As the curtain falls on the Bush presidency, we will inevitably try to assess his legacy. So will President Bush. He’s been doing interviews, holding press conferences, and just delivered his farewell address all in an effort to define that legacy. This effort will not end with the swearing in of President-elect Obama next Tuesday. Bush and his supporters will continue to point out the merits of his presidency in an attempt to put it in a favorable light.
It’s easy to join the choir complaining about the Bush presidency. Observers will point to his lack of engagement of ideas, combined with his overconfidence, that lead to a series of serious mistakes that will take years, if not decades, to fix.
During the last eight years there have been a host of serious setbacks, ranging from Iraq to the economy to Katrina. Bush sought to reform social security and immigration policy–failing on both fronts. His plan to redo education – No Child Left Behind – has not succeeded. But there have been no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since the horror of Sept. 11 and Bush’s initial response to Sept. 11 was widely applauded. Few will forget the day he stood on ground zero and issued a rallying cry to the entire world. There was also a good deal of economic growth for much of his presidency.
But, overall, his presidency looks like a failure. Just consider that his approval ratings hover in the 20s and he actually became the least popular president in the modern era, eclipsing the low-water marks set by Presidents Nixon and Truman.
But it will take decades before we can truly judge the Bush presidency. It’s critical to get some historical perspective. If Iraq stabilizes and peace comes to the Middle East, Bush may have a very different place in history. Remember that in August, 1864 everyone thought President Lincoln had failed and that he would not even win re-election. Yet with a few key military victories, he changed public sentiment and went on to win both the 1864 election and the Civil War. Lincoln now stands as our greatest president. When Harry Truman left office, few thought it was a successful presidency. Now we can look back on his many controversial decisions and see their merit. Nearly all historians rate Truman as a “great” or “near great” president.
Prior to the economic meltdown last fall and Bush’s tepid response to it, I could have envisioned Bush faring better in the presidential rankings than conventional wisdom now suggests. But the collapse of the economy on his watch makes him look more like Herbert Hoover than Harry Truman and that’s not good news for President Bush or his legacy.
The bottom line is that we need some time to put the Bush presidency in proper perspective. But all the signs suggest history will not be kind to the 43rd president of the United States.
John Geer is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science. This opinion piece was originally published in The Tennessean Jan. 17, 2009.
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