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The Legacy of the Bush Administration

By Jack M. Balkin

The Bush Administration, in its waning days, is now staking out its legacy. President Bush claims that history will vindicate his policies. The belief in historical vindication, which no doubt has comforted many unpopular leaders, is a dangerous delusion. Rather than listen to the condemnation of their contemporaries, those who suffer this delusion can feel all the more superior and virtuous in knowing that they recognize and are pursuing the right path in the face of great opposition.

One can only wonder--with a depressing sense of the awesome price that has been paid--about the untold number of times that political leaders have engaged in disastrous actions while consoling themselves with this delusion.

In the new issue of Foreign Affairs, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice articulates and defends the Bush Administration's foreign policy ("The New American Realism"). The core theme of her essay is that "our policy has been sustained not just by our strength but also by our values." Rice argues that ultimately the US can prevail only if the rest of the world is won over to the ideals of democracy, human rights, and respect for the rule of law.

The following passage is the closest Secretary Rice came to obliquely acknowledging that the Bush Administration has itself done some bad things:

There have been some bad times in the past eight years when we have had to do new and difficult things--things that, at times, have tested the resolve and patience of the American people. Our actions have not always been popular, or even well understood. The exigencies of September 12 and beyond may now seem very far away. But the actions of the United States will for many, many years be driven by the knowledge that we are in an unfair fight: we need to be right one hundred percent of the time; the terrorists, only once.

It's hard to know whether Rice offers this as an explanation, or plea for forgiveness, for the Bush Administration's now well-documented distortion of the evidence to start a war that has killed and maimed many tens of thousands of people, and for all the other bad things it has done--including officially sanctioning torture; no Administration in recent US history has shown greater disregard for the rule of law. The disconnect between her rhetoric in the essay about American values and the reality of the Bush Administration's policies is hard to swallow.

Here are the closing words of her essay: "An international order that reflects our values is the best guarantee of our enduring national interest, and America continues to have a unique opportunity to shape this outcome....And if we remain confident in the power of our values, we can succeed in such work again."

Too bad the Bush Administration did not really believe in the power of our values, for it has badly tarnished those values in the eyes of world opinion. The most we can hope for now is that people around the world will be able to separate the repudiated policies of the Bush Administration from the genuine good within (the best of) American ideals.

Full post as published by Balkinization on June 09, 2008 (boomark / email).