The Test of Time
What do fifteen of the smartest people in the room—presidential scholars, best-selling biographers, and White House veterans of both parties—think history will say about the legacy of George W. Bush? And is there anything he can still do to change it?
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He has two big responsibilities: the national security of America and the economic security of America. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t have a strong national security posture without being strong economically. And so I think he’ll also get great credit for some of the bold steps he’s taken on the economic side not only to strengthen our domestic economy in this challenging time but, quite frankly, to help lead the global economy. He’s done so through more economic engagement with countries around the world in this whole area of free trade and open trade; he’s signed more free-trade agreements than any previous president. History will look at this guy and say, “He’s somebody who really had a place in his heart for the individual who needed a helping hand, not just in the United States but in the world.” He understands that the biggest problem we have in the world, other than providing democracy and freedom and peace, is poverty, and you cannot take on the big challenge of poverty effectively without the global economy growing at its full potential. And the global economy can’t grow at its full potential without global security. These things are all related.
When they look back, they’ll say, “Whoa!” He was very bold on the tax cuts. He went against many on the other side who said, “You’re going to destroy the economy. You’re going to drive deficits through the roof. Interest rates are going to go straight up.” Just the opposite has happened: a more robust economy, a higher growth rate, more jobs, lower interest rates, greater wealth, more home ownership. We maintained ourselves as the strongest, most dominant economy in the world by far, and that allows us to have this leadership position in the world, which we have the responsibility to use with humility.
Has the president suffered setbacks? Yes. Have there been problems? Sure. But despite all the horrible pictures we see on TV and the heartache and the pain and the suffering, which is terrible and gut-wrenching, I think we’ll step back from this moment. While I know a lot of people think his legacy rests on what happens with Iraq, historians will say, with time and reflection, that he did a remarkable job. He didn’t worry about polls or focus groups or even elections. He worried about doing what was right—and our world will be a better place because of it.
MARVIN OLASKY
FOR MOST CHURCHGOING AMERICANS, helping the poor is a crucial moral issue. There’s a lot more in the Bible about helping widows, orphans, and aliens than about anything else except loving God himself. The conservative response to that biblical imperative has been divided. Churchgoers give their money and time to fighting poverty, but then there are the social Darwinists, who sneer at poverty fighting. Others see “compassion” as a word seized by liberals and want to relinquish all claim to it.
What George W. Bush tried to convey is that such relinquishing is wrong both morally and politically. Give up compassion and we give up a piece of what’s best in us. Republicans become the party of corporate suits, of mean-spirited purple people eaters. W. knew that most Americans want an alternative to the failed idea that we measure our concern for the poor by the size of government appropriations rather than the content of our character. The central impulse of compassionate conservatism that he enunciated was that individuals can do a lot more to help their neighbors and that religious groups are particularly good at, as we like to say, “challenges personal and spiritual.” Compassionate conservatism, as it was presented to Governor Bush and embraced by him, meant that smaller government and less government spending led to more help for the poor.
Somehow, that combination of less and more was lost in the shuffle of Washington over the past six years. Some good things happened. The administration promulgated some executive orders that have temporarily removed some discrimination against religious groups. But those small accomplishments fell far short of the original hope for a tough-minded approach that would help the poor while shrinking welfare spending and that would create for years to come a level playing field for all groups involved in helping the poor, whether religious or not. While we got compassionate conservatism on the board, it became distorted. It came to be looked upon as either a political gambit by Republicans trying to buy minority votes or a rhetorical device hoping to fool soccer moms. And so Bush, in this area, has been moderately weak.
He could be stronger by pushing, as he hasn’t done until now, for two of the original proposals of compassionate conservatism. One was a $500 tax credit for any individual who gave that amount to the poverty-fighting nonprofit of his choice. That’s $500 more going to community nonprofits and $500 less going to the Beltway bureaucracy. A second proposal involved vouchers. The idea was that instead of having the Department of Health and Human Services decide which organizations would get grants, needy Americans could vote with their feet and choose groups that dealt most effectively with their problems.
Another thing the president could do is push through a reexamination of disaster policy—a realistic appraisal of what worked and what didn’t work following Hurricane Katrina—so we can do better next time there’s a major disaster. Church workers were the first volunteers on the ground at a time when FEMA was out to lunch. Michael Brown, the famous “Brownie,” was following the governmental playbook by telling emergency responders to stay home unless they had a specific request from governmental authorities. We should try to rebuild from the bottom up, by relying upon community groups and religious groups of all kinds, rather than FEMA and other governmental agencies. They’re largely ruled by paperocracy, often out of fear of litigation, and by bureaucratic habits. Religious groups tend to be a lot more versatile and a lot more responsive.
If W. pushes for decentralization of social services and disaster relief, he can still build a lasting legacy.
BRUCE BARTLETT
THERE ISN’T MUCH QUESTION that George W. Bush will rank among the bottom of all presidents in terms of his accomplishments in office. Among Republican presidents, Herbert Hoover has to rank as the worst because his economic policies brought on the Great Depression. The second worst is probably Richard Nixon, but this president is getting pretty close to that. The war is the key element in making this determination.
In my view, one has to look at the necessity of a war, how it was conducted, how many American lives were lost in the process, and its success in terms of achieving the goals of the conflict. The Spanish-American War, for example, was probably unjustified but at least achieved what it was designed to achieve. This war was neither justified nor is it achieving its goals. This could change depending on what happens in the next two years. However, the evidence suggests that rather than try to fix some of the problems that Bush has created, he’s simply going to double his bet in hopes that he can somehow salvage something. I don’t think that’s going to work. People do win the lottery occasionally, but it’s not a good strategy for enriching yourself.
As for Bush’s tax policies, I think they have been overestimated in terms of their positive impact. I do believe in reducing marginal tax rates, but none of the tax rate reductions that he has rammed through Congress are permanent. More than likely, they’ll be repealed or fail to be extended in coming years. I’m not really sure what the point is of bothering with these kinds of tax changes if they are not going to be made permanently to affect people’s behavior. I think that the tax cuts added perhaps a few tenths of a percent to economic growth, but undoubtedly there are other kinds of policies that would have done just as well. The growth that the administration is so proud of is essentially what we would have gotten if we had done nothing.
Bush says he wants to balance the budget, but the problem is that the financial commitments that have been made under this president will extend long, long after he is out of office. The fact that the budget may or may not balance by some measure at some point in the near future is essentially irrelevant to the basic fiscal situation. The problem is that once the baby boomers start retiring, the financial commitments he’s made will cause the deficit to rise dramatically, and some future president will have to deal with it.
On occasion Bush has made proposals and recommendations that I personally agree with, but they have been pursued with such ineptness that he has made things worse. He’s poisoned the well. An example is Social Security reform. I favor personal accounts, but Bush has gone about advocating this position in such an incredibly stupid way that in future years it will be hard for anybody to advance those kinds of options as reform proposals without being ridiculed. People will say, “Oh, that’s just the same old Bush proposal that nobody paid any attention to,” and you’re just not going to get any traction on it.
If Bush were listening to me, I’d suggest that we cut our losses in Iraq under whatever reasonable circumstances apply, but I’m not sure what he can do. At some point you just have to hope things work out or leave it to your successor to clean up the mess. It’s grossly unrealistic to think that this president is ever going to admit error in any way. He doesn’t listen to anybody. If there were anybody on earth he would listen to, it would be his father, and he clearly has not paid the slightest bit of attention to his father’s advice or to James Baker’s, Brent Scowcroft’s, or Colin Powell’s. You can’t reason with him. You can’t do anything except wait for the clock to run out.
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