Opinion: What will historians say about George Bush’s legacy?
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Well, as you all may have noticed, there’s a presidential election underway, though there hasn’t been too much persuading of voters going on lately. And the election, of course, also means the George Bush administration will be coming to an end (much to the regret of certain marketers).
Cue the historians.
It can be hard to figure out the legacy of a presidency while it’s still in progress. Sometimes historians can take decades reaching a consensus on whether a president had a good, bad or indifferent impact on the country, and in what ways. But that doesn’t mean contemporary writers won’t give it a shot.
Over at the New York Review of Books, Jane Mayer takes a stab at assessing Bush legacy’s on terror and the use of torture in an essay adapted from her recent book, ‘The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.’ It’s not a particularly warming view. Mayer, a New Yorker staff writer, writes that after the 9/11 terrorist attacks ‘President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and a small handful of trusted advisers sought and obtained dubious legal opinions enabling them to circumvent American laws and traditions. In the name of protecting national security, the executive branch sanctioned coerced confessions, extrajudicial detention, and other violations of individuals’ liberties that had been prohibited since the country’s founding. They turned the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel into a political instrument, which they used to expand their own executive power at the expense of long-standing checks and balances.’
While both John McCain and Barack Obama have stated their opposition to the use of torture, Mayer argues that ‘through four congressional election cycles and two presidential campaigns, there has been surprisingly little intelligent debate about the Bush administration’s approach to terrorism.’
‘The presidential election of 2008 may prove a turning point. In a hopeful sign of change, both parties’ presidential nominees have taken strong, principled stands against torture, promising to close loopholes that secretly sanction it, and to bring the country’s detention and interrogation policies back in line with its core constitutional values. Yet neither candidate had put forward a coherent alternative by June 2008. The Bush administration’s ‘New Paradigm’ remains intact, allowing the administration to claim all of the powers that flow from war, while allowing detainees almost none of the rights that either the military or criminal justice system confers.’
It’s an interesting point of departure for debate. Has the presidential campaign given short shrift to the Bush administration’s approach to combating terrorism? Has it been a success, a failure, or something in between? Has the effect on civil rights been a defensible trade-off? The debate-board is open below.
-- Scott Martelle
