Decision ‘08

Is It Too Late For Bush?

That’s the subtext of this Peter Baker article in the Washington Post:

The war in Iraq seems to have taken a turn for the better and the opposition at home has failed in all efforts to impose its own strategy. North Korea is dismantling its nuclear program. The budget deficit is falling. A new attorney general has been confirmed despite objections from the left.

After more than two years of being buffeted by one political disaster after another, President Bush and his strategists think they may finally be getting back at least a bit of their footing. While still facing enormous challenges, from the crisis in Pakistan to the backlash over children’s health care, they hope Bush has arrested his downward spiral and established a better foundation for the remainder of his time in office.

In many ways, the shifting political fortunes may owe as much to the absence of bad news as to any particular good news. No one lately has been indicted, botched a hurricane relief effort or shot someone in a hunting accident. Instead, pictures from Iraq show people returning to the streets as often as they show a new suicide bombing. And Bush has bolstered morale inside the West Wing and rallied his Republican base through a strategy of confrontation with the Democratic Congress, built on the expansive use of his veto pen.

Yet none of this so far has particularly impressed the public at large, which remains skeptical that anything meaningful has changed and still gives Bush record-low approval ratings. The disconnect highlights his dilemma heading into the last year of his administration: Can anything short of a profound event repair an unpopular president’s public standing so late in his tenure? Can tactical victories in Washington salvage a wounded presidency?

I think it is too late for Bush, popularity-wise. Bush-hating has become a national sport far out of proportion to any rational anchor. History will no doubt judge him less harshly, overall (how could it fail too, considering how harshly the present judges him?). The exception, as always, is Iraq. History will judge our entry into this war as misguided and based on a horrible intelligence failure, helped along by ideological blinders…but the recent progress holds out the hope that the outcome of the war may still be better than we dare hoped a year ago, or even three months ago.

It won’t bring up Bush’s poll numbers, though, either way. Only one thing would do that - bringing the troops home (or at least a good chunk of them). The only way that will happen in Bush’s term is if the Iraqi government makes a giant leap forward in the area of Sunni-Shia reconciliation…and given their current glacial pace, I don’t know if we can get there…still, if - IF - the violence stays low, Iraq will be less of an albatross around the GOP’s neck than it was in 2006…

13 Responses to “Is It Too Late For Bush?”

1 Is It Too Late For Bush? Says:
November 18th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
[…] Mark placed an observative post today on Is It Too Late For Bush? […]
2 Ryan Bonneville Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 6:46 am
As always, I think you overestimate the rationality of thinking it’s okay to torture people.
3 too many steves Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 10:13 am
History’s judgment on our endeavor in Iraq will not focus on the why (intel failure) and what (tactical prosecution) so much as it will assess the result. If the result of our engagement in Iraq is greater security for Americans and a diminution of the strength and reach of al Qaeda, then Iraq will be judged a strategic success. Public opinion is fickle and ephemeral and therefore of no consequence to the historical assessment of a presidency.
4 Ryan Bonneville Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 11:13 am
And if the result of our “engagement” is, as looks likely, a decade of basically no political progress in Iraq and continued hostility toward America in the region - with the requisite provocation of Iran, assuming we don’t also decide to go to war with them - can we finally declare Iraq a strategic failure? When exactly do Republicans get to stop moving the goalposts and actually own up to the mess they’ve created? If a Democrat had started this war, every single one of you would be clamoring about what a horrible idea it was. When do we get to finally admit that which is blindingly obvious to everyone who isn’t a Republican, which is that Iraq is a mess and George Bush is making it up as he goes?
5 too many steves Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Of course but that analysis is simply of a moment in time. If it makes you feel better, this conservative admits that the there was an enormous intelligence failure leading to our entry into Iraq, and the execution has been terribly flawed - both of those are tactical failures and irrelevant to the strategic value. We are now experiencing success which, if lasting and continued, could allow the US to come out smelling like a rose after stepping in a bucket of sh*%.

I get the sense that for you there is no set of circumstances that would cause you to judge Iraq as anything but folly.
6 peter Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 11:56 am
“History will no doubt judge him less harshly, overall (how could it fail too, considering how harshly the present judges him?)”

I expect the judgment of history to be even harsher than current popular opinion. When this famously secretive administration can no longer use executive privelege to prevent its secrets from coming out — and when everyone except Barney has written a tell-all memoir — then future historians will have much more data which point to Bush as the Worst President Ever. (My guess: it will be amended to include By A Long Shot).
7 too many steves Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
We should make a list of the predictions and have awards for those who are correct. Trouble is we will have to revisit the contest in multi-year increments (say, 5 years) because the opinion of historians changes over time.
8 Andy Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
If you want an example of a failed quagmire, look at the limbo that Kosovo is in. She wants self-determination, but the UN & EU are scared to let that happen, lest the Islamists take the reins.

So here we are nearly a decade later in some sort of suspended animation with no political progress internally nor externally.
9 too many steves Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Which is a good, recent example of the argument against nation building and why we should eschew “foreign entanglements”. Tactically though, colonialism is so much less complicated and effective.
10 Ryan Bonneville Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
TMS, you are correct that there is nothing that would convince me that the war in Iraq was anything but folly. It was a war waged under false pretenses (although I agree with Mark that that was a mistake and not a lie - history may say differently, as Peter argues, but for now I will give this White House the benefit of the doubt on WMD), of little to no strategic value, that has cost a whole lot of money and lives, and that is going to continue for a very long time. It’s the sort of foreign entanglement that would have made George Washington’s head explode, and it has been nothing if not incompetently botched the entire time.

“Botched”, of course, does not do justice to the mess, though. The very worldview that motivated this, that the US is somehow entitled to be the boss of the Middle East and unilaterally declare preemptive war against countries (which have very bad leaders, we all admit) that pose no existential threat, is so misguided, wrongheaded, depraved, and illegitimate that I have no idea how we can ever extract ourselves from this madness - nor do I have any idea how we can convince angry, militant young Muslims that we aren’t, in fact, out to destroy their way of life (a way of life that is often deeply horrible, but that is not our job to police). War with Iran would only be the icing on this lunatic cake.

Now, all that said, I hope and pray (well, I don’t pray, but you get the idea) just as much as you do that something good comes of this. As of now, I side with the liberal internationalist and libertarian schools of foreign policy that insist our continued presence isn’t really helping and that the cessation of violence has an awful lot to do with forced ethnic separation that would have occurred with or without us. I don’t think there are good reasons to believe the country would collapse any faster without us there - and so I support troop withdrawal because I don’t believe our troops make a particularly big difference, not because I have any desire to screw the Iraqis. We have already done quite enough of that, thank you kindly.
11 Mark Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Peter, I am shocked - SHOCKED, I say - to hear you opine that Barney will not publish a tell-all. Of all the Bush administration figures, his would be the one I would want to read. I hope you are stating your opinion only and don’t have any inside information to that effect…
12 Peter Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
That’s why Harry Truman said ““If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog”. They don’t write books.
13 Mark Says:
November 20th, 2007 at 12:19 am
Well, he could have just left out “in Washington” and it would have been just as true. I have a long bipartisan love of presidential pets. I was very sad to hear that Clinton’s dog Buddy passed on…and I’m sure many Bush haters can’t help but crack a smile at Barney’s antics (have you ever seen the Christmas videos they put together? Very cute)…