Remembrance of Presidents Past
George W. Bush on himself:
In an interview conducted earlier this month by his sister, Doro Bush Koch, Mr. Bush said he wanted to be remembered “as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process.”
“I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values,” Mr. Bush said. “And I darn sure wasn’t going to sacrifice those values; that I was a President that had to make tough choices and was willing to make them. I surrounded myself with good people. I carefully considered the advice of smart, capable people and made tough decisions.”
Unlike many things that come out of his mouth, this is basically true. Bush considered the advice of smart, capable people such as Colin Powell, Richard Clarke, Rand Beers, Paul O’Neal, Christie Todd Whitman, etc. and he chose to regret it. These were tough choices. The destinies of billions of people around the world were in one way or another effected. Hundreds of thousands of lives lay directly in the balance. And rather taking the advice of smart, capable people Bush decided to take the advice of dumb, inept people. And he did it, as he says, because he was following his values — immoral values that he he shared with the people on whose counsel he preferred to rely. The results have been disastrous and are plain to see.
60 Responses to “Remembrance of Presidents Past”
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November 29th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
That’s harsh.
I am willing to give the man this much: his values were
not immoral contrary to
what you assert, but he did not
have the intellectual temperament to listen to sage
advice to achieve the ends implied by those values.
This difference does not matter much for so many
people who have been affected adversely
by his policies, but
after all he is a Christian, and his moral compass
cannot be that skewed.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
rather than taking
November 29th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
is Gregor serious, or is his post a parody?
If there is indeed a Christian God, Bush will be burning in the fires of hell for all eternity.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Hitler could have said something similar as Bush said here, as well as Gandhi – or me: “My intentions were good.”
In that respect there is no difference between Hitler, Gandhi, Bush, myself – or you:
All humans are convinced that they act according to their values and principles, and that these are valid and good, etc. That is the way our brain works.
If you want to judge your own actions or those of the others you have to look at the results, not at the intentions.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
This reminds me of a column David Brooks wrote a while back. His basic argument was yea, Bush may have made some bad decisions, but at least he sticks by them and is decisive. Indeed, there was this popular strain of thought for a substantial period during the past eight years that argued that Bush was a good leader because he is decisive and sticks to his decisions. Which of course was really, really stupid. I hope that people don’t give him a pass in his post-presidency years because, yea he sucked, but he was decisive and stuck to his decisions!
November 29th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
I think that Bush’s statement inevitably leads to the conclusion MY draws from it, but it’s actually even simpler than that. It was not difficult for Bush to reject good advice because he did put such a premium on his gut instincts, and doing so was both immoral and showed poor character.
I’m trying hard here not to be shrill. Bush consciously governed in such a way that placed the expertise of experts about how best to help the country at a distance from the levers of power, and it’s difficult to come up with an explanation for doing so that does not result in the conclusion “immoral” and “poor character.” It follows from the very premises Bush is laying out.
Really, Bush’s only out would have been if his instincts somehow really were that good. If all of his bets had yielded benefits, then sure, that would have worked. But Bush is a person of ordinary intelligence wedded to a rigid anti-government, low-tax, pro-business ideology, and under those circumstances, consciously rejecting empiricism could only have turned out badly. In short, Bush may not be “dumb” but he was way too conventional and uninteresting an intellect to get away with just riding the conservative ideology over the waterfall in a barrel. You’d have to be a genius to pull that off (geniuses generally don’t discard information though), and Bush isn’t that.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Dumb people like Cheney and Rumsfeld? For a guy who can’t spell, has trouble forming complete sentences, and hasn’t accomplished anything but graduating from Harvard, that’s a bit hard to take.
Bush did exactly what he promised he’d do. That the Iraq war turned out to be more difficult than many expected didn’t mean it was a good idea to lose it, and despite its unpopularity, Bush didn’t allow us to.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Bush did exactly what he promised he’d do.
Yeah, like that promise of a “humble foreign policy” he made in 2000. A man of his word, that George W.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
“and he chose to regret it”
i’m thinking you probably meant to write:
“chose to ignore it”
November 29th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
jeff, he promised that he’d address the threat posed by Saddam’s Iraq, and he did that, as promised. He also delivered the Medicare prescription drug benefit, and tax cuts, and education reform.
But, yes, you are right that the tone of the foreign policy hasn’t been as promised, and it’s also fair to note that, contrary to what Bush in 2000 suggested, the US has been involved in lots of nation-building. The Democratic/Clinton position has been vindicated by its ratification by the Bush administration is one way to look at it. Another is that there was an intervening event.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
If you redefine winning to mean “killing tens if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians in order to expand Iran’s influence in the Middle East, let Afghanistan hang, and let Bin Laden remain at large”, then yes, we have definitely won.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
dave, I have the feeling that you are the sort of moron who thinks that more troops in Afghanistan will allow us to capture bin Laden. Of course a post-Saddam Iraq is less of a counterweight to Iran. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to demonstrate, except that first-order realpolitik foreign policy is alive and well among the dim-witted.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
oh, and by the way:
this post is nowhere near harsh enough.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Thomas, there are many ways to persuade. Referring people who have differing opinions as morons is one tactic, but in my experience it doesn’t tend to yield results.
As to substance of your argument, there are many lines of evidence and personal testimony that when OBL was trapped at Tora Bora, US attention had already turned to getting ready for the big party in Iraq. How that is a credit to Mr. Bush, I’ll leave to you to explain.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Of course, accommodating the political process is what we elect the president to do. Once he realized the job was in conflict with his own personal beliefs, he should have resigned. Instead, he decided to abdicate in place, accounting for the last several years of drift.
November 29th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Thomas refers to people smarter than him as morons as a matter of projection. His claim that Bush removed the threat of Saddam Hussein is a perfect example of his monstrous idiocy (for those keeping track the pronoun actually works no matter which idiot you apply it to).
Tell us Thomas the Moron – how was Saddam Hussein going to threaten the United States? Was it his massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons? Perhaps his anthrax loaded ICBMs?
You are a total fucking moron Thomas. You know nothing and you defend your support of the worst President in the lifetimes of anyone on this board with transparent nonsense.
Here’s a clue dipshit, tax cuts that increase our debt are nothing more than tax delays. That giveaway to the drug companies is more idiocy. Bush has demonstrated that conservatives like Thomas provide no value in government and Thomas himself demonstrates that they provide no value in discussion.
November 29th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
“he chose to regret it.”
Dude – what does that even *mean*?
“And rather taking the advice of smart, capable people…”
It’s a good thing your blog is free. I can’t imagine paying to read somebody who cares as little about his writing as you do.
November 29th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Ever been to a ground breaking ceremony? Chrome plated shovels, or over sized scissors are wielded by dignitaries. Symbolic illusion.
Bush is that ceremonial tool.
The chrome has worn off, and the scissors where never meant to cut anything but ribbon. He got his values, his vengeful God, when he “stopped” drinking.
His life is about more than an accounting of what worked and what did not work for us. Because his presidency was never about us, the people. It was only about him. “I’m the decider”.
As with all of his other attempts at success, it finally comes down to us to bail him out from his delusions. Or maybe that should be “our” delusions.
November 29th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Nope, that’s what the comma was in there for. Afghanistan hanging is one thing, finding Bin Laden is another, and in any case, it sounds like he’s hanging out in Pakistan. That’s really beside the point though. You say that we now have victory in Iraq. Fucking wonderful. What does that mean, and what’s in it for us? The Iraqi government, for as long as it manages to function, isn’t going to be our BFF. God only knows how many Iraqi civilians have been killed or become refugees, but it’s not a small number. Finally, there’s still the impact on the surrounding countries, mostly Turkey and Iran. Turkey, our NATO ally, gets to deal with an Iraqi Kurdistan that will most likely become fully independent, whereas Iran, birth place of the “Death to America” chant, gets expanded influence with the Shi’ite majority of Iraq.
Seriously, what was the fucking up side to our invasion?
November 29th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Jeff, sorry, just aping Matt’s style here, where differences in opinion are reduced to differences in intellectual aptitude. But really, there’s no evidence to support your suggestion that the US or the Bush administration or however you want to phrase it was focused on Iraq in December of 2001.
evil, I know and enjoy it when I meet someone smarter than me, but that aint happening here. Your suggestion that risk-assessment should be done on a post-hoc basis is interesting, to say the least, and fits perfectly with the foreign policy we had prior to 9/11. As for the rest, I suppose you oppose Obama’s “tax cuts”? The prescription drug benefit is a giveaway, but to old people, which is apparently what people want.
dave, backing up, did you vote for Al Gore? Because you might remember that he criticized Bush Sr. and Cheney for refusing to take Baghdad in 1991. Would a new Iraq government in 1991 have been our BFF? Would the impact on Turkey and Iran been different? I’m curious when you adopted your simplistic realpolitik analysis which suggests that the goal of US foreign policy should have been keeping Saddam in power.
November 29th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
But really, there’s no evidence to support your suggestion that the US or the Bush administration or however you want to phrase it was focused on Iraq in December of 2001.
Oh really, Thomas? Try the Google.
‘We haven’t seen Bin Laden since Tora Bora – we were distracted by Iraq,’ U.S. admits
The other major obstacle to the search was the war in Iraq, with officials from the CIA and the U.S. military saying they began shifting resources out of Afghanistan early in 2002 – and they still have not recovered from that mistake.
“Iraq was a fundamental wrong turn,” John Brennan, a former deputy executive director of the CIA and a former chief of the National Counter-terrorism Centre, told American media.
“The collective effort in the government required to go after an individual like Bin Laden – the Iraq campaign consumed that.”
Thanks for playing, Thomas!
November 29th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
..sorry about not closing the tag.
November 29th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
According to Woodward’s Plan of the Attack, Bush had Tommy Franks start planning for Iraq 2 months after 9/11. That would be Nov 2001. Which is before Dec 2001, no?
November 29th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
But really, there’s no evidence to support your suggestion that the US or the Bush administration or however you want to phrase it was focused on Iraq in December of 2001.
“Beginning in late December 2001, President Bush met repeatedly with Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his war cabinet to plan the U.S. attack on Iraq even as he and administration spokesmen insisted they were pursuing a diplomatic solution, according to a new book on the origins of the war.”
November 29th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Since Jeff S. beat me to it, I’ll add that this seems to have been reported at the time; I don’t give much credence to anonymous sources in the UK press, but everything they reported turned out to be accurate AFAIK.
November 29th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Matt, if this blog is important to you then please proofread before pressing the button, and if you catch it after you submit, then edit it.
OK, enough about that. About Bush, I don’t think he’s evil at all and the idea that he is doesn’t make any sense. He is a true believer in a few basic propositions, some of them ridiculous on their face but accepted by large numbers of non-crazy people, others not even ridiculous. That’s fine as far as it goes. His major failing, which you can construct as an ethical one if you really have to, is that he had no sense of his own limitations and he hold in contempt those who would question him. Hubris, in a word. It’s had the results Matt has described, but it’s not hubris in support of some Orwellian notion of the foot on our neck for ever more.
November 29th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Oh. It’s all about him.
November 29th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
It’s a good thing your blog is free. I can’t imagine paying to read somebody who cares as little about his writing as you do.
Can we stop this tedious bullshit about how Matt Yglesias can’t spell. It’s not that he CAN’T SPELL. It’s that spelling isn’t that goddamn important. If you can’t figure out that he meant to say “reject” when he wrote “regret” or that there’s a missing “than”, then don’t read this blog. Go read Instapundit, where every “heh” and “indeed” conform to the standards of English spelling.
As for accomplishments, the guy has written for the Atlantic, for the American Prospect, and now for CAP. He’s published a book. He’s not yet thirty. What other kinds of accomplishments do you need in order to say that Bush has been a fucking horrible president who misled us into a war in Iraq, botched another one in Afghanistan, spent more money than LBJ, and finished his presidency with the worst financial crisis in 70 years?
November 29th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Joe, I agree with you that Matt can spell, and people who use the poor spelling to dismiss his arguments are being silly. Matt is one of my favorite bloggers, and I check his blog over ten times a day; I waited in line this summer to get him to autograph my copy of ‘Heads in the Sand’. Still, I have to admit that the spelling and grammar mistakes sometimes drive me nuts.
It’s true that the meaning of what he writes is often clear, even when there’s an error. But sometimes, it genuinely isn’t, such as when the word ‘not’ is missing from a sentence. There have been times when I’ve read a sentence or paragraph 2-3 times to figure out whether Matt genuinely meant the opposite of what I thought he was leading up to, or if he was being sarcastic, or if it was just a typo.
One should respect ones readers enough that one makes sure ones work is largely error-free, to ensure that the readers don’t spend minutes scratching their heads and trying to figure out whether the last paragraph means what it says, or the opposite. I appreciate that blogs are a fast-paced medium, but how hard is it to actually proofread? For a post of this length, it shouldn’t take more than a minute. For the dyslexic, it may be difficult without an additional proofreader, but on a much-visited blog like this, the commenters are happy to perform that service; all that the blogger needs to do is update his posts once the first person points out an error.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Leo Brux,
Er, people do things they know to be wrong all the time. Please see Chesterton’s “The EVerlasting Man” where he talks about “self-conscious diablism’.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
One should respect ones readers enough that one makes sure ones work is largely error-free, to ensure that the readers don’t spend minutes scratching their heads and trying to figure out whether the last paragraph means what it says, or the opposite.
I’ve read him for 3 years now. I think in the course of 3 years, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been genuinely confused because of a typo, as opposed to thinking, “he must’ve forgotten a ‘not’”. That’s a pretty decent track record on the clarity front. You could stack that up against his former colleagues at The Atlantic, where I could count on several hands the number of times I’ve read something THIS FALL that he’s had to retract, and Megan McArdle, who I don’t read because she’s full of shit.
Gratuitous swipes at his former colleagues aside, one apparently needs to respect one’s readers enough to generate decent arguments, although on the Intertubes, Instapundit doesn’t even do that and he’s got a ton of readers. Spelling, if Matt’s success is any indicator, doesn’t have much to do with it.
But I guess when you point out that Bush has been awful, and you assemble some arguments for that proposition, and people don’t have a rejoinder, they’ve got to hone in on something. So spelling it’ll have to be…
And I’ll note for the rest of the commentariat here, that Yglesias doesn’t pay me a dime to be a fanboy.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
The Atlantic, where I could count on several hands the number of times I’ve read something THIS FALL that he’s had to retract, and Megan McArdle, who I don’t read because she’s full of shit.
Not respecting my readers, I left out a crucial name:
The Atlantic, where I could count on several hands the number of times I’ve read something THIS FALL by Andrew Sullivan that he’s had to retract, and Megan McArdle, who I don’t read because she’s full of shit.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Ah the classic “if you didn’t support the Iraq war, then you wanted Saddam to be in power” line. And when did you stop beating your wife?
Of course I voted for Gore. I seem to remember that there were more policy differences than what should have happened in 1991.
I also love how analyzing how our actions can have positive and negative impacts on our foes and friends somehow becomes ’simplistic’.
And you still haven’t said what we got out of the war. Other than a boost to defense stocks and an incentive to develop better prosthetics.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Thomas, it’s quite obvious that there is pretty much no one here dumber than you. There was never any serious evidence prior to the assault on the innocents of Iraq that Saddam Hussein had the ability to threaten the United States. It takes someone remarkably stupid to still be defending Bush’s lies after all the evidence has already confirmed what people smarter than a box of frogs knew in 2002.
Since you are obviously too stupid to understand who the big winners were in the drug company giveaway we will leave that for others. The single most important issue of the last decade for Americans and for the Iraqis is your defense of mass slaughter based on no information.
Tell me Thomas, you dimwitted baboon, what evidence was there to support your contention that Bush acted to protect the United States from Saddam Hussein? Tell me, where was the evidence of an ICBM program? Where was the evidence of an active nuclear bomb program? Where, in short, was any evidence whatsoever that Iraq posed a credible threat?
Now, before you start lying again, let us consider what it means when you have evidence that leads you to conclusions that are objectively false. How does that actually constitute evidence? This makes no sense except, perhaps, to a moronic propagandist like yourself.
Bush murdered innocent Iraqis, at best, because he believed things that simply weren’t true. He started a war based on things that had no basis in reality. Even if he were just wrong it would make him a monster. That there is no reason to believe he was mistaken makes you a monster for defending him.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
The single most important issue of the last decade for Americans and for the Iraqis is your defense of mass slaughter based on no information.
Well, that was badly phrased. Nothing Thomas says is important. Nothing he does is of any significance. But Bush managed to slaughter innocent Iraqis without anything approaching a rational justification. That’s the single most important issue to face the United States, as well as Iraq. A just society would have Bush up on war crimes. We are not one. We are not one partly because morons like Thomas aren’t automatically considered unfit for conversation the moment they support unprovoked assaults on innocents.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
At the risk of further hijacking this thread, I’ll only point out that it’s a question of what standards one sets. I would much rather read Matt’s posts, even if they contain an occasional error, than those of many other bloggers, which is why I check this blog 10 times a day, and Instapundit 10 times a year, if that. But being better than Instapundit is an awfully low bar; why can’t one have both good writing and good spelling? (Not to mention a pony for everyone, or at least for me.)
Sure, significant confusion only happens to me a handful of times in a year (or in 3 years), but it’s fairly frequently that I take an extra 30 seconds to re-read and make sure I’m not missing something. Matt’s 30 seconds of proofreading time may be more valuable than the re-reading time I save, but when the gain per reader is multiplied by thousands of readers, I think investing the 30 seconds to produce a clearer post is worth it. And one doesn’t even have to triple-check every post before publishing; all I’m saying is that it would be nice if posts were updated once commenters point out errors.
November 29th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
That may be his worst typo ever. REJECT. Why doesn’t he fix them?
November 29th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Cheney and Rumsfeld aren’t “dumb” anymore than Himmler and Goering were dumb, except that I think that Rumsfeld is actually more morally repulsive than Hermann. W’s biggest malignancy is his callowness. As Jonathan chait once pointed out – he was like that little “Twilight Zone” monster that all the adults cringe around lest he turn them into a jack-in-the-box. Only, the C-I-C of the world’s only military superpower. It’s a miracle half the world isn’t in ashes.
November 29th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
This post makes no sense. Eventually I decided you probably meant to say “reject” instead of “regret”, but still wasn’t sure. But this seems to be the consensus among other confused readers.
November 29th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
I suspect that Matt’s typos are some sort of private blogging joke that he shares with his friends and it’s becoming sort of a signature. It might also be that Matt is passively-aggressively asking his bosses for an assistant. I don’t know.
I find it funny for now. But he should definitely give it up soon and get serious or get an assistant. Because It’s creeping into his long form pieces for formal publication and it detracts from his seriousness in those pieces.
I offer this with much respect and admiration for the brilliant Matt Yglesias.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:59 am
Finding a bad typo in an otherwise good post (or essay, or whatever) is like getting nicked by a tooth during fellatio or biting down on sand in a Wellfleet oyster. It doesn’t ruin the experience, but it does distract and disrupt.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:11 am
Fuck Dumbya Bush. He is no more moral than Charlie Manson is, and he doesn’t have the excuses Manson had. Dumbya was born with everything. He has never suffered a day in his life. He has chosen to be a scumbag war criminal and he should end his days in prison wondering if his food has been spit in… or worse.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:16 am
By the way, is Thomas actually Doro Bush in internet drag?
November 30th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
His dad must have been somebody. Harvard wouldn’t have let me in, and I can manage to spell English words. I can overlook the spelling problem, I just wish Matt would remember to type all the words he thinks.”And rather taking the advice of smart, capable people…” What? “Unlike many things that come out of his mouth, this is basically true. Bush considered the advice of smart, capable people such as Colin Powell, Richard Clarke, Rand Beers, Paul O’Neal, Christie Todd Whitman, etc. and he chose to regret it.” He choe to regret it? Do you mean he chose to neglect it. Someone recently said that the pundit jobs tend to go to people based on where their degree is from and not on their ability, and MY is sure evidence of that.
November 30th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
‘course, i don’t actually regret not going to Harvard.$50,000 a year is too much money just to surround yourself with towering intellects like GWB and Bill Kristol.
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:57 am
First post from Gregor:
Look at his record, even before being president.
His values, ethics, mentality etc. are completely immoral. How many innocent lives has he destroyed? And how many more in the future because of his policies and decisions based on greed, fear, lust of power, money and control.
December 2nd, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I’m counting three mistakes in this post:
Plural title “Remembrance of Presidents Past”
A missing word.
An incorrect word.
Which is pretty unprofessional for a writer but just priceless when you use the phrase “dumb, inept people” in the post.
December 5th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Coming back to the topic of the post, the main issue I see here, is the failure of politicians and the public to view flexibility of opinion as a positive thing. Think about all the crap that went on with Bush/Kerry 2004… the accusations of “flip-flopping”. Why wasn’t Kerry throwing it right back at Bush by saying “Flip flopping is good! The ability to change your opinions in order to react to the changing times is essential in this fast moving world. We can’t afford to be stubborn and stick to outdated ideas like Bush does.” Of course, the reason Kerry didn’t say this is he was a dumbass too.
I WANT a president who knows how to adapt the changing times. If that means he is subject to the ebbs-and-flows of public opinion, GOOD!
Oh, and BTW, grammar does matter when you want to be taken seriously by the majority of intelligent society who also think it matters.
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