Daniel Franklin: How Could Bush (If He’s Interested) Recover His Reputation?
[Daniel Franklin is currently Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia.]
President Bush’s protestations notwithstanding, his presidency was a failure and is likely to be judged as such by future generations of historians. Bush likes to refer to the Truman presidency as a model for his own resurrection, but I don’t think the analogy applies. Truman reeled from one crisis to another, from the death of Roosevelt to the atom bomb, to the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, to the Berlin Blockade and the list goes on right up to the invasion of Korea.
Truman is now recognized as a great to near-great president because he dealt with crises and in doing so came up with some pretty good solutions given the constraints. Furthermore, by the time Eisenhower came into office, with the exception of Korea, most of the challenges Truman faced were stabilized or put to rest. President Bush leaves us with many “disappointments” as he likes to put it, unsettled situations dumped in the new president’s lap. In that regard, he is not like Truman at all.
With W. gone, President Obama will frantically have to deal with a quickly degrading economy, a federal budget gone south, our policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan in a shambles, the Middle East recently embroiled in a shooting war, environmental concerns, health care issues and the list goes on. A good president doesn’t hand off crises to the next the way Bush has.
Nevertheless, I suspect that President Bush is comfortable with his administration, although why he feels that way is a mystery to me. So it is most likely that he will spend the rest of his time playing golf, tending to his library, and making an occasional speech. I doubt he will act as Truman did the role of elder statesman. He probably won’t be tapped. He just is not perceived to be that competent; he has never proved his intellectual mettle.
How can a president recover his reputation? Public service.
But if he did want to recover his reputation, what could he do? I think it’s instructive in this regard to examine the experiences of five ex-presidents whose administrations were judged to be resounding failures. First, let me say that I’m going to leave living presidents out of the equation. Theirs is an experience that is too recent to be judged. But John Quincy Adams, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, William Howard Taft and Herbert Hoover are all considered substandard presidents. However, Adams recovered his reputation, Taft and Hoover are at least well regarded as public servants and Pierce and Buchanan are derided or forgotten.
What did Adams do to recover his reputation? He got back on the horse. After he left the presidency, he returned to Massachusetts where he eventually ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. There he served with distinction as THE voice of the abolitionist movement. He was probably just as influential, if not more so, in his ex-presidency as he was when he was president and in what history has proved, on the right side.
Taft went on to become Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He is considered a competent if not great jurist. But he came to the court late in his life and in addition to his service prior to becoming president, he is now considered a fine public servant if not a great president. Pretty much the same can be said for Herbert Hoover, who, after he left the presidency served in a number of roles in service to the public including European relief and acting as chair of a commission for government reform.
Buchanan presided over the collapse of the Union. He went home to Pennsylvania to write his memoirs to attempt to recover his reputation. But with the outbreak of the Civil War and the fact that he lived only six more years after he left office, Buchanan was forgotten and disappeared in the annals of history. (Actually, I think he gets a bad rap. The Civil War had been coming for forty years and he, like Hoover, was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time.)
Pierce is probably the most tragic ex-president. As Pierce left office, he was so unpopular that the citizens of his home town drew up a petition to request that he not move back to town after he left the White House. He spent much of the Civil War criticizing Lincoln, so virulently in fact that when Lincoln was shot an angry mob surrounded Pierce’s home. They figured he was in on the plot. After he lost his beloved wife, Pierce drifted back into alcoholism and died a forgotten drunk. By the way, George W. Bush is related to Pierce on his mother’s side.
What I am saying is that failed Presidents recover their reputation through public service. It remains to be seen whether the new model of charitable giving and private diplomacy as practiced by Carter, Clinton and H.W. Bush are sufficient to recover a reputation. But what does seem to work is to continue to serve.
Will Bush do so? Doubt it.
Of course, in all of these cases, the individuals involved had an inkling that their administrations had failed. Does now former President Bush have that capacity for introspection? I doubt it and suspect, therefore, that his reputation as president will never recover.
Read entire article at Britannica Blog
President Bush’s protestations notwithstanding, his presidency was a failure and is likely to be judged as such by future generations of historians. Bush likes to refer to the Truman presidency as a model for his own resurrection, but I don’t think the analogy applies. Truman reeled from one crisis to another, from the death of Roosevelt to the atom bomb, to the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, to the Berlin Blockade and the list goes on right up to the invasion of Korea.
Truman is now recognized as a great to near-great president because he dealt with crises and in doing so came up with some pretty good solutions given the constraints. Furthermore, by the time Eisenhower came into office, with the exception of Korea, most of the challenges Truman faced were stabilized or put to rest. President Bush leaves us with many “disappointments” as he likes to put it, unsettled situations dumped in the new president’s lap. In that regard, he is not like Truman at all.
With W. gone, President Obama will frantically have to deal with a quickly degrading economy, a federal budget gone south, our policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan in a shambles, the Middle East recently embroiled in a shooting war, environmental concerns, health care issues and the list goes on. A good president doesn’t hand off crises to the next the way Bush has.
Nevertheless, I suspect that President Bush is comfortable with his administration, although why he feels that way is a mystery to me. So it is most likely that he will spend the rest of his time playing golf, tending to his library, and making an occasional speech. I doubt he will act as Truman did the role of elder statesman. He probably won’t be tapped. He just is not perceived to be that competent; he has never proved his intellectual mettle.
How can a president recover his reputation? Public service.
But if he did want to recover his reputation, what could he do? I think it’s instructive in this regard to examine the experiences of five ex-presidents whose administrations were judged to be resounding failures. First, let me say that I’m going to leave living presidents out of the equation. Theirs is an experience that is too recent to be judged. But John Quincy Adams, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, William Howard Taft and Herbert Hoover are all considered substandard presidents. However, Adams recovered his reputation, Taft and Hoover are at least well regarded as public servants and Pierce and Buchanan are derided or forgotten.
What did Adams do to recover his reputation? He got back on the horse. After he left the presidency, he returned to Massachusetts where he eventually ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. There he served with distinction as THE voice of the abolitionist movement. He was probably just as influential, if not more so, in his ex-presidency as he was when he was president and in what history has proved, on the right side.
Taft went on to become Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He is considered a competent if not great jurist. But he came to the court late in his life and in addition to his service prior to becoming president, he is now considered a fine public servant if not a great president. Pretty much the same can be said for Herbert Hoover, who, after he left the presidency served in a number of roles in service to the public including European relief and acting as chair of a commission for government reform.
Buchanan presided over the collapse of the Union. He went home to Pennsylvania to write his memoirs to attempt to recover his reputation. But with the outbreak of the Civil War and the fact that he lived only six more years after he left office, Buchanan was forgotten and disappeared in the annals of history. (Actually, I think he gets a bad rap. The Civil War had been coming for forty years and he, like Hoover, was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time.)
Pierce is probably the most tragic ex-president. As Pierce left office, he was so unpopular that the citizens of his home town drew up a petition to request that he not move back to town after he left the White House. He spent much of the Civil War criticizing Lincoln, so virulently in fact that when Lincoln was shot an angry mob surrounded Pierce’s home. They figured he was in on the plot. After he lost his beloved wife, Pierce drifted back into alcoholism and died a forgotten drunk. By the way, George W. Bush is related to Pierce on his mother’s side.
What I am saying is that failed Presidents recover their reputation through public service. It remains to be seen whether the new model of charitable giving and private diplomacy as practiced by Carter, Clinton and H.W. Bush are sufficient to recover a reputation. But what does seem to work is to continue to serve.
Will Bush do so? Doubt it.
Of course, in all of these cases, the individuals involved had an inkling that their administrations had failed. Does now former President Bush have that capacity for introspection? I doubt it and suspect, therefore, that his reputation as president will never recover.