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   From: theprof@jonez.net   
      
   ///   
   > George Bush's repugnant legacy   
   >   
   > The frat boy ships out   
   >   
   > Jan 15th 2009   
   > From The Economist print edition   
   >   
   > Few people will mourn the departure of the 43rd president   
   > HE LEAVES the White House as one of the least popular and most   
   > divisive presidents in American history. At home, his approval rating   
   > has been stuck in the 20s for months; abroad, George Bush has   
   > presided over the most catastrophic collapse in America's reputation   
   > since the second world war. The American economy is in deep   
   > recession, brought on by a crisis that forced Mr Bush to preside over   
   > huge and unpopular bail-outs.   
   > America is embroiled in two wars, one of which Mr Bush launched   
   > against the tide of world opinion. The Bush family name, once among   
   > the most illustrious in American political life, is now so tainted   
   > that Jeb, George's younger brother, recently decided not to run for   
   > the Senate from Florida. A Bush relative describes family gatherings   
   > as "funeral wakes".   
   > Few people would have predicted this litany of disasters when Mr Bush   
   > ran for the presidency in 2000. True, the 2000 election was likely to   
   > be divisive because of the peculiar arithmetic of the outcome (Mr   
   > Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore by 500,000 votes, then won a   
   > disputed recount in Florida by a few hundred). But for most people Mr   
   > Bush was a pretty acceptable choice, and certainly not a   
   > crusader-in-waiting.   
   > He came across as an affable chap, particularly when compared with   
   > his uptight rival. Frank Bruni, who covered his election campaign for   
   > the New York Times, wrote in 2002 that "the Bush I knew was part   
   > scamp and part bumbler, a timeless fraternity boy and heedless cutup,   
   > a weekday gym rat and weekend napster." And the then governor of   
   > Texas presented himself as a centrist-a new kind of "compassionate   
   > conservative", a "uniter rather than a divider", an advocate of a   
   > "humble" and restrained foreign policy. The Economist liked this   
   > mixture enough to endorse him in 2000.   
   > How did all this change? How did the uniter become a divider? How did   
   > Mr Bush's governing style shape American politics over the next eight   
   > years? And what legacy has the 43rd president left for the 44th?   
   >   
   > His supporters-the few that remain-point out that this was a   
   > presidency knocked sideways by the terrorist attacks of September   
   > 11th 2001, which no one foresaw. The huge expansion of government and   
   > executive power under Mr Bush, and the prosecution of a disastrous   
   > war, all unrolled in the wake of those attacks. The financial crisis,   
   > which began with overvalued homes and sloppily underwritten   
   > mortgages, was the product of numerous forces and failures in which   
   > Mr Bush was not a major contributor; they included low interest   
   > rates, bankers' reckless risk-taking, flawed regulation and   
   > consumers' bubble mentality, all of which spanned borders.   
   > Yet Mr Bush's presidency was also poisoned by his own ambition. Mr   
   > Bruni's "timeless fraternity boy" wanted to be a great president. He   
   > not only wanted to win the second term that Bill Clinton had denied   
   > to his father-though that mattered to him enormously. He also wanted   
   > to usher in a period of prolonged Republican hegemony, much as   
   > William McKinley had done for his party in the late 19th century.   
   > After the September 11th attacks he not only itched to destroy   
   > al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He also wanted to tackle the root causes of   
   > terrorism in the Middle East. Mr Bush frequently spoke about how much   
   > he hated anything that was "small ball". His close advisers   
   > repeatedly described him as a "transformative president".   
   > Mr Bush's role model throughout his presidency was not his father but   
   > the patron saint of the modern conservative movement, Ronald Reagan.   
   > He regarded Reagan as a man who had unleashed free-enterprise and   
   > defeated the Soviet Empire, and he tried to do the same with his huge   
   > tax cuts and his global war on terror. He mimicked Reagan's Western   
   > style, even relaxing on a Texas ranch where Reagan had taken his   
   > holidays on a Californian one; and he echoed Reagan's enthusiastic   
   > use of the word "evil".   
   > Other facets of Mr Bush's personality mixed with his vaulting   
   > ambition to undermine his presidency. Mr Bush is what the British   
   > call an inverted snob. A scion of one of America's most powerful   
   > families, he is a devotee of sunbelt populism; a product of Yale and   
   > Harvard Business School, he is a scourge of eggheads. Mr Bush is a   
   > convert to an evangelical Christianity that emphasises   
   > emotion-particularly the intensely emotional experience of being born   
   > again-over ratiocination. He also styled himself, much like Reagan,   
   > as a decider rather than a details man; many people who met him were   
   > astonished by what they described as his "lack of inquisitiveness"   
   > and his general "passivity".   
   > This led Mr Bush to distrust the Washington establishment, and even   
   > to believe that establishment wisdom was probably wrong simply by   
   > virtue of what it was. Fred Barnes, a conservative journalist,   
   > entitled his book on Mr Bush "Rebel in Chief". He quotes one Bush   
   > confidante as saying: "One tux a term. That's our idea of outreach to   
   > the Washington community."   
   > Lack of curiosity also led Mr Bush to suspect intellectuals in   
   > general and academic experts in particular. David Frum, who wrote   
   > speeches for Mr Bush during his first term, noted that "conspicuous   
   > intelligence seemed actively unwelcome in the Bush White House". The   
   > Bush cabinet was "solid and reliable", but contained no "really   
   > high-powered brains". Karen Hughes, one of his closest advisers,   
   > "rarely read books and distrusted people who did". Ron Suskind, a   
   > journalist, has argued that Mr Bush created a "faith-based   
   > presidency" in which decisions, precisely because they were based on   
   > faith, could not be revised subsequently.   
   > For the good of the party   
   > Mr Bush relied heavily on a small inner core of advisers. The most   
   > important of these was Dick Cheney, who quickly became the most   
   > powerful vice-president in American history. Mr Cheney used his   
   > mastery of bureaucracy to fill the administration with his protégés   
   > and to control the flow of information to the president. He pushed Mr   
   > Bush forcefully to the right on everything from global warming to the   
   > invasion of Iraq; he also fought ruthlessly to expand the power of   
   > the executive branch, which he thought had been dangerously   
   > restricted since Watergate.   
   > The two other decisive figures were Karl Rove, Mr Bush's longtime   
   > political guru, and Donald Rumsfeld, his defence secretary. Mr Rove   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)