?
Let's begin with the obvious: Bush is not the worst president we've ever had. He wasn't a drunken figurehead like Franklin Pierce, a lightning rod of corruption and moral ambiguity like Warren G. Harding, or brought our country to the brink of Civil War like James Buchanan. On the other hand, Bush might be our worst re-elected president; he was probably just as polarizing and partisan as fellow two-termer Richard Nixon, but with a more efficient crew of spin doctors and public relations experts. As mouthpieces to the world, Dana Perino and Scott McClellan have nothing on Ron Ziegler.
In some ways, George W. Bush is the mirror image of Lyndon Baines Johnson, another president who rose to the occasion in the wake of a national tragedy. Like Dubya, LBJ began his second term (or first elected term, if you will) with his party in control of the House, Senate, and Supreme Court. Where Johnson had his Great Society initiatives, Bush had the Patriot Act. Also like our 43rd president, Johnson championed an unpopular war and left office villified by his own party in doing so. Where Bush limped Reaganomics along until it was beaten like a dead horse, Johnson was the last true New Deal Democrat, making the wayward assumption that Franklin D. Roosevelt's Depression-era policies would still work thirty years after the fact.
Alas, that's where the comparisions end. LBJ died less than four years after leaving office, a broken and defeated man in his time but now regarded as a champion for civil rights and social security. The progressive acts that were instigated by his slain predecessor John F. Kennedy and completed by Johnson himself was enough to push the old Texan somewhere in the middle of the pantheon, his strengths and weaknesses almost cancelling each other out. It's tough to say what President Bush's saving grace will be; No Child Left Behind comes close, but this noble effort at restructuring our education system could use retooling.
Instead, the Bush Presidency will be remembered most for the quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq. Where usurping and removing the Taliban from Afghanistan was a justified reaction to the 9/11 tragedy, Operation Enduring Freedom was more of a knee-jerk reaction built along a string of unseemly assumptions. Saddam Hussein had every right to be removed from power, but his downfall could've waited until after the assault in Afghanistan was completed and Osama bin Laden was captured and detained. Hussein has been dead two years now, but bin Laden is (presumably) alive and well and still unpunished for his actions. Five years since his capture, Hussein's trial and execution was a hollow victory overshadowed by President Bush's most egregious mistake, letting the most powerful terrorist in the world get off scot-free for the eerily precise execution of more than 3,000 innocent Americans.
On Tuesday, I'll resume this commentary by looking at President Bush's domestic policies.
On January 20th, Senator Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States, making the end of two crucial eras in American political history, the Reagan Revolution and its daffy offspring, the Bush Administration. The presidency of George W. Bush was one of the polarizing in American history, derided for being too partisan and imperialistic, though his dwindling number of supporters and apologists would suggest a growing political bias in the media and that Bush did the best he could leading the country in the wake of several unfortunate and devastating events. Considering that, what is George Walker Bush's place in history?
Let's begin with the obvious: Bush is not the worst president we've ever had. He wasn't a drunken figurehead like Franklin Pierce, a lightning rod of corruption and moral ambiguity like Warren G. Harding, or brought our country to the brink of Civil War like James Buchanan. On the other hand, Bush might be our worst re-elected president; he was probably just as polarizing and partisan as fellow two-termer Richard Nixon, but with a more efficient crew of spin doctors and public relations experts. As mouthpieces to the world, Dana Perino and Scott McClellan have nothing on Ron Ziegler.
In some ways, George W. Bush is the mirror image of Lyndon Baines Johnson, another president who rose to the occasion in the wake of a national tragedy. Like Dubya, LBJ began his second term (or first elected term, if you will) with his party in control of the House, Senate, and Supreme Court. Where Johnson had his Great Society initiatives, Bush had the Patriot Act. Also like our 43rd president, Johnson championed an unpopular war and left office villified by his own party in doing so. Where Bush limped Reaganomics along until it was beaten like a dead horse, Johnson was the last true New Deal Democrat, making the wayward assumption that Franklin D. Roosevelt's Depression-era policies would still work thirty years after the fact.
Alas, that's where the comparisions end. LBJ died less than four years after leaving office, a broken and defeated man in his time but now regarded as a champion for civil rights and social security. The progressive acts that were instigated by his slain predecessor John F. Kennedy and completed by Johnson himself was enough to push the old Texan somewhere in the middle of the pantheon, his strengths and weaknesses almost cancelling each other out. It's tough to say what President Bush's saving grace will be; No Child Left Behind comes close, but this noble effort at restructuring our education system could use retooling.
Instead, the Bush Presidency will be remembered most for the quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq. Where usurping and removing the Taliban from Afghanistan was a justified reaction to the 9/11 tragedy, Operation Enduring Freedom was more of a knee-jerk reaction built along a string of unseemly assumptions. Saddam Hussein had every right to be removed from power, but his downfall could've waited until after the assault in Afghanistan was completed and Osama bin Laden was captured and detained. Hussein has been dead two years now, but bin Laden is (presumably) alive and well and still unpunished for his actions. Five years since his capture, Hussein's trial and execution was a hollow victory overshadowed by President Bush's most egregious mistake, letting the most powerful terrorist in the world get off scot-free for the eerily precise execution of more than 3,000 innocent Americans.
On Tuesday, I'll resume this commentary by looking at President Bush's domestic policies.
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