Next on Mount Rushmore

As regular readers know, I sometimes like to make arguments for positions I don’t hold, just to test my viewpoint. Today I will argue that President George W. Bush will be regarded by historians as among the best presidents ever, and might get a place on Mt. Rushmore.

Reiterating: This is not my view.

To judge the greatness of a president, you are allowed to consider only his top priorities. For example, no one remembers Abe Lincoln’s position on, well, anything except the Cvil War. For the purposes of choosing a greatest president, you can round up all the little issues and toss them away.

For example, while critics might say restricting government funding for stem cell research is boneheaded, history has its own way of evaluating things. If no stem cell breakthrough based on human embryos ever happens, despite all the private funding, President Bush’s position will seem irrelevant to history. If a privately funded research group makes a breakthrough, it will also make Bush’s opposition of public funding seem irrelevant. People might argue that public funding would have made it happen faster, but that issue will seem trivial over time.

The same can be said of all the smaller disagreements President Bush’s critics have with him. In a hundred years, they will not be part of what historians use to judge him. So let’s look at the big stuff.

President Bush famously promised to do something about the Axis of Evil: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. That was a top priority. How’s he doing so far?

Iraq didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction, but by restricting inspectors, it acted as if it did. That is almost as dangerous as having a nuclear weapon because it causes your neighbor (Iran) to build its own nukes, just to be safe. It turns out they were doing just that.

Recently we learned that Iran stopped its nuclear bomb program in 2003. That’s about the same time the U.S. was disemboweling its next door neighbor based on the suspicion of having a nuclear weapons program. Iran probably noticed. History will credit President Bush for removing the threat of nuclear war from the Middle East.

North Korea has also discontinued its nuke program, thanks in part, history might acknowledge, because when the U.S. invaded Iraq, it went after the leadership first, including sons. That’s the sort of thing that gets your attention if you are a dictator. As with Reagan’s Star Wars defense plan, the U.S. under President Bush seemed crazy enough to attack North Korea. The threat was entirely credible. That, plus China’s pressure, neutralized North Korea.

Meanwhile, Libya surrendered its nuclear ambitions without even being asked. Credit President Bush for that one too.

Terrorism was a priority during the Bush administration. History won’t blame him for the first attack on 9/11, but it certainly might credit him for the fact no other attacks happened during his two terms. That’s a perfect record on homeland security.

Also, as I have argued before, the war in Iraq might turn out to accidentally be the death of Al-Qaeda. By showing a willingness to attack Muslims, any goodwill the organization had gained by attacking the United States began to erode. Iraq became flypaper for terrorists. They came in to Iraq, pissed off the locals, and the locals exterminated them in large numbers. While the number of wannabe terrorists might have increased, you only have to kill the smart ones near the top several times before management is comprised of mostly the dumb ones by default. History might record that Iraq was the turning point in the war on terror. Al-Qaeda bet everything on Iraq, and lost. President Bush did indeed “fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here.” While it didn’t happen exactly the way he envisioned it, history might credit him for moving the fight and winning it.

Then there’s global warming. Assuming it’s real, the only solution is massive improvements in alternative energy. Thanks to oil being over $100 a barrel, every time you read the news another huge corporation is installing solar panels in the desert, or synthesizing algae for biofuels, or harnessing the wind. President Bush is a free market guy, and the free market seems to be stepping up. Success in these alternative energy movements is not assured, but it seems likely, given all the venture capital flowing in that direction. History will record that President Bush and his free market views saved the world from global warming.

The economy isn’t great, but it isn’t bad enough to detract from President Bush’s place in history. The same is true for crime, health, pollution, education, and any number of problems that won’t factor into his legacy one way or the other.

What do you think?

Comments

[Evangeline]

I am not going to mince words. I like George W. Bush. I think he did a great job with the hand that he had dealt to him. No other President had to face the issues that he had to. I also remember the hate and poison that was pointed at Reagan while he was in office and the few short years that followed. It was only after years that people appreciated what they had... just goes to show you .. you don't know what you got until its gone. I know that this will be true of G.W. Bush. No, I do not agree with everything that he has done in office... but I more agree then disagree. Things and issues have many layers... Nothing is black and white.. People like to tie everything up in a bow... I rest my case. He will be remembered and appreciated... only people with a lot of time on their hands just write hateful things. There is a silent majority that will remember him fondly.

[mirc]

yes very good

[Shashwat]

Bush will be remembered for both the killing of over a million Iraqis and the death of U.S soldiers. So the chances of Bush being on mt. Rushmore is as likely as a nuclear bomb detonating right now and destroying NYC

[Bob Tee]

Scott, in your book 'Cartoonist Ignores Helpful Advice', you mentioned that you were an optimist.

By being able to come up with this article, I wholeheartedly believe you are one!

[Jonathan]

> Didn't it just turn out Iran WASN'T working on nuclear weapons?

No, actually it didn't. I read the AP report, which is rather more extensive than the brief soundbites on TV. The AP report concluded that they'd stopped developing a *warhead* in 2003, in response to US and international pressure, but had the technology to build it any time they chose to start again. It also concluded that the present sanctions were the right way to continue, as they were proving more effective than previously thought, and that the primary obstacle for Iran to overcome was having enough enriched nuclear material to build a bomb. And that they could likely accomplish that in the next 5-10 years. The warheads they can build at any time, as they've had the information for that readily available for 40 years.

I'm not a fan of Bush in a lot of areas. But I do find that there are a great many people so determined to hate him that they have an immediate reaction to anything he does, with or without facts. I agree or disagree with the President depending on his policies and my views. But I remain astounded that there are people so deeply entrenched in hating the man that they would leave positions they've held for years if he were to agree with them, just to not be on the same side as him. It gets rather childish at times.

[Bill]

Oh, and calling Bush a "free market guy" is like calling Mao an Austrian economist... Bush has raised the amount of resources taken by government more than any President except FDR.

[Bill]

The comparison with Lincoln is interesting. Lincoln fought a long, unnecessary (think about it... how many other nations had wars over ending slavery? Haiti, and... no one else) war which directly killed 600,000 Americans, more than any other war. The war destroyed the Federal system, and removed a lot of the checks and balances on government. (Good and short history of the Civil War: "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men" by Rummel).

Bush will probably surpass Lincoln. He has already surpassed all past presidents except FDR in spending. By involving us in the feuds of the Saudis, Iraq and Afghanistan, he has probably guaranteed retaliation that will dwarf the Civil War death list... and the casualties of major bioterrorism won't all be non-cartoonists.

[Matthew Goggins]

SC,

"Iran built (except that they didn't really) nuclear weapons not because Israel has them, not because the US (a country that has called you "evil") has them, but because Iraq acted as if they were working on building them."

We can't be 100% sure why anyone does anything, but which country -- the U.S., Israel, or Iraq -- invaded Iran, went on to fight a devastating eight-year death-match, and used WMD's (toxic chemicals) to boot?

"But, maybe you are cleverer than I thought. You are actually pre-trolling your own blog to generate more traffic. Brilliant!"

Scott pre-trolls his own blog almost every day. He actually happens to be kind-of brilliant that way.

Maybe one day he'll even convince himself that President Bush made the right call on Iraq.

[SC]

"Iraq didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction, but by restricting inspectors, it acted as if it did. That is almost as dangerous as having a nuclear weapon because it causes your neighbor (Iran) to build its own nukes, just to be safe."
Incre-duh-ble logic, Scott. Let me rephrase: Iran built (except that they didn't really) nuclear weapons not because Israel has them, not because the US (a country that has called you "evil") has them, but because Iraq acted as if they were working on building them.

But, maybe you are cleverer than I thought. You are actually pre-trolling your own blog to generate more traffic. Brilliant!

[admiral krunch]

George bush will be considered by historians the greatest president ever because the way things are going, we'll soon be in a situation where anyone who disagrees is dragged out and shot

[George Bush Jr.]

Even I know my job performance rates be below Calvin Coolidge.

[Theo]

So I think the question that needs to be answered is, has any president that history has eventually looked upon favorably had the same abysmal approval rating that GW has enjoyed in his second term?

If the answer is yes, then this Scott's thought experiment is somewhat plausible. If the answer is no, then it's probably not going to happen that way.

[Dave]

Wow Scott... I think the GOP should hire you to write their propoganda. Seriously though, putting aside your viewpoints, you nicely summed up the truth. Too bad you don't recognize it.

[mo]

I cannot believe I am going to defend Bush on subsidies but oh well. In a tiny African country called Malawi the IMF demanded they reform their government to reflect free market trade.
Sadly Malawi did this and they ended up pushing themselves into the worst famine in the history of the continent. People literally starved to death in the street.
Two years ago Malawi told the IMF and the World Bank to take a flying you know what. They knew their country. They knew that the soil was arid and depleted. They knew they needed to fertilizer..they also knew their was only one way to get farmers to cultivate using it. They had to subsidize it.
They did and two years later a desperate, starving country sold corn to Ethiopia. They have such a surplus they know have products to sell. Ofcourse they can only sell to their neighbours because Europe and the US subsidize so much they can never hope to make any money selling in the free market.
But they aren't starving..we don't have to send them food aid anymore.
How about we let third world countries produce FOOD anyway they want? How about we recognize that food producers are the most important people in the whole damn world. If they need subsidies to keep me fed bring on the damn subsidies.

Let's play free market with products that wont kill us if they can't get produced okay?

[GeraldNZ]

He is so not a true "free market guy". He subsidises US biofuel to the extent that every tonne of CO2 displaced costs US$500 or more (but some argue that the net impact of the subsidies on CO2 emissions is in the wrong direction)at a time when the "Kyoto" price of emissions is around US$15. Consequently food prices go through the roof with all the land being turned over to biofuel production. Bush has done very little to get good results on free trade - in fact he's increased US farm subsidies. If he cared about free trade he'd use a proper market mechanism like a tax or trading system to incorporate an efficient price into the cost of fossil fuels in the US.

[David MacMillan]

"Didn't it just turn out Iran WASN'T working on nuclear weapons?"

No, it turned out that out intel believes Iran STOPPED working on nuclear weapons in 2003. Which, as Adams was pointing out, is about the same time when we invaded Iraq. Hence the remote possibility that our invasion of Iraq pushed Iran to stop their rapidly developing nuclear program.

[Dave]

"damn, and i thought the rest of the world had no good reason for thinking americans were arrogant pigs. sigh."

Posted by: Peter | December 12, 2007 at 08:53 PM

- The arrogance of Americans pales in comparison to the self righteousness and arrogance of the Europeans. The difference is that they haven't done too much lately to earn their attitude.

[Charles]

There is no more room on Mt. Rushmore to add a new face. $100 per gallon oil would rock...we would change to alternative fuels so fast it would make your head spin.

[Dilbert's Rabbi]

You had fun with this, didn't you, Scott. The comments are hilarious, in a sad sort of way. Do it again!!

[Stef]

History: "George W. Who?"

[Noumenon]

I haven't read the comments, but for me at least, just saying "this is not my view" is a huge anger reducer. I regard everything you said as a legitimate perspective that might turn out to be true, with the benefit of hindsight. I just get mad when people say this is already their view, because I don't think you can say it yet with the information we have available to us now.

I'm not sure people who opposed the U.S. entering World War II were wrong either at the time, no matter how history worked out.

[Diana W]

If anything, Bush's face should be on credit cards since he's run up a national debt that may take generations to repay. Sure he kept taxes down, he just passed the buck (TRILLIONS of bucks actually) to the next guy. I feel bad for the next couple guys in office who have to deal with the hole he's dug.

[Matthew Goggins]

Balerion,

"That said, I just have to respond to some of the more ludicrously idiotic posters on this topic."

Methinks you are, perhaps, just a wee bit full of yourself, young man.

Can't we all just get along here? I'm not defending a serial murderer like Che Guevara or a mass murderer like Mao -- I'm defending someone who is fighting on our behalf to promote the country's best interests.

Time will tell just how well he's done. In the meantime we should do our best to play nicely with each other and show each other respect.

"The imposition of our social and political systems on other people is not the solution to our security problems, especially not at gunpoint."

A couple of points.

Democracy and civil rights are most emphatically not ideas or systems which are exclusively American or Western. All people yearn for liberty and justice and despise oppression and tyranny.

It took us a long time after our revolution to forge our democratic traditions and a cohesive national identity. It took us a good eight years after the battle of Yorktown just to work out our Constitution. So please don't be too quick to dismiss the Iraqis and their democratic yearnings. They have already sacrificed very bravely on behalf of the freedoms we sometimes take for granted here in the U.S.

Second point: I agree with you that war should only be considered as a last resort, and only undertaken as a really, really last resort. However, that does not mean eshewing war at all times and under all circumstances.

In particular, the removal of Saddam by force is something we were forced into doing by the logic of the facts on the ground. I know you and Scott disagree with me, and since reasonable people will view this differently, I respect your position.

"Spending trillions of dollars and killing hundreds of thousands for a low probability of acceptable results and to prevent a low likelihood threat is irresponsible, reckless, homicidal, and stupid."

1) We did not and will not spend trillions.
2) Whatever we end up spending (300, 400, 500 billion?) doesn't mean much unless the amount can be compared to what we would have spent if we had left Saddam in place. Would leaving Saddam in place have cost us 100 billion or 1,000 billion? -- nobody knows.
3) We didn't kill hundreds of thousands. In fact, we took every precaution to invade and to win without killing hundreds of thousands, and we have succeeded in doing exactly that.
There have been an estimated 40 to 80 thousand civilian casualties in Iraq since we took over. But apart from the initial invasion, those civilian deaths have been almost entirely the result of insurgent, criminal, and terrorist killings.
4) Low probablity of success? You could make that argument, but it didn't seem that way to me in 2003, and it certainly doesn't seem that way to me now, in 2007.
5) "Irresponsible, reckless, homicidal, and stupid"
Okay, it was arguably reckless, even arguably stupid. But homocidal?
By the way, the war in Iraq was also arguably "responsible, prudent, statesmanlike, and brilliant", as long as we're tossing around adjectives here.

"Toppling a dictator is great, Saddam was a bad ruler. There are worse ones we could have toppled, that's a ridiculous argument."

Actually, there aren't too many bad guys out there who were actually worse than Saddam, or even just as bad as Saddam.

But even if there were, it doesn't make sense to go after all of them at once. So you have to pick which one goes first. Once again, reasonable people will disagree about these things, but Saddam had many things arguing in favor of his termination.
One not insignificant reason to topple Saddam was that we were already, both morally and legally, in a state of war with his regime, thanks to his ongoing violations of the ceasefire agreement we had concluded with him after the Persian Gulf War.

"Even more ridiculous is your assertion that continuing on a reckless and irresponsible course of action when smarter people than you (and I include my pre-schooler in that category when compared to the president) tell you its a bad idea is a positive trait."

The key words here are "reckless and irresponsible". I think it would have been "reckless and irresponsible" not to have invaded Iraq -- the equivalent of sticking our head in the sand like an ostrich.
Is Al Gore being "reckless and irresponsible" for turning himself into a prophet against human-induced global warming? Was Albert Einstein being reckless and irresponsible when he goaded Franklin Roosevelt into starting the Manhattan Project, especially when it turned out that Hitler was never even close to developing his own atom bomb?
You say "reckless and irresponsible", and I say, "bold and decisive leadership". If anything, he may have waited too long by going through the United Nations and attacking in March 2003 instead of March 2002, although I personally believe he was right to take the U.N. route.

"If I came to your house, defecated on your carpet, and then cleaned it up, I doubt you'd be too impressed. Only so far, the equivalent analogy is not that I would have cleaned the carpet up, but only that I would be pooping less."

This is fairly witty, so I have hope for you. But of course, W didn't poop anywhere except in Saddam's purty little palaces. Al Qaeda and the other troublemakers have been doing all the pooping, and we've been busting our butts trying to shovel all the crap out (and helping the Iraqis get to a point where they can pretty much handle it all themselves).

"I realize no one will probably read this or care, put it down to frustration at the monkeys."

We do care, Balerion. Monkeys are warm, intelligent primates, and we feel your frustration.

Just try not to take political disagreements to heart so much. We don't support President Bush just to annoy you!

[ThePug]

As much as I hate Bush, I think you're correcting in describing which issues will or will not factor into the judgment of him by future historians. I just disagree (as I think you do in reality) on how those issues will be viewed. Iraq will be seen the same way Vietnam is seen for LBJ. Ron Paul's insurgent anti-war GOP campaign is comparable to the anti-war backlash that occurred in the 1968 Democratic primaries. This war will be seen as a disaster that got out of hand and rapidly became unpopular when the costs and body bags started piling up. Afghanistan's role in his legacy will hinge on the long-term survival of the Afghan government, which isn't looking too hot at the moment. Even if it does survive, there's the whole issue that "Enduring Freedom" seemed to have a lot more to do with overthrowing the Taliban and nation-building in Afghanistan than it did with actually going after al-Qaeda (which escaped largely intact into Waziristan).

I think the whole "War on Terror" will be viewed as a hysterical overreaction to an event which, though unprecedented, didn't originate from a threat that could be militarily confronted.

[mo]

what is more fascinating than the thought that George Bush Jr could be remembered as a "good" president is the comments here.
So many are so entrenched, hell cemented into their position it's a wonder Americans aren't in a civil war themselves.
There seems to be no middle ground at all.
The problem with that is extremists are scary people.
If you hold a position and refuse to listen to anything else you are an extremist. You literally cannot change your mind. When two large groups that have to live together suffer this disease of extremism we think of Israel and Palestine...maybe we need to think more about the US.

If none of you can come together and find consensus nothing will change. You will have more of the current stalemate where nothing ever gets done or you will get a majority of one group that will grab hold of power and run the government like a dictatorship.
Then the other group will revolt and chaos will be born.

If your comments truly reflect the future of the US I wont worry about the Middle East anymore. The US at war with itself is a hell of a lot scarier than anything Iran could be doing.