What Bush Got Right
There’s an episode of The West Wing that I saw on Bravo a couple of weeks ago and have been thinking about since. It involved a scene where one of the staff is talking to President Bartlett about an upcoming State of the Union speech. The speech is going to include something about federal grants to provide cell phones to neighborhood watch groups. It’ll include that because it polls very well, and because the President is in political peril and needs a great State of the Union address to stay afloat. It was a reminder of the pettiness of mid-1990s politics, but also a reflection of the fact that the Bartlett administration, like the Clinton administration, and like many other politicians, had a certain imagine in its head of how politics worked. In this image, the public is full of people with all kinds of opinions. And if you ask them questions, you could discern their opinions. And if you identify things that public opinion favors, and that you also deem defensible policy goals, and then go do these things, the public’s opinion of you will go up. And that’s how politics works!
Except the evidence suggests that that isn’t actually how politics works. The evidence is that public opinion is largely incoherent, that voters do much more rationalizing than reasoning, and that people have little information about what politicians are doing or saying anyway. What matters for political sense is a few big, crude factors. And the Bush administration, whatever you say about them, seems to me to have basically understood this. There was a lot of sentiment in December 2000 and January 2001 that the weird nature of Bush’s accession to the presidency meant that he not only would but had to basically ditch his governing agenda in favor of a more centrist posture. The Bushies correctly ascertained that whether or not he succeeded in getting bipartisan glamor shots three and a half years earlier was going to have nothing to do with his re-election prospects. They saw that a President has certain powers to shape policy, that the vast majority of policy decisions have no impact whatsoever on voter behavior, and that the best thing you can do is just press ahead with what you think is best.
Unfortunately for the world, George W. Bush’s ideas about what’s best are stupid and morally deficient. And that, of course, completely vitiates whatever virtues his methods may have had.
43 Responses to “What Bush Got Right”
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January 17th, 2009 at 8:47 am
Never give Bush credit for anything. He may have stumbled into this “great” new political ideology, but that’s hardly something to cheer. Don’t feel sorry for the jerk just because he’s finally leaving…
http://www.sunstateactivist.org/ssablog/
January 17th, 2009 at 8:57 am
The West Wing was a terrible show, dramatically and politically. But it does serve as an interesting window into the naked cluelessness of a certain kind of center-right cult of the presidency.
January 17th, 2009 at 8:58 am
It was a reminder of the pettiness of mid-1990s politics, but also a reflection of the fact that the Bartlett administration, like the Clinton administration, and like many other politicians, had a certain imagine in its head of how politics worked. In this image, the public is full of people with all kinds of opinions. And if you ask them questions, you could discern their opinions. And if you identify things that public opinion favors, and that you also deem defensible policy goals, and then go do these things, the public’s opinion of you will go up. And that’s how politics works!
It seems to me this theory of politics was explained in a book somewhere…
January 17th, 2009 at 9:21 am
There’s a lot of truth to that, and it’s a good post. But it’s not the whole story. Bush managed to manipulate public opinion for a while only because of 9/11 and then a war, which galvanizes irrational patriotism. (Look at broad support for war in Israel right now.) Otherwise, he was unpopular owing to the economy then, and he’s even more unpopular now. On the public domestic measure he wanted most, privitization of social security, he still never got it.
Even with the interim years of chauvanism, Bush’s success depended on things surprisingly independent of public opinion. First, he could do a lot in private, either with executive power (altering regulations on, especially, the environment) or abusing it, often in secret. Second, he could always depend on the GOP’s amazing ability to march in lock step, giving them a legislative edge, just as in defeating Clinton measures and, I bet, Obama’s to come. And third, and we can’t say this enough, compliant media. Compliant media. Compliant media.
January 17th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Dear Matt: The two main accomplishments (so to speak) of the Bush presidency were enacting big tax cuts and starting a war. These are the two very easiest things for any leader in any system to accomplish. So big whoop.
January 17th, 2009 at 9:23 am
West wing was a terrible show.
Bartlett was weak and bullying.
Leo ran the country.
Why was it so popular?
January 17th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Earth to people writing comments: Matt is not defending the Bush presidency in this post. Please re-read the last sentence, and if necessary look up “completely” and “vitiates” in a dictionary.
January 17th, 2009 at 9:47 am
They certainly got the reading of politics right. There are only certain voting issues for anyone, elite blogger or columnist or peon dentist in the ’sticks.’ I mean I am sure Matt would have overlooked Clinton’s position on flag burning in the general election to avoid the risk of a war with Iran if McCain won.
You realistically only have two choices, and you can’t give partial a vote. So Matt’s elitist take on voter ‘confusion’ aside it’s probably the correct way to look at the political calculus.
January 17th, 2009 at 9:50 am
This post is actually making a suggestion for the Obama people, obliquely, through a sort of historical parable. Judge the parable not for what it tells us about Bush, but for what it tells us about politics.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:08 am
this is connected to the cheney doctrine of “accountability moments”.
the view is that the president does not govern with the consent or consensus of the american people. that doesn’t matter at all. even if the american people completely oppose what you are doing, you do it anyhow, because you want to or in order to reward your supporters.
all that matters is that you own the office, and once you are in the office you are a dictator. how you got into the office doesn’t matter; what you do to keep the office doesn’t matter.
you have to get it once, and that involves telling some lies, or maybe having your friends in the scotus appoint you. then you have to keep it a second time, and that involves telling some lies, esp. about the other parties candidate.
other than that, there is no accountability, there is no consent of the governed, there is just sweet, sweet, tyranny.
this philosophy, more than any particular policy, is the bush/cheney administration’s most destructive legacy to america.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:12 am
JohnH is right – any discussion that doesn’t emphasize the role of the media is deficient.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:12 am
again, what cheney realized, that nixon, for instance, never got, is that under our constitution, approval ratings mean absolutely nothing.
nixon actually resigned because the american people had turned against him. can you believe that? he actually cared what we thought, and did not think you could govern the country without popular support.
cheney looked at the institution of the presidency and so that there is no “no confidence” motion written into it. it doesn’t matter what your approval ratings are, and never has.
nixon committed the unforgiveable sin: he gave up power just because people didn’t like him. he misunderstood the nature of executive tyranny.
bush 1 committed a sin nearly as wicked: he hurt his chances for re-election by doing something beneficial for the country as a whole.
cheney made sure never to make these mistakes. that’s why he does not give a fuck about his 13% approval rating: because it means nothing to his institutional power. until next tuesday, even if his approval rating sinks to 0%, he can still have you arrested, tortured, and disappeared for life.
somehow, we’re going to have to either patch up what the constitution actually says, or at least restore the traditional understanding of it, so that we repudiate this vision of the executive as unchecked tyranny.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Karl Rove gets, in my mind, far too much credit for the political side of the bush Presidency. I’ve long thought that George Bush was not our first MBA president so much as he was our first pure political operative president.
The upside of something like that is he totally grasps things like this, which makes it possible to move an agenda.
The downside, of course, is that if you’re really not much more than a political operative, there’s this whole “governing” side to being President that you really don’t get. See, a “governing” president uses the spoils system when it comes to things like appointing the ambassador to Belgium. A political operative makes them head of FEMA. A “governing” president has discussions with other foreign leaders about how to avoid being over-scheduled by staff and losing perspective. A political operative president doesn’t notice that the bureaucracy is reporting to the vice-president, not him. A “governing” president doesn’t sit on his ass for half an hour after being told we’re under attack, and then disappear for the rest of the day, leaving it to the mayor of New York City to reassure the nation that someone is in charge and don’t worry, the union will make it through this.
Bush was a very good political operative, which is why his photo-ops were magnificent and he almost never broke character.
All that said, I do think the point above about 9/11 capital and only achieving the 2 easiest things to do, starting a war & cutting taxes, is a really key point.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Reagan was, and remains in retrospect, very popular, but his individual policies never were. In large part, this is because he showed leadership, that is, he proposed doing – and did – things which were not part of contemporary political chatter and then he stuck to them. Reagan made Congress go on record as opposing him before he would compromise, and then used the vote against you next time you ran. He appeared strong and resolute.
By contrast, Democrats as a group are terrified of getting out in front on almost any issue, always ask for a camel with one hump when they say they would prefer a camel with two hump, are constantly backing and filling the second they hear any opposition, seldom force Republicans to go on record, and thus have no record of opposition to run against. They appear weak, dissolute and incapable of defending themselves. They do not look, feel or sound like leaders.
As James Carville said, if Democrats won’t even defend themselves, why would common citizens believe Democrats would stand up for them.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Matt’s struck an important point about why the Clinton administration was at best a modest success, though it’s heart was probably in the right place: for a long time, liberals bought into a certain form of vulgar utilitarianism that was shown in that episode of West Wing. Bush correctly rejected that form of utilitarianism (though we shouldn’t give him much credit for that). Hillary Clinton, for instance, apparently still believes in it (witness her campaign strategist being Penn) and her failure in healthcare reform was partially based upon her convoluted scheme trying to be all things to all interest groups, rather than just putting out something good.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Kid bitzer wins the thread, I think.
The same way the Obama campaign’s critical primary insight was understanding that delegates, not states, win a primary, Bush/Cheney figured out that approval ratings don’t matter.
Their critical insight was there’s just one real accountability moment in a two-term presidency, re-election. And if nobody’s going to impeach you, you can then do whatever. And, of course, the accountability moment is comparative, so you can win by tearing the other guy down just as easily as building yourself up. More easily, even.
This is true, and a terrifying precedent. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Nixon was not just a better President, he was a much, much better American than either George Bush or Dick Cheney. It does appear he believed in the consent of the governed.
Alternatively, Nixon may just have feared Congress. Really, when you take impeachment off the table, I don’t understand what check exists on a second-term president. That’s a fucking problem.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:32 am
nixon actually resigned because the american people had turned against him.
No, Nixon resigned because House and Senate Republicans had turned against him and he was about to be impeached.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:33 am
nixon actually resigned because the american people had turned against him. can you believe that? he actually cared what we thought, and did not think you could govern the country without popular support.
This is not why he resigned. He resigned because the Republican Party turned against him and he was about to be impeached and removed from office. He resigned after the Republican congressional leadership came to his office and Barry Goldwater told him he would only get 15 votes for acquittal in the Senate.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:33 am
the Clinton administration was at best a modest success, though it’s heart was probably in the right place
Except for when, you know, they were killing Iraqi children by the hundreds of thousands and bombing Sudanese pharmaceutical factories.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:37 am
The first thing I thought of when reading this post is what burritoboy said: That Mark Penn doesn’t understand this. (And, for that matter, Axelrod does: note his heavy emphasis on biography).
The good news, I guess, is that Hillary is at the one post where – aside from Israel – she’ll be walled off from public opinion.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Talk about not being able to see the forest. Matt, Bush didn’t just figure this out. Smart politicians have understood for as long as there has been representative governments that most people don’t understand or really care what is going on as long as they are taken care of. This is why pork happens. This is like conservatives trying to explain life and why we need to torture based upon a TV show. You can’t try to use an example of a tv show to say what anything was like except in the broadest of terms. The young who think everything was invented in their time.
January 17th, 2009 at 11:37 am
I haven’t watched “The West Wing” since the final episode aired, but what I remember is how frustrated the White House staff got with all those Clintonesque micro-initiatives and going hat in hand to Capitol Hill all the time.
Bush never worried about any of that, he turned policy upside down in a big way and simply told Tom DeLay et al. to deliver whatever he needed from Congress. It’s as if he said: “Mandate? We don’t need no stinkin’ mandate!”
Amazingly, it worked. Even when Karl Rove decided Bush needed an invasion of Iraq just to help him get re-elected as a “war president” (which I think is the real overriding reason for the invasion).
January 17th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Great post! Hopefully this advice is heeded by the Obama administration (though the early signs are not very encouraging). In direct contrast to Bush, Obama’s ideas about what’s best are smart and moral. He just has a bad tendency to revert to the bipartisan (read: crappier) position, rather than sticking with the better policy.
January 17th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Please. Clinton never got to enact his agenda. The best he could do was stall the Republicans. Clinton still left office as the most popular modern president, Clinton was more popular than Reagan.
In 2000, the majority of voters still chose the Democrat Gore over Bush. By 2004, support for Iraq had not entirely eroded. The economy was better than it had been but still not improved and Bush was able to barely squeak in to re-election on the force of voter turnout by the Christian right and being able to maintain just enough of the independent voters resisting social change.
In 2008, McCain and Obama were close in the polls until the economy totally tanked. The independent voters abandoned the Republicans in droves. More of the same was not going to win no matter what.
What Rove understood is the electorate is up for grabs and making people afraid of social change can keep voters on the Republican side. People don’t want to change their current lifestyle. What drove voters away was the huge social changes caused by economic collapse.
January 17th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Blowout losses in 1980, 1984 and 1988, followed by loss of Congress in 1992, convinced liberals that liberal policies (as opposed to a particular version of them) might be good for the country, but were unpopular. If you don’t trust the American people to have your back when times get tough, you act weak.
And the Democratic response to percieved unpopularity was ‘vulgar utilitarianism’. I.e. most of what liberals support won’t pass muster with Americans, so focus on a narrow range of issues for which you can guarantee support, or at least no strong opposition.
January 17th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
“Please. Clinton never got to enact his agenda. The best he could do was stall the Republicans. Clinton still left office as the most popular modern president, Clinton was more popular than Reagan.”
I don’t think I would argue with that, but I would say the shocking thing is that, all told, Clinton was only a modest success and still was by far the best of the post-LBJ presidencies.
January 17th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Bush controlled all 3 branches of government and achieved what domestically ? Sunsetting tax cuts ?
An enlargement of Medicare ?
Really, his domestic agenda was a joke.
Any president can start wars.
January 17th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
What folks here are not quite accounting for is the role of resentment in Bush Administration politics.
The way I see it, for the past 40 years Democratic Administrations have been elected to materially fix the country when it ran close to bankrupcy and complete internal and external clusterf&&&.
Republican Administrations have been elected to enact the dramas of ego, vanity, paranoia, bravado, resentment, and one more grand rummage through historical baggage when the material and managerial condition of the country was good enough to survive the sustained period of incompetence, ineffectuality, abuse, raging, and waste that entails. IOW, the GOP is a kind of rage therapy Party.
January 17th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
If Bush was so unremittingly bad, why is Obama in no hurry to change so many of Bush’s policies? He’s even keeping on board prominent figures from during the Bush Administration (e.g., Sheila Bair, Tim Geithner, Robert Gates). Heck, last week, Obama was agreeing with Dick Cheney quotes on Sunday Morning TV shows.
Time to downshift from the Bush Derangement Syndrome, folks.
January 17th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
“He’s even keeping on board prominent figures from during the Bush Administration (e.g., Sheila Bair, Tim Geithner, Robert Gates). ”
Geithner’s biggest rise was during the Clinton adminstration, and he’s clearly a protege of Summers and Rubin. I don’t think you can call the chair of the FDIC a prominent figure – quick, name some other FDIC chair besides Blair? You can’t, because nobody ever cares who the FDIC chair is except in extremely severe financial crises. It’s not even the SEC Chair, which has almost always been a vastly more prominent role.
Gates, you have something more of a point, but it’s not unusual for a handful of people to move from Administration to Administration.
January 17th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
On reflection, I think Matt is wrong in this post.
I’d agree first of all with David at #27. Those of us on the left may *feel* that GWB kept getting away with murder, but substantively he doesn’t have much domestic legacy to point to.
I also think Matt way overreads the significance of Bush’s (actually rather close) pres. election in 2004, while totally ignoring the significance of 2006 midterms, not to mention the national convulsion of disgust that’s sweeping Bush’s whole party out the door right now.
Governing in a 51% fashion may sometimes get you re-elected, but it really doesn’t seem to be a good way to put a permanent stamp on the country.
January 18th, 2009 at 2:56 am
http://www.broowaha.com/article.php?id=4488
This article is so relevent to what the original poster was addressing.
January 19th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
I think you’re giving the Bush43s too much credit. From what I saw, they lost an election, got into power, and immediately started blitzing to the right in hopes that if they changed things enough in a 4-year period, the next administration would have to spend a lot of its time just trying to cancel this (essentially extremist) stuff out. Remember that his numbers before 9/11 were pretty stale for a new president.
I think 9/11 bought them so much capital that they could adjust this tack and suddenly feel less like they were avoid public scrutiny of their mischief and more like anything they chose to do would be heralded as brilliant.
I think that perhaps implicit in your argument, but worth elucidating, is that our electorate is a fantastically ignorant lot — so yes, “…the vast majority of policy decisions have no impact whatsoever on voter behavior…”
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