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chapter one
Bush Agonistes
86 • 66 • 59 • 48 • 39 • 32
Those numbers designate the percentages of Americans who approved of George W. Bush’s performance as president in late 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, respectively. This data, from Washington Post–ABC News polls, demonstrate that every year George Bush has remained in office, fewer and fewer Americans have approved of the job he has done, and more and more Americans have become dissatisfied with his presidency.
And it is not merely the quantity but also the intensity of the disapproval that has steadily increased. The percentages of Americans who “strongly disapprove” have risen dramatically from the end of 2001 to the end of 2006: 6, 20, 29, 38, 47, 53. And the group consisting of the president’s most enthusiastic supporters—those who “strongly approve” of his performance—has shrunk year after year: 64, 45, 39, 27, 20, 18.
The dramatic shift in the public’s perceptions of George Bush is unsurprising in light of what a consequential presidency this has been. Among admirers and opponents of George Bush, there are exceedingly few grounds for agreement. But few Americans, regardless of their political leanings, would dispute that the impact of the Bush presidency on America will be both profound and long lasting.
During Bush’s tenure, the United States suffered the first major foreign terrorist attack on its soil. The U.S. invaded two sovereign nations—one which had an integral connection to that attack and one which had none—followed by a violent and protracted occupation of both countries with no end in sight. Beyond Iraq, the Bush administration has been directing increasingly threatening rhetoric toward yet more countries, particularly Iran, the most powerful Middle Eastern nation other than Israel. Yet by the end of 2006, all of the demands on America’s armed forces had resulted in a military that was stretched so thin that new missions were and remain all but unthinkable. Prominent politicians in both parties were calling for a significant expansion of the U.S. military based on the expectation that far more missions lie ahead.
Subsequent to 9/11, the Bush administration constructed a super–maximum security prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which it declared beyond the reach of any law, and the image of its orange-clad, bowed, and shackled prisoners became a symbol of anti-American resentment around the world. The president’s lawyers engaged in a series of legal battles to defend unprecedented theories of virtually limitless presidential power, which the president applied not only to foreign nationals but also to American citizens, including those on U.S. soil. Immediately prior to being voted out of office, the Republicans who controlled Congress enacted a law vesting in the president sweeping new powers of indefinite detention and coercive interrogation.
Throughout the Bush tenure, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies sent terrorist suspects to secret prisons, so-called black sites, throughout Eastern Europe. They abducted citizens off the streets of other nations—including those of America’s own allies—and sent them for interrogation to countries notorious for the use of torture. World opinion toward America underwent a fundamental shift as anti-American sentiment reached an all-time high, spreading throughout most countries and on every continent.
Multiple bombing campaigns and other U.S. military assaults have undoubtedly killed scores of Al Qaeda members, along with tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocents. Al Qaeda’s ability to operate freely in Afghanistan has surely been impeded, and—other than the now-forgotten though still-unsolved series of deadly anthrax attacks in 2001 aimed at political leaders and prominent journalists—there have been no further terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, nor any convincing evidence of a serious, formidable plot to perpetrate one. However, the leader of Al Qaeda at the time of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, has been neither apprehended nor killed, at least to the administration’s knowledge. By all accounts, Al Qaeda’s Taliban allies are resurgent, and Al Qaeda has exploited the chaos caused by the removal of Iraq’s government to operate within a portion of Western Iraq. As the president entered lame-duck status, his vows to prosecute the “war”—encompassing not only Iraq but a whole host of other nations and groups—transformed into threats to escalate it further still.
Even without further increases in military spending, and even though the United States is the world’s sole superpower, military spending has skyrocketed under the Bush presidency. In early 2007, the Bush Pentagon sent to Congress a request for a $622 billion defense budget, only $141 billion of which was to be devoted to Iraq and Afghanistan. Even with inflation adjustments, and as the U.S. continues to swelter under massive budget deficits, that proposed amount for defense spending is the highest since World War II. The amount of “peacetime” defense spending, and the overall expenditures for defense, has increased every year during the Bush administration. The U.S., by itself, accounts for more than 50 percent of total worldwide military spending. The U.S. military budget is larger than the total spending of the next twenty largest spenders combined, and its military budget under Bush is six times larger than that of China, the country with the second-highest defense budget. The seemingly endless expansion of American military spending reflects an intent not merely to defend America from attacks but also to occupy and rule large parts of the world—particularly the Middle East—as an imperial power.
It is difficult to argue with the conclusion of Bush admirer John Podhoretz, who contended—in his 2004 literary homage to Bush’s greatness entitled Bush Country: How Dubya Became a Great President While Driving Liberals Insane—that the president has “constructed one of the most consequential presidencies in the nation’s history.” In an article highly critical of the president’s governance, former Reagan and Bush 41 speechwriter Peggy Noonan observed in a September 2006 Wall Street Journal column that Americans generally agree that the president either “is a great man or a catastrophe,” but nothing in the middle, and she added:
The one thing I think America agrees on is that George Bush and his presidency have been enormously consequential. He has made decisions that will shape the future we’ll inhabit. It’s never “We must do this” with Mr. Bush. It’s always “the concentrated work of generations.” He doesn’t declare, he commits; and when you back him, you’re never making a discrete and specific decision, you’re always making a long-term investment.
Thomas Mann, senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, observed that “George Bush will go down in history as one of the most consequential presidents in American history.” For better or for worse, the Bush presidency will have long-lasting effects for America. The legacy of George W. Bush will be the legacy of the United States for some time to come.
The Arc of Icarus
The Bush presidency, perhaps more than any other in American history, has been shaped by a single event. The September 11 attacks presented an opportunity for leadership and for renewing America’s unity and sense of purpose greater than any event since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. And even the president’s most virulent critics would likely agree that this was an opportunity which the president seized—decisively and aggressively. In the aftermath of those attacks, a president who was elected with three million fewer votes than his opponent and who presided over a deeply divided electorate, commanded one of the most unified and resolute American citizenries in history. In the wake of 9/11, support for President Bush spanned the political spectrum and was abundant and enthusiastic in both political parties.
Support for the president suffered a slow, natural erosion from the 90 percent level he enjoyed in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. A portion of that early support was a fleeting, ephemeral by-product of a traumatized and angry nation. But the bulk was solid and sustained, resulting in an intense desire on the part of most Americans for the president to succeed. Most of the post-9/11 support for President Bush and his policies was both genuine and committed.
Thus, over the course of the next two years—through the March 2003 invasion of Iraq and for at least six months thereafter—the president’s approval ratings never fell below 60 percent, and generally remained in the 66 percent range; fully two-thirds of the American public continued to endorse his job performance. Manifestly, Americans of many political stripes remained joined in common cause, standing behind their president through this period.
And the profound depth and breadth of that support, of that national coming together, enabled him to take any action, request any legislation, obtain any new executive powers with no meaningful opposition. Throughout late 2001 and 2002, true bipartisanship (for better or worse) reigned in Congress, engendering a near total absence of controversy and the enactment of laws bestowing on the president broad new powers. Criticism of the president was negligible in the political mainstream. Most opposition came from factions that were successfully stigmatized and relegated to the relatively inconsequential fringes.
Beginning in mid-2002 and continuing for the rest of the year, the president devoted himself almost exclusively to insisting that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq constituted a grave threat to the United States and must be confronted. Standing on his broad-based support, he campaigned to persuade Americans of the wisdom and necessity of invading Iraq, notwithstanding that Iraq had not attacked, had not threatened to attack, and lacked the capability to attack the United States.
The audacity of preemptively invading another country was no match for George Bush’s popularity. The trust and faith placed by Americans in the president assured that the outcome of the “debate” over going to war against Iraq was preordained. As had been true with virtually every issue, large and small, foreign and domestic, since the 9/11 attacks, the president’s will would prevail.
In the midst of the Iraq debate, and largely because of it, the president’s soaring popularity also delivered, in November 2002, a resounding victory for his party in the midterm elections. Typically, and for many reasons, a president’s party loses Congressional seats in midterm elections, but not in 2002. The Republicans took over control of the Senate from the Democrats and increased their control in the House.
The magnitude of their victory was historic. It had been almost seventy years—the 1934 midterm elections during Franklin Roosevelt’s first term—since a president’s party had gained strength in both the House and the Senate in a midterm election. Bush’s sky-high approval numbers reached into state elections as well. After the 2002 elections, Republican governors outnumbered Democratic governors for the first time in fifty years.
The Republicans’ extraordinary national victory was plainly the by-product of the towering popularity of President Bush, buttressed by his bellicose posture toward Iraq, which became the centerpiece of the 2002 campaign. The nation had coalesced behind its president, and even though he was not on the ballot, the deep faith placed in his leadership among Republicans, Independents, and even many Democrats led to a historic victory for his party.
The president’s popularity cannot be attributed exclusively to the happenstance of the 9/11 attacks. Particularly in the weeks and even months following those attacks, much of the president’s conduct generated confidence both in his abilities and in his judgment. As it appeared at the time, the invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent overthrow of the Taliban was a creatively executed and rapid success. Moreover, although his initial post-9/11 appearances were shaky, the president’s speeches quickly became resolute, eloquent, and even inspiring. He expressed a focused and restrained anger but steadfastly avoided vengeful rhetoric. He pledged to pursue the planners and perpetrators of the attack relentlessly, but appeared to eschew rash or reckless overreaction.
And the president repeatedly emphasized that the enemy was defined neither as adherents to Islam nor as Middle Eastern countries and their citizens, but instead was a band of fanatics who exploited Islam as a pretext for terrorism and violence. In his September 20, 2001, speech to the Joint Session of Congress, he declared:
Americans are asking: Who attacked our country? The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as al Qaeda. They are the same murderers indicted for bombing American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and responsible for bombing the USS Cole. . . .
The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics—a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam.
And in the midst of emerging, isolated reports that American Muslims (or those perceived to be such) were the victims of attacks, and even of murder, the president pointedly emphasized:
I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here. We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them [emphasis added]. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith. (Applause.)
Three days earlier, President Bush had purposefully made a public appearance at the Islamic Center in Washington and afterward delivered this pointed statement: Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don’t represent the best of America. They represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior. This is a great country. It’s a great country because we share the same values of respect and dignity and human worth. And it is my honor to be meeting with leaders who feel the same way I do. They are outraged. They are sad. They love America just as much as I do. . . .
Women who cover their heads in this country must feel comfortable going outside their homes. Moms who wear cover must not be intimidated in America. That’s not the America I know. That’s not the America I value. Attacks or intimidation efforts against Muslim Americans or Arab Americans, warned the president, would be aggressively prosecuted. In addition to a firm insistence on tolerance for all citizens, including Muslims, the president expressed goodwill toward other countries—and toward Democratic leaders—in his opening remarks before the Joint Session, remarks that are striking in light of how little such sentiments would be present for the remainder of the Bush presidency:
Speaker Hastert, Minority Leader Gephardt, Majority Leader Daschle and Senator Lott, I thank you for your friendship, for your leadership and for your service to our country. (Applause.) And on behalf of the American people, I thank the world for its outpouring of support. America will never forget the sounds of our National Anthem playing at Buckingham Palace, on the streets of Paris, and at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.
Unquestionably, the 9/11 attacks would have united the country behind any president; external attacks on a nation virtually always prompt the citizenry’s solidarity behind their leaders. But sustained support for President Bush was not merely the by-product of emotion-driven reactions to the attack. The president himself was responsible for a wide and deep admiration and trust on the part of many Americans who, though initially skeptical of him, were eager that their country be led by an empowered and able president. Predictably, the president’s approval ratings eroded from the unnatural 90 percent level, but, as noted, they remained high over the course of the next two years. And the March 2003 invasion of Iraq boosted the approval ratings once again to near 70 percent.
