Ross Douthat Writes a Truly Terrifying Horror Story

It's about people doing to George W. Bush in the future what others have in the past done to the foreign policy of Teddy Roosevelt:

The Atlantic Online | June 2008 | Redeeming Dubya | Ross Douthat: The national memory often confuses hubris with greatness. That’s good news for George W. Bush: The idea that history might rehabilitate George W. Bush seems too ludicrous to be seriously entertained. His approval ratings have been so low for so long, it’s hard to remember that he was ever popular. The Iraq War, his signal endeavor, has lasted for more years than America’s involvement in the Second World War and seems likely to last longer; a fragile truce in a wrecked, misgoverned country is the best the next president can hope for.

Even many of the president’s ideological allies consider him a failure... a false conservative who betrayed the Reagan legacy... a blunderer... [whp] couldn’t follow through. His liberal foes, whose bill of indictments has swollen to the size of Gravity’s Rainbow, while away the hours until January 2009 by arguing over just how terrible a president he’s been. The worst since Nixon? Since Hoover? Since James Buchanan?...

[N]early every presidential reputation, however tarnished, eventually finds someone willing to defend it.... But something more than partisan apologetics will be needed for his presidency to be remembered as something other than a failure.... George W. Bush will have to win over not only centrists but at least some liberals.... Imagining that these liberals, and others, might be won over again requires two big assumptions. First, assume that the years immediately after Bush leaves office pass without domestic calamity.... The harder assumption... America’s intervention in Iraq eventually needs to come out looking like a success story rather than a folly.

This seems improbable, to put it mildly. But the crucial word here is eventually. The Bush administration has often seemed bent on vindicating, in the short run and by force of arms, Francis Fukuyama’s famous long-term prediction that liberal democracy will ultimately triumph... if the Iraq of 2038 or so is stable, democratic, and at peace with its neighbors, and if American troops have maintained a constant presence in the country--no one should be surprised to hear hawkish liberals as well as conservatives taking up the idea that George W. Bush deserves a great deal of the credit.

I do not mean to suggest that this is a likely outcome, or that it would be a just one. The cost of the Iraq War, in lives and dollars and squandered opportunities, ought to far outweigh the possibility that a long-term American presence might push the Middle East in a direction it was headed anyway.... [W]e’ve forgiven Teddy Roosevelt his role in the bloody and disgraceful occupation of the Philippines.... Despite our crimes, the Philippines turned out well enough in the long run... these well-respected presidents have benefited, as well, from the American tendency to overvalue activist leaders....

[A] too-keen awareness of the American tendency to associate great leadership with world-historical ambition has wrecked the presidency of George W. Bush. But the enthusiasm for Barack Obama and John McCain suggests that the yearning, on the left and right alike, for presidents who will pursue greatness has only been enhanced by the debacle in Iraq. This is good news for Bush.... But it’s dangerous news for America. Those who rehabilitate the follies of the past are condemned to repeat them.

Comments

[David Lloyd-Jones]

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Grossly unfair to Herbert Hoover, a great engineer and a thoroughly decent man, even though your average normal Republican.

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[David Lloyd-Jones]

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One more kick at the can: If the Arab world is in good shape twenty or thirty years from now, the credit will be split two ways.

About a third of the credit will go to Pan-Arab anti-imperialism of the Gamal Abdul Nasser/Muslim Brotherhood variety. The other two thirds will belong, justly, to Ba'ath, both in Iraq and in Syria of which Sadaam Hussein is a martyr. Sayyid Qutb, despite his honorable association with the Brotherhood, and Osama bin Ladin, inventor of the networked delayed distributed zombie attack in meatspace, I think will pass into history as fringe oddities.

The idea that Bush and his Trotskyite friends of the Columbia University thumb-sucker persuasion will get credit for the good things which may very well happen is ridiculous in the extreme.

Which reminds me: why isn't Richard Perle in jail yet? Surely selling national security secrets to the Saudis while serving (as chairman, yet!) on a Pentagon advisory panel, surely this is worse than anything Jonathan Pollard ever did.

[anne]

"[A] too-keen awareness of the American tendency to associate great leadership with world-historical ambition has wrecked the presidency of George W. Bush. But the enthusiasm for Barack Obama and John McCain suggests that the yearning, on the left and right alike, for presidents who will pursue greatness has only been enhanced by the debacle in Iraq."

Interesting comment; but does it mean that even with Barack Obama we will not be leaving Iraq and surely not Afghanistan, as I fear will be the case?

[Alan]

"[W]e’ve forgiven Teddy Roosevelt his role in the bloody and disgraceful occupation of the Philippines." This is not much of a parallel, I think. Roosevelt fought in the Spanish-American War, but in Cuba, not the Philippines. He was governor of New York when the U.S. - Philippine War began. I have never heard people who speak of Roosevelt as a great, or near-great President, base their claim on the Philippines. Nor is McKinley, who was responsible for the Spanish America War and the decision to keep Philippines, counted among the great or "activist" Presidents. I don't think a stable, successful, democratic Iraq in 2038 is possible as a product of a continued US occupation, but I doubt it would be credited to Bush it if happened.

[nemo]

"ww2 was ten years - iraq has now been five."

What the hell? You're obviously counting the Allied occupation of Japan and Germany -- an absurdly flexible definition of the relatively clear word "war".

The American involvement in WWII lasted from Pearl Harbor in December 1941 until the Japanese surrender in August 1945. Less than 4 years. The occupation ain't the war.

America is still at war in Iraq, by any definition. The occupations of Japan and Germany were not part of the war, by any definition. We are still fighting in Iraq. There were no fighting in Japan and Germany after the summer of 1945.

The very earliest conflict of WWII was the Sino-Japanese war of 1937. In Europe the war began in 1939. Even considering all the actors involved, WWII lasted no more than 8 years, and American participation lasted less than 4 years.

Be honest, for Christ's sake.

[Antonio Manetti]

If by chance Iraq achieves something resembling a stable democracy in twenty or thirty years, it will be because in the natural course of things factors that the current adminsistration could not forsee or control contrived to produce that outcome. Of course, should that happen, those looking for some sort of redemption will be quick to claim credit, just like the supporters of Reagan and Bush 41 took credit for the outcome of the cold war.

[who judges TR on Philippines?]

Who judges TR based on his role in the Philippines? I remember being taught in school about TR and and Panama Canal, negotiating end to Russo-Japanes War and the Great White Fleet publicity stunt. Those are the foreign policy credits I was taught.

So I agree with Alan, except that TR did allowed the brutal occupation to continue. It is not something I have ever heard being credited to him as a foreign policy success.

BTW, at least, TR was much more honest about what we were doing, including torture of the rebels -though he called the favorite method, the water treatment, a 'mild torture'. The water treatment was forcing high volume of water into the victims stomach, not our modern waterboarding, contra recent US propaganda.

Same with Truman. Korea is mostly a blot, not something upon which his reputation, let alone his foreign policy reputation, is based. Truman had many other foreign policy successes, that more than counterbalance that Korea blot.

What does GW Bush have, other than the Iraq mess? If Iraq had worked, GW Bush might have been a McKinley or a James K Polk. But it did not work. The idea of any rehabilitation that could achieve any consensus is a fantasy.

[Slim]

Look at it this way. Eventually the factions will tire of fighting so they kiss and make up. The added stability allows Iraq to fully exploit it's oil wealth, and at these prices that's a lot of wealth. So Iraq enters a period of high growth, with reconstruction sharing the wealth and improving standards of living, which in turn has a further dampening effect on extremist sentiment. Iraq is suddenly a wealthy, happy democracy and in the wings stands a beaming Bush saying I told you so! Ross Douthat didn't have to be so cautious, about the only thing that could derail the triumphant narrative is the emergence of a new dictator. A descent into full civil war in Iraq will only change the focus of the narrative, ie Republicans blaming Obama or Hillary for withdrawing American troops too early.

[Ron Sturtevant-Stuart]

while away the hours until January 2009 by arguing over just how terrible a president he’s been. The worst since Nixon? Since Hoover? Since James Buchanan?...

my sig line is
when we say worst president ever, we include the next 200 years as well

so, in the next 30 years we'll have forgot how bad our economy became, the debt we incurred? We'll forget how 8 years faster response to global warming could have saved so much? We'll forget how close we came to a fascist state?

I pray it will not be so

[Bruce Wilder]

The right example to use would be the other, thoroughly unpopular President, the unfortunate Harry S Truman.

Truman was not a "Great" President, or a "Great Man", and the all too evident smallness of the man contributed to his unpopularity at the time, even if it also contributed to the nostalgia that partly rehabilitated him, personally. But, Truman had his virtues, including personal integrity, and the kind of modesty that allowed him to work with men, like Marshall, that he admired for good reason. He confronted enormous challenges in the domestic economy, which we conveniently forget. And, of course, there was the matter of the Korean War, a great debacle.

Truman was rehabilitated by the subsequent, far more competent conduct of Eisenhower. In particular, with respect to Korea, Eisenhower confirmed Truman's judgment with regard to Korea. And, in reconciling the Republican wingnuts to a sensible policy, he gave the Democrats political cover for their liberal internationalist foreign policy, making it the bi-partisan foreign policy, that FDR had attempted to build, by working with, and promoting, the Wilkie-Dewey-Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party.

Bush, like Truman, is not a "Great Man". Duh. But, while the harshest critics of Truman were vicious Republican wingnuts, the harshest critics of Bush are sensible, rational centrists. This difference ought to give us pause. It won't give Douthat pause, because Douthat exists to give a lovely mahogany veneer to the rusting, misshapen iron of the plutocracy. But, the rest of us should consider that the next President will be running away from Bushian precedents, not confirming them, or if he does not run fast enough, he will be crushed by the avalanche of bad Consequences of the Bush.

The senior Taft and Wilson did a lot to save Theodore Roosevelt's reputation from his worst excesses. Eisenhower did even more to save Truman (and the U.S.) from Truman's idiot critics. No one will save Bush from righteous judgment for idiotic promotion of torture, business and political corruption, perpetual and pointless war, and national bankruptcy.

George W. Bush "is" one of Truman's idiot critics.