History Handed George W. Bush Greatness on a Platter, but He Kicked It Aside
Some American presidents cannot handle greatness. Such was George W. Bush. Only now that his presidency is finally over is it fair to judge his overall performance, since there can no longer be either any final achievement that could compensate for any of his failures, or any last disaster that would condemn him beyond any hope of redemption. For better or worse, his presidency is history. Historians can now fairly compare him to other war presidents who also faced attacks on the United States.
The very first time the United States was attacked early in a president’s term came at the beginning of Abraham Lincoln’s first term of office, when the armed forces of South Carolina attacked the United States federal military at Fort Sumter, which protected the approach to Charleston Harbor. Thus began the American Civil War, or War between the States, the war in which more Americans died than in any other war.
In a situation where the United States is under attack, even by fellow Americans, the president does not need to inspire Americans to defend their country. When Abraham Lincoln called for volunteers he readily got more than he thought he would need, and didn’t even need to draft troops for over a year, by which time he had learned that the rebels were far more serious and determined than he had imagined.
Although Lincoln thought the war would be over far sooner than it was, he still acted with courage, determination and above all the political acumen that had helped him win the presidency in the first place. He moved quickly to unite the country by getting the political opposition on board for the fight, discussing strategy with his chief rival for the presidency, Senator Stephen Douglas, and even appointing Democrat Edwin Stanton as his Secretary of War early in 1862. When one of his cabinet secretaries suggested starting wars with European powers, thinking this would bring the southern states back to fight a common enemy, Lincoln politely declined. He refused to respond to foreign provocations for the duration of the war, famously calling for “one war at a time.” He cashiered generals who freed slaves against orders, insisting that he was fighting only to defend the country against rebellion. Congress even passed a Constitutional Amendment, still theoretically capable of ratification, which would have entrenched slavery forever in the United States Constitution.
The very southern determination that so prolonged the war thrust Lincoln’s greatness upon him. After nearly a year and a half of almost unrelieved southern victories, Lincoln faced a stark choice. He could either free the slaves to deprive the southern economy of its most important labor force, or he could lose the war. He chose to declare all slaves held in rebel territory free, effectively offering them their freedom if they would desert and join the cause of the United States. It still took several months before the tide of the war began to turn at Vicksburg and Gettysburg as the steady exodus of slaves began to have an effect, but the Emancipation Proclamation won the war, and secured Lincoln’s greatness for all time as one of the most beloved of all American presidents.
The next time the United States would be attacked early in a President’s term was at Pearl Harbor. Franklin Roosevelt’s policy at the time was “Preparedness,” as most of the world was already at war. But Roosevelt was not just a bystander. His policy of sending Lend-Lease supplies to Britain and China, and in fact any nation willing to fight the Axis powers, not only helped the resistance to international aggression, the massive fiscal stimulus involved also brought the United States itself out of the Great Depression.
Roosevelt, like Lincoln, was politically savvy. He knew he led a divided nation, in which there was even significant support for the Axis powers. Like Lincoln he appointed a Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, from the opposition party, which in Roosevelt’s case was the Republican Party. Roosevelt refused pressure from others in the country for an immediate declaration of war, instead choosing to fight the Axis by means politically acceptable to his fellow Americans, many of whom were still convinced that it was impossible for an enemy to attack the United States. Inevitably those enemies would have to either attack the United States itself, or give up fighting at all.
The attack on Pearl Harbor came early in President Roosevelt’s third term of office. In the American system of fixed presidential tenure and regularly scheduled elections, this meant that Roosevelt, like Lincoln before him, had nearly a full four year term to win the war, or at least bring victory so near that the country would vote their confidence in him by sending him back to the White House for another four year term, as they had Lincoln. Here was where Roosevelt’s policy of Preparedness paid off. Thanks to the first peacetime draft in its history and an armaments buildup, the United States was ready, willing and able to participate fully in World War II as a major combatant. By winning that war and ending the Great Depression, among many, many other accomplishments, Franklin Roosevelt earned the admiration, not only of Americans but also of peoples around the world. Like Lincoln he has a place in history as one of the greatest US presidents of all time, greatness perhaps not thrust upon him, but an achievement of his own.
The contrast between these two presidents and George W. Bush could not be greater. Bush ignored warnings that al-Qa’ida, having already attacked US embassies in East Africa, intended to attack the North American mainland as well. Bush was unprepared when they did attack. Instead of seeing the war through to the bitter end by capturing or killing the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, he started a second, unrelated war, for reasons still not very clear, with a country which had had nothing to do with the attacks, and which in fact was on hostile terms with the perpetrators. For the first time in its history the United States was involved in two major, unrelated wars at the same time.
Bush also lacked the political acumen of Lincoln and Roosevelt, or perhaps even their patriotic instincts. Instead of appointing a Secretary of Defense from the opposition party, trying to rally the country to his cause through war bonds, increased military recruitment, and “Know your Enemy” education campaigns, Bush tried to use the war for political advantage. Reelected narrowly by manipulating “terror alert levels” to manipulate the public’s fear, Bush tried to use his “mandate” to privatize the Social Security system, the national plan of payments to retirees that Franklin Roosevelt had put in place to ensure that elderly Americans would no longer starve to death, as many of them had done in the Great Depression. When the majority of Americans finally realized that Saddam Hussein had had nothing to do with Al-Qa’ida or the September 11 attacks in New York, George W. Bush’s approval ratings fell dramatically, and never recovered from historic lows. It is safe to say that he will never occupy the place in the American pantheon occupied by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.
Four years after the attack on Fort Sumter, General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederate States of America were history. Four years after Pearl Harbor, General Hideki Tojo was a prisoner and the Japanese military was history. Four years, five years, six years, seven years, now eight years after the September 11 attacks, Osama bin Ladin is nowhere in sight and al-Qa’ida is now stronger than ever. History handed George W. Bush greatness on a platter, but he kicked it aside.
Bush was divisive and ineffective. Instead of boosting the armed forces through a draft (which would have been politically feasible in the wake of 9/11) or even adequate arms and supplies, Bush left the military strained nearly to the breaking point with “stop loss” programs, and a so-called “surge” that didn’t really send additional troops to Iraq but merely extended the tours of the troops who were already there. His economic mismanagement and lack of oversight (or even acumen) left the United States, and indeed the world’s, economy in its worst shape since the Great Depression. Probably the best that any historian can say about George W. Bush right now is that he will never be the worst president in the history of the United States.
That distinction remains with James Buchanan. Even had Bush been so divisive that Americans were killing each other in a bloody Civil War that called into question the very survival of the country when Bush left office, it would have taken Bush eight full years to do it. Buchanan did it in half that time. As the American Civil War raged over four years and 10,000 battlefields, producing approximately a million casualties, about the only thing both sides could agree on was that James Buchanan had been a disaster as president of the United States. May we never look on his like again.