Clift: The End of the Bush Era

Other presidents have had lower approval ratings. But President Bush holds the record for the longest, sustained period of public dissatisfaction with his leadership. Almost his entire second term has been marked by sub-par ratings. He leaves office with 28% job approval, according to the latest Gallup poll—the lowest of his presidency. Such widespread rejection should provoke introspection, but Bush remains unrepentant. He interprets his dismal standing with the American people as evidence of his willingness to defy public opinion and do what is right, or rather, what he thinks is right, regardless of evidence to the contrary. The lower his polls go, the more correct he thinks he is.

He made a hash of his presidency, but he kept America safe from another 9/11-style attack. That's the core of his presidency, and how he hopes to be remembered. Here's his argument: It didn't happen again and it would have happened again if I hadn't done what I did, so stuff your criticism. The problem for us mere mortals is that it's an un-testable proposition. It might be true for all we know, but it's frustrating to evaluate arguments in the negative backed up by secret information. Bush alludes in general terms to threats warded off and life-saving actions his administration took because of intelligence gained from "enhanced interrogation techniques," a phrase that will go down as emblematic of his presidency in the same way "modified limited hangout" evokes the Nixon era.

Bush is making the same opaque argument on the TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program)—that for all the griping about how his administration mishandled the bailout, things would have been much worse if they hadn't done it. And the fact is that Bush's case is impossible to prove—or refute. It's a little like definitively answering: Is there a God? Like religion, a lot of what Bush is saying has to be taken on faith. Maybe there is classified information about threats that he averted that were clear and present dangers as opposed to the distant and prospective plots that have been publicized. And maybe the necessary information was procured through unsavory means. I'm inclined to give Jack Bauer the benefit of the doubt on "24" as he pursues the bad guys. I'd be more willing to cut Bush some slack if Dick Cheney wasn't running the show.

Pressed on the unpopularity of the administration's war policies by the News Hour's Jim Lehrer, Cheney was unbending in his defense of the Iraq invasion, even citing Al Qaeda links to Saddam Hussein that have been discredited. He suggested that the public reaction to what he considers hard truths are proof of their necessity and virtue. Lehrer kept pressing the question of whether in a democracy the adverse reaction of the American people over a period of time should be taken into account. Cheney dismissed the argument, saying the administration did what it had to under the banner of national security, and if the public didn't like it, they could have voted Bush out of office. Instead Bush won re-election "comfortably," a green light that served as a mandate. "The public gets to decide whether or not they want to continue us in office. Obviously, we weren't up in '08, but they certainly did in '04," Cheney said, seemingly oblivious to the damage Bush has done to the Republican brand.

In an exchange reported by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in one of his insider books, British Prime Minister Tony Blair confessed to doubts about the course of the Iraq War when he read letters from the families of fallen soldiers saying how much they despised him. When Blair asked Bush how he felt, Bush replied without hesitation, "I haven't suffered any doubt." The non-reflective Bush was on full display in his farewell address to the country, warning in Manichean terms of the evil that lurks out there, and insisting that the rightness of his cause should take precedence in evaluating his presidency over the heap of woes he leaves his successor.

The speech, with its recycled rhetoric, was Bush at its worst. Earlier in the week at his final press conference we got a good long look at Bush, and he was at turns defiant, funny, sarcastic, charming, and above all, authentic, a man who was in over his head and should never have become president. I can't begrudge him on his way out the door for grasping the one thing that is indisputable—that America hasn't been attacked since 9/11 even as he glides over the fact that the terrorist attacks happened on his watch. He takes credit for the surge stabilizing Iraq and ignores the terrible consequences of the war from the lives lost and the million displaced to the empowerment of Iran, a much more dangerous enemy than Saddam Hussein. He insists he's not isolated but he sees the federal response to Katrina as a success, citing 30,000 people pulled from rooftops in the 72 hours after the storm, and casting criticism as an attack on the first responders. He's entitled to his view of history, but it's not one many people share.