The Bush legacy

Giving credit where it's due

Bush apologists are understandably a frustrated group of people. With the days dwindling down to a precious few, it's increasingly difficult to hope that the president will accomplish anything worth celebrating before his exit from office (which, of course, will be an event worth celebrating, but that's not considered an “accomplishment,” as such).

Richard Nixon began his presidential tenure with the expressed hope that he would meet the challenge expressed in a young girl's placard: “Bring Us Together.”

“I saw many signs in this campaign. Some of them were not friendly. Some were very friendly. But the one that touched me the most was—a teenager held up the sign ‘bring us together.’ And that will be the great objective of this administration, at the outset, to bring the American people together.”

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Nixon achieved his goal in the worst way possible when the American public united against him and cheered his resignation in 1974. Now George W. Bush has nearly matched him. While he is not leaving office any too soon, Bush is as unpopular today on the verge of his departure as Richard Nixon was on the eve of his forced resignation, with less than a quarter of the citizens approving of his job performance.

So what dregs can a Bush apologist find while scraping the bottom of the barrel for something good to say about our lame-duck president? What can we give him credit for, apart from uniting America against him and poisoning the well for Republican candidates?

With a little bit of creative thinking, some right-wing pundits want us to give President George W. Bush for “keeping us safe” from terrorism. That is, we're supposed to grade him on a generous curve. After the epic fail of his negligent security policy of 2001, ignoring the chatter of our enemies and the explicit warning (“Bin Laden determined to strike in the US”) of the presidential daily briefing of August 6, 2001, thereby permitting the events of 9/11 to occur, the president got semi-serious about homeland security. Since then, of course, there have been no major terrorists strikes on U.S. soil. The president, however, has chosen to expend even more American lives than were lost on 9/11 in feckless actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the idea being that Americans won't be killed on American soil if we make them available to be killed overseas.

The action in Afghanistan started well, ousting the Taliban government that had sheltered al Qaeda, but then lapsed when bin Laden was allowed to escape and Bush decided it was more important to launch a second war to settle a family feud with Saddam Hussein. Even Bush admitted in 2005 to 30,000 deaths among Iraqi civilians, but it's all in the good cause of preserving (or restoring, that is) the American homeland security that he failed to protect in 2001.

It's not a proud record, but it's all Bush apologists have to work with. Conservative editorial cartoonist Lisa Benson is on board. She celebrates George W. Bush's legacy by first mocking the media's obsession with Barack Obama and his Hawaiian beach vacation. The poke at the media is perfectly on target. The suggestion that they turn their attention to Bush's homeland security legacy, however, expects way too much forgiveness on our part, even if Benson makes Bush look rather pathetic as he seeks our notice.

I don't have Benson's artistic skills, but I can offer an improvement to her cartoon that is more in keeping with the reality of George W. Bush:

Goodbye, George. And good riddance.

Lose weight now!

The elephant diet

I've cited this cartoon before (in Son of Richard Nixon), but here it is again. It's my fondest wish for the Republicans in this election—a repeat of their 1974 wipeout:

Avast, ye Techers!

A piratical Ditch Day

Caltech's Millikan Library continues to serve as the campus's tallest billboard (in addition to being its tallest building). This year the east side of the nine-story edifice was adorned with a Jolly Roger, the skull decorated with an “06” eyepatch.

The accompanying illustration was published in the new issue (Volume LXIX, No. 2) of Engineering & Science, Caltech's quarterly magazine for alumni and friends of the institute. As reported in the photographs' caption, “Besides flying their colors from Millikan Library, the pirate crew made the Gene Pool next to the Beckman Institute run red with blood in the form of FD&C Red Number 5.”

Back in 1973, Millikan was used to acknowledge a more specific pirate, who was then (but not for much longer) occupying the White House. Students from Dabney House used their mountaineering skills to dangle from ropes while affixing the wooden frame of their canvas sign to the side of the building. Quite a feat. The “Impeach Nixon” banner attracted wide attention, including an angry letter from the president of the National Oil Company, who said the prank was going to cost Caltech a million dollar contribution he had been planning to make. Campus opinion was mixed, but most of us thought the oil man was blowing smog. He could just as easily have written a letter saying he had decided against a two million dollar contribution. Words are cheap when they're not on a cashier's check.

The local coterie of college Republicans, in a tradition which survives to the current day, were gormless pudges unable to rappel down the side of Millikan to remove the offending sign. They dangled hooks over the parapet at the top of the building in an attempt to snag the sign and break it loose. When that failed, a genius who is probably now working in the Bush/Rumsfeld Pentagon came up with the idea of torching the sign. Fortunately, the polished rock face of Millikan Library was not seriously damaged, but it was defaced by soot and ash that remained visible for months.

The bastards are still at it, aren't they?

Son of Richard Nixon

History repeats itself

George W. Bush may be the biological son of George Herbert Walker Bush, but he is the political offspring of Richard Milhouse Nixon. While Richard Nixon was more experienced and sharper in intellect than George W., he is the perfect model for the current president in terms of hubris and miscalculation. Even after he was forced to resign from office, Nixon was able to declare that “When the president does it, that means it's not illegal.” (He said it during a 1977 interview with David Frost. See the video at Crooks and Liars.) He never learned.

President Bush and his advisors appear not to have learned anything from Nixon's example. The Republican Party's political operatives are doing their best to bind together the fate of the president with the fate of each G.O.P. candidate. The White House doesn't want anyone running away from the president. God forbid that any of them get elected to congress without being beholden to their beloved chief executive or by distancing themselves from his failed programs and policies. Party chairman Ken Mehlman says, “The President is seen universally as the face of the Republican Party.”

That's what the Republican candidates are afraid of. As Bush's poll numbers languish in the basement, G.O.P. hopefuls see their campaigns crippled by the president's unpopularity. They fear that the 2006 elections will turn out the same way as those in 1974. Both are midterm elections in the second term of Republican presidents accused of trampling the law and the Constitution. Nixon resigned a few months before the 1974 election, making it inevitable that the balloting would turn into a referendum on his conduct. If the same thing happens this year, with Bush's poll numbers competing with Nixon's for unpopularity (even without the benefit of a presidential resignation), a modern day political cartoonist might ink an hommage to Don Hesse's editorial cartoon (Aftermath of the Nixon Years) in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat a few days after the election. That would be sweet.

John Murtha the Bellwether

Nixon in 1974

Many news stories dutifully report that Representative John Murtha (D-PA) was first elected to Congress in 1974. I have not seen any reports, however, that provide much context for that fact, using it instead as mere background for today's news about Murtha's surprising role as a vociferous "peace hawk." The youngsters among us can be forgiven for not recalling the circumstances, but 1974 should resonate in the minds of middle-aged Americans. There are lessons for 2005.

The Vietnam War was by no means over at the beginning of 1974, although the fragile Paris Peace Accords were in place, U.S. POWs had been released, and President Richard Nixon was hoping to wind down American involvement in a dignified manner (as opposed to the actual rout over which the hapless Gerald Ford presided in spring of the following year). The longtime representative in Pennsylvania's 12th district had died in office and a special election was being held on February 5. Democrat John Murtha of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives jumped into the race, which would result in his becoming the first Vietnam veteran in the U.S. House of Representatives. His opponent was Republican Harry Fox (the administrative assistant to the late congressman from that district).

Fox found himself saddled with a highly questionable campaign asset. President Nixon was under threat of impeachment for the Watergate scandals (wiretapping, hush money, obstruction of justice, perjury, etc.) and had not reaped the hoped-for political benefit of the quasi-peace in Vietnam. Senator Sam Ervin had presided over devastating hearings on Capitol Hill where former presidential counsel John Dean had described his "cancer on the presidency" conversation with Nixon and White House aide Alexander Butterfield had revealed the existence of the corroborating White House tapes, which the U.S. Supreme Court later forced Nixon to turn over to the Watergate special prosecutor. Nixon was eager to promote Fox's campaign in the hopes that a Republican victory would strengthen his hand and demonstrate his continued political viability. Since the president himself was damaged goods, he dispatched Vice President Ford to the 12th District.

In a news segment on CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite reported that Murtha was avoiding making the special election a referendum on Nixon and Watergate while Fox was eager to depict Watergate as a locally irrelevant obsession of the national media. Nevertheless, the broader significance of the contest was widely recognized and Murtha's narrow victory was interpreted as yet another defeat for the beleaguered president. A month later it happened again in Michigan, when a Republican congressional district changed hands to the Democrats in yet another special election (Thomas Luken vs. Willis Gradison), but Murtha's victory was the first to highlight Nixon's vulnerability.

Now Congressman Murtha is taking on another damaged Republican president, although this time his assault is direct rather than incidental. With both houses of Congress in Republican hands, George W. Bush is in no significant danger of impeachment, but other parallels are more striking. The current Bush administration is increasingly seen as the most dishonest since Nixon's, the president himself widely denounced for misleading the public and members of Congress.


Not to put too fine a point on it, Bush is seen as a liar, as Nixon was before him. Bush's approval ratings are contending with Nixon's for the record low. A special prosecutor is chipping away at the president's White House staff and scandals abound in every quarter. Nixon's included illegal campaign funds, the criminal gang known as the White House plumbers, and disinformation attacks on political opponents. Bush's include smaller transgressions—such as turning scientific reports into propaganda—and greater ones, such as distorting military intelligence, cronyism involving incompetence: FEMA, Homeland Security, and the planning and overseeing of the war in Iraq. John Murtha has just made it impossible for Bush's defenders to paint all war opponents with the broad brush of anti-military liberalism. Murtha is a staunch military supporter who knows failure when he sees it. Though some of the sleazier GOP lifeforms slithered out from under their rocks to denounce Murtha as a treasonous leftwinger, the president himself soon felt obligated to distance his administration from those ridiculous charges. Bush found himself in the position of saying nice things about the man who dramatically turned the issue of the Iraq war against him.

The Republican Party has had a long, happy ride during its years of ascendancy. However, the glorious victory of 2004 may have been a last gasp rather than a new lease on life. The Bush administration has become a millstone around the party's neck, dragging the GOP toward a debacle like the 1974 general election, after which the Democratic majorities had grown to 61 versus 37 in the U.S. Senate (2 were independent) and 291 versus 144 in the U.S. House. (Observe that 61 votes in the Senate is more than enough to invoke cloture on a filibuster without extralegal maneuvers and lacks only six votes of being able to convict on a bill of impeachment.) Of course, these days Democrats are in the minority in both houses. The task in 2006 is to gain new majorities, not augment existing ones. Should Democrats get their act together rather than merely rely on Bush's continued stumbling and bumbling (and I wish I were more confident that that will occur), in 2007 we could have Bush cornered and stymied by new Democratic leadership in the House and Senate. There's a consummation devoutly to be wished, since a president without his current congressional wrecking crew would at least be limited in the further damage he could do. In particular, a Democratic Senate could put brakes on Bush's attempt to pack the courts with rightwing ideologues.

I doubt that Bush's administration will unravel to the degree that Nixon's did. Back in 1974, everyone thought of Nixon as the sly mastermind behind the White House chicanery. Today more people are likely to give Bush the benefit of the doubt, regarding him as a false front for the monied interests who bankrolled his ascension into power. President Bush is likely to remain in office until his successor takes over in January 2009, a date still disappointingly far in the future. Bush's tenure would likely be cut short only if it were discovered that he was a driving force behind the lies and distortions spoken in his name rather than merely Cheney's Charlie McCarthy. But what would be the benefit of that? Instead of the dummy, we would then be stuck with the ventriloquist. Does anyone think President Cheney would be an improvement over President Bush?

However, it does occur to one to speculate that Cheney's health would not be equal to the onerous burdens of the chief executive's office. Perhaps he would have to reluctantly stand aside. The next in line to the presidency is the speaker of the house. Right now the speaker is the unremarked and unremarkable Dennis Hastert, but that could change after 2006.

President Pelosi? Perhaps you read it first here.

Update: If this is the first place you saw the words "President Pelosi" side by side, you don't get around enough. Randi Rhodes and Daily Kos, among others, beat me by a mile. Check out this Google search.