Yesterday on esquire.com Ron Suskind wrote an excellent little piece about the legacy of President Bush the second entitled What Bush Meant. The first problem with his presidency is summed up in one paragraph:
George Walker Bush is not a stupid or a bad man. But in his conduct as president, he behaved stupidly and badly. He was constrained by neither the standards of conduct common to the average professional nor the Constitution. This was not ignorance but a willful rejection on Bush’s part, in the service of streamlining White House decision-making, eliminating complexity, and shutting out dissenting voices. This insular mind-set was and is dangerous. Rigorous thinking and hard-won expertise are both very good things, and our government for the past eight years has routinely debased and mocked these virtues.
The second problem was, essentially, a refusal to acknowledge the first:
President Bush was unmoved by any arguments that challenged his assumptions. Debate was silenced, expertise was punished, and diversity of opinion was anathema, so much so that his political opponents–other earnest Americans who want the best for their country–were, to him and his men, the moral equivalent of the enemy. It is important to note just how different such conduct has been from the conduct of other presidents from both parties.
Anyone who has drawn this sad conclusion has been dismissed as a “Bush hater” by those who defend the president.
It seems overly simplistic to narrow everything down to these two self-reinforcing problems, but I believe this is the basis for what’s befallen America these past eight years.
There’s a George Bernard Shaw quote I’ve always liked: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” This morning it occurred to me that Shaw’s statement is incomplete. Technically all change depends on the unreasonable man. If the change is for the better, then it’s progress; if not, we’re left with the task of repairing the damage he’s done.
[tags]george bush, ron suskind, george bernard shaw, esquire[/tags]
