James Wolcott: How Bush Stacks Up

Most people fear death. It’s something they’d prefer to skip, if possible, or at least put off to a later date. President George W. Bush entertains a more laid-back, come-what-may attitude toward the big D, and not, I suspect, because he’s assured of a pre-boarding pass to heaven. It’s because death provides the most unassailable of alibis, the perfect getaway. It lets him off the hook, providing an escape hatch for personal accountability while history deliberates on the lasting achievements and ruinous legacies of his presidency. No matter how lousy his approval ratings, how low America’s esteem sinks in the world, how hacktacular his political appointments, Bush takes comfort in the knowledge that posterity takes a long time to deliver its final draft (“There’s no such thing as short-term history as far as I’m concerned,” he told NBC’s Brian Williams on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina), and by then he’ll be compost. It’s difficult to think of any modern inhabitant of the Oval Office who has contemplated his own mortality aloud more often than Bush, or drawn more consolation from its graveyard perspective. On the last page of Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack (2004), Bush, asked how history would judge the war in Iraq, verbally shrugs: “History. We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.” And on the first page of Robert Draper’s Dead Certain (2007), Bush cautions, “You can’t possibly figure out the history of the Bush presidency—until I’m dead,” then inserts a piece of cheese into his mouth. This exit clause isn’t something he invokes only to reporters. In Bill Sammon’s The Evangelical President (2007), an aide confirms to the susceptible author that Bush doesn’t brood about the petty setbacks that bedevil less serene souls: “His attitude is a very healthy one. He says, ‘Look, history will get it right and we’ll both be dead. Who cares?’ ” If only the estimated 1.5 million Iraqis displaced by the war and driven into Syrian exile could adopt such a healthy outlook, maybe they too would learn how not to sweat the small stuff.

As bad news laps over the transom, President Bush is sustained by his religious faith and his self-serving identification with the travails of his epic predecessors—Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman—who were put through the wringer by the challenges of their times and eventually lionized for their vision and fortitude, once all the bloodstains came out of the laundry. The power and majesty of the office Bush holds afford him the summit view to compare his crucible of fire with those that came before, and to ponder where he may eventually rank on the Presidential Firm-Resolve Leadership Peter Meter, whether he’ll acquire in retirement that beloved Reaganesque sunset aura. Unfortunately, the rest of us don’t have the luxury of picking out which china pattern goes best with our legacy. In varying degrees of impact, we’re at the receiving end of the decisions the Decider makes, and have to live with the consequences while he prepares for a long siesta of kicking back at the Crawford, Texas, ranch, building a Freedom Institute, and hitting the lecture circuit to “replenish the ol’ coffers” (Draper, Dead Certain). We’re in damage-assessment mode, unwilling to wait for death to render a verdict. In the endless pause until a newly elected pseudo-dictator swears the oath of office on January 20, 2009, publishers are pumping out one exhaustive indictment and eyewitness memoir after another about the still-unfolding Bush era, and with each new addition to the stack (among the books on deck in 2008: Fred Kaplan’s Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power, Russ Hoyle’s Going to War: How Misinformation, Disinformation, and Arrogance Led America into Iraq, and former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s memoir, What Happened), Bush himself looms larger and emptier, the front man for a fire sale on civil liberties, environmental protections, and constitutional values who’s managed to maintain a flaky-piecrust persona....