Issues '08: The Bush Legacy

Rising from the ashes

Because I like to think of myself as a sophisticated, metropolitan individual (who just happens to be from Ohio farm country and enjoy types of alcohol that can induce blindness), I picked up an issue of Harper’s that featured a fascinating, depressing article called “Undoing Bush,” which assembled a group of “journalists and thinkers” to address what the next presidential administration must do to repair the by-then eight years of “sabotage, bungling, and neglect.”

I credit the authors of the article for their insight as well as giving me a good idea for a column. Unfortunately, I must gripe that the article was only an anorexic 17 pages, which is probably more reading than President Bush did before he decided to invade Iraq, but for the rest of us who enjoy such trite pastimes as “thinking,” 17 pages just doesn’t cut it. I do not fault Harper’s for the brevity of the article. After all, they can’t very well print a thousand page issue of their magazine. But addressing the Bush administration’s catastrophic “sabotage, bungling, and neglect” in 17 pages is like trying to fit the history of the Roman Empire onto a cocktail napkin.

However, the point remains very, very apt. Whether it’s the Obama, Clinton, Thompson, or Romney presidency, the next administration is going to be faced with not only the challenges we had in the 2000 election (which now seem so highly mild in comparison: what to do with a budget surplus?) but a host of new ones created by the forces of George W. Bush.

Take the environment, which in the past six years has been handed over to corporate interests in a fashion that would shame even Ronald Reagan. Perhaps the next president can pick people to regulate industries who did not serve those industries just ten minutes earlier. The most famous example is Mark Rey, a lobbyist for the timber industry for 18 years, who just happened to be drafted for the position of undersecretary for natural resources and the environment in the Department of Agriculture. His appointment is merely a microcosm of a typical Bush administration tactic. While other Mark Reys exist in nearly every piece of the executive branch, the concept of politicizing the entire government was the true aim of this methodical group of douche bags.

Examples can be found everywhere. Take the civil service, where the most absurd examples occurred in Iraq. Rather than appointing experts to head or advise key agencies in the new Iraqi government like the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education, or the Coalition Provisional Authority’s agency to spur the private sector, the Bush administration chose a diarrhea-like hodge-podge of Republican grunts and “loyal Bushies.” This potpourri of ignorance included young ideologues pulled from the ranks of the highly conservative Heritage foundation, some of whom had never held a job with any experience relevant to their new position in Iraq. I’m not exaggerating in the least when I say that people as young, inexperienced, and unintelligent as me were literally in charge of some of the new Iraqi government’s most important operations (and remember I just told you that I basically grew up drinking moonshine and vandalizing church signs by changing inspirational scripture to profane anecdotes about “your mom”; or maybe I only told you the first part—I’ve lost so many brain cells, it’s hard to remember).

While civil service politicization can be more hilarious than what has happened to the judiciary, in the long run, the damage to the courts matters far more because the sick bastards wiping their asses with the constitution will be doing so for life. What is most uproariously funny about Bush’s judicial nominees, on the lower courts and the Supreme, is that the Christian right—George’s base, his flock, his placenta—thinks they got what they wanted. They think he gave a side-winding shit about abortion or prayer in school or gay marriage. Yes, Bush was and is certainly in agreement with them on these issues, but as Dahlia Lithwick so incisively points out, these were ancillary to his main concern, which was his own power. He only nominated justices who shared his vision of an untouchable executive branch, an imperial president with literally no scope to his authority. This is why before nominating Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, he first chose the vastly unqualified Harriet Miers, who was so stupid, the Senate actually made her re-do a simple questionnaire. Bush nominated Miers not for her stanch pro-life views or her unwavering dedication to strict constructionism, but because she is a loyal lapdog.

Skipping over a host of other issues, we’ll cut to Iraq. Iraq, however, is not just Iraq. Iraq now means our military, which has been stretched to the breaking point, has begun to miss recruiting goals, and will likely fall into the kind of rebuilding stage it saw after Vietnam whenever we finally exit the Middle East.

Iraq now means our intelligence, which has been undermined and politicized in unprecedented ways, not only in the lead-up to the Iraq war, but in every ensuing issue we’ve confronted because of that conflict. For example, Bush will, until the end of time, tell us that we must stay in Iraq because al-Qaeda is there and they will follow us home when we leave. This completely ignores our actual “intelligence” which has found that the group “al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia” has no operational ties with Osama bin Laden’s organization and is responsible for only a fraction of the actual violence in the country.

Finally, Iraq means our standing in the world. While we may think of ourselves in such trite, thoughtless terms as “the greatest country on earth,” 99% of the rest of the world thinks of us as a nose-picking, masturbating giant who would gladly tear the roof of a house to get at the cookie jar on the first floor. Repairing our image will not only mean extricating ourselves from Iraq in a manner that does not leave the country in a complete genocidal bloodbath, but also leading the way on protecting innocent civilians in Darfur, stepping up to bat on global climate change, and generally acting like we’re a part of the world rather than behaving like we own the place.

Of course, all this (and more) is not the work of a 17 page article any more than it is the work of a 1,200 word column. It is literally the work of generations, which brings me to the greatest thing George W. Bush did while in office: He has assured all of us—including you reading this right now—that no matter how selfish, inconsiderate, idiotic, careless, bigoted, incompetent, and ruthlessly disastrous to everyone in our lives we all are, it will never take longer than a decade to fix.

Thank you, President Bush, for at least giving the rest of us hope.