George W. Bush
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TerrorismTerrorism
To his credit, there have been no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11/01. And for this I’m grateful. Also, I do not think anyone can reasonably lay full responsibility for the 9/11 attacks on George W. Bush. However, it did happen on his watch, so I think that he does deserve some of the blame, just as I think Clinton deserves some of the blame for the Branch Davidian debacle at Waco. We did have reasonable intelligence that al Qaeda was trying to execute a large scale terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and it has become pretty apparent, according to the 9/11 commission, that the Clinton administration took al Qaeda more seriously than the Bush administration did. Keeping America safe is one of the primary responsibilities of the President, so, by definition, the responsibility for any failure to do that has to fall, at least partially, on the sitting President’s shoulders. It comes with the job. I do find Bush’s almost complete failure to accept this responsibility disturbing.
Despite the fact that the U.S. has avoided any terrorist attacks since 9/11/01, many of the Bush administration’s responses to the threat of terrorism have been silly, scary or even possibly manipulative. Any of you who have been prevented from taking a nail file or scissors onto an airplane when going through airport security might attest to some of the silliness (do you really think anyone could take over a plane with a nail file after 9/11?). The fact that most cargo that goes on planes is still unscreened is, in my opinion, alarming.
What I find much more disturbing, even alarming, is the Patriot Act that the Bush administration requested (and got) and the way it has been implemented. The detainees that have living at the Guantanamo Bay detention center for the past couple of years without a trial were sent there by executive decree. Under the Patriot Act that the Bush administration requested, no proof whatsoever is necessary to detain American (and foreign) citizens indefinitely (i.e., forever, literally until they die), as long as the President says they are terrorists. The Bush administration also requested a legal opinion and justification for using torture, which, when combined with their request to detain American citizens at will for as long as they want, is truly disquieting. In other words, the Bush administration wanted the authority to, at its sole discretion, without any proof or due process, detain indefinitely and torture anyone it wanted to, based only on their word that that person was a terrorist. That sounds like a medieval kingdom to me, not the United States of America, home of the free. And it scares the living daylights out of me.
The case for the Bush administration’s manipulation of the terrorist threat is more speculative, but I think it deserves some consideration, as it carries serious implications about the Bush administration’s credibility and the cynical lengths to which it will go to ensure it stays in power. The most obvious example of this terror threat manipulation is the war in Iraq, when the Bush administration tried to associate Saddam with al Qaida in speeches and talking points before the war. It has since become obvious that there was no connection between the two. Another, even more cynical potential example of this manipulation is more speculative, but disturbingly convincing. It involves the “fortunate” timing (for the Bush administration) of its issuing terror alerts.
Foreign Policy
Originally, I was in favor invading Iraq in the spring of 2003, provided we could get international support for it, which, under normal circumstances, I think we could have. Of course, at the time I also thought we had rock-solid evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). We weren’t the only ones who thought he had WMD; most people did. While pretty much everyone (including the French and Germans) thought that he had WMD, especially chemical and biological weapons, none of the other countries felt so certain of it that they were willing to invade a sovereign country, or even condone such an invasion, without some proof through inspections. Bush, in true Bush-decisive manner, was apparently so thoroughly convinced that he was right that he didn’t listen to anyone who found fault with his policies. Nor did he invite varied viewpoints to inform his policies and analyze the validity of the conclusions his administration was drawing (the groupthink that Rumsfeld has acknowledged). This has been a persistent trait of his administration in numerous areas, not just terrorism. In fact, a senior official in the Bush administration, in an act designed to either punish or set an example, committed treason by revealing a CIA operative’s identity in Nigeria. Doing this not only endangered the life of the operative he revealed and the life of her contacts, it also compromised our intelligence operations in Nigeria, the primary source of uranium mining in the world. Neither smart nor patriotic, in my opinion.
It is true that Saddam did thumb his nose at the U.N. and its resolutions. It is also true that if the U.N. refuses to follow up on its resolutions with actions, it will continue to be a paper tiger instead of a real force for stability. I also find the German and French tendencies to put their heads in the sand when faced with significant foreign policy commitments annoying and generally counter-productive. However, the U.N.’s lack of approval of the invasion of Iraq did not occur in a vacuum.
The fact that policy is not enacted in a vacuum is something Bush steadfastly resists realizing. It really shows that he does not understand how consensus politics (the kind that exists in democracies) works. In this particular case, Bush had repeatedly ignored and rebuffed international interests and treaties (the Kyoto environmnetal accord (which Russia has recently ratified), the ballistic missile defense treaty, establishment of the International Court, among others) in the polite “my way or the highway” style that has become his trademark. It really should surprise no one that, after two years of not cooperating with the world community (who, in the meanwhile gave their approval for the U.S. to invade Afghanistan (with which I wholeheartedly agreed)), most of our traditional allies didn’t give Bush the nod to invade a sovereign country without solid evidence of WMD. Now that we did actually invade, and made something of a mess of things, and WMD were not found, our credibility is at an all-time low.
Bush really does not seem to understand the value of good international relationships, or even the common notion of compromise and give-and-take between allies and opponents that is the process produces most of the progress in the world. I think this is related to some of Bush’s character issues.
Unfortunately, Bush’s polite “my way or the highway” approach to foreign policy has squandered the unprecedented goodwill towards the U.S. following 9/11 and made the U.S. the most feared and hated country in the world by a wide margin. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press shows a dramatic drop in international views of U.S. foreign policy and the U.S. in general. This has several bad effects on the U.S., including:
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A dramatic increase in hostility to the U.S. that has helped al Qaida recruit and made international travel for American citizens more stressful and dangerous; |
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Less of a perceived common interest between the U.S. and the world in general and, more specifically, our traditional allies, such as Germany, Britain, France, Spain, Australia, Canada and others, which means that these countries are less likely to seek common solutions with the U.S. or commit their resources to U.S. goals; and |
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Lack of international support for the U.S.’s international endeavors, which makes Iraq and other undertakings less legitimate int he eyes of the world and much more expensive for the U.S. taxpayer. |
The Economy
I give Bush credit for some of the short-term upturn in the economy that has lifted us out of recession. He has decreased taxes and increased government expenditures, and in so doing has employed one of the traditional tools of economic stimulus: an expansive fiscal policy. I think that some of this deficit spending was justified in light of the recession and responding to the 9/11 attacks and the threat terrorism poses. Unfortunately, as anyone who has to balance his or her checkbook knows, spending more and earning less means that we are going into debt. Record debt, actually: almost half a trillion dollars ($422 billion this year) and more than that, if you only count on-budget receipts and outlays. And this after Bush inherited a record budget surplus from the Clinton administration. The fact that the Republicans have the Presidency and both houses of Congress makes this impossible to blame on Democrats.
Bush’s remarkable feat of moving the Federal budget from a surplus in 2000 to a record deficit in 2004 is, in my opinion, partially excusable because of a mild recession he inherited, the September 11 terrorist attacks, new efforts to combat terrorism, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, approximately $150 billion of that deficit is directly tied to the war in Iraq, which, in the absence of WMD in Iraq, was a war of choice, not a war of necessity. Normally, deficit spending has a stimulating effect on the U.S. economy. However, most of the $150 billion for the war in Iraq is being spent in Iraq, not in the U.S., and provides very little stimulus for the U.S. economy, other than increasing the amount of debt (plus interest) that must be paid back by American taxpayers in the future.
This is especially problematic because very soon we must pay for the retirement of the baby boomers. To do this, we need to build up budget surpluses, not more debt. Alan Greenspan agrees that these large budget deficits cannot continue without significantly harming our economy for many years to come.
The truth is that Bush’s policies have been business-friendly to the extreme. As an economist by training and a small business owner, I certainly support reasonable business-friendly policies. I believe that the businesses, and particularly small businesses, are the primary engines of growth for the U.S. economy. However, I do think that this can go too far. An example of this, in my opinion, is the new set of overtime rules that the Bush administration recently tried to implement, but which Congress has blocked, due to its potential bad effects on middle-class workers. While the Bush administration tried to sell this as adding flexibility to the system, the system already offers the flexibility he is trying to tout. The only significant effect of the new rules would be to strip away protection from mandatory overtime for middle-class white collar workers.
Bush’s policies do, in some instances, reward companies for outsourcing jobs to overseas. Given the net loss of almost a million jobs since Bush has been in office, this is simply not acceptable to most working-class people. Nor do I think it is wise for the U.S. economy in the long run. One documented effect of outsourcing to take advantage of cheap foreign labor is that businesses often take this route instead of trying to develop new technologies and become more efficient in their operations. In the long run, or even in the medium run, this will reduce the competitiveness of the companies that do this. Unfortunately, the timeframe for this to occur is somewhat longer than the average CEO’s tenure at a major U.S. company. This means that, by the time the company becomes less competitive, the CEO has moved on, probably with a handsome bonus for increasing profits. While this may be fine for the people who make up Bush’s circle of friends, this simply is not acceptable to most working-class people.
The Environment
I consider myself
more of a conservationist than an environmentalist. However, I do not think that being pro-business and being pro-environment are mutually exclusive. I also think that market-oriented means to overall environmental objectives are better than strict government regulations, if they can be implemented, because they harness the creativity of the profit motive. However, the truth is that polluting businesses do not pay the full cost of the pollution they produce, making some kind of regulation necessary to protect the rest of us. It is the polluting companies’ neighbors, the people who live downstream or downwind from them and future generations who pay for their pollution. Permitting businesses to pollute in an unregulated environment is essentially a subsidy to those businesses that encourages them to pollute. This is especially true where global warming is concerned.
There has traditionally been a signficant amount of bad science on the part of environmentalists. This has caused a credibility problem for much of the new, more scientifically valid research that supports responsible environmental policies that some environmentalists support. Eventually, as environmental science matures, the validity of this research should improve. However, if you believe the Bush administration’s environmental policies are based upon solid, rational science, then I suggest you check out this article on CNN outlining the most scathing scientific attack on any
administration in U.S. history. It discusses a statement condemning the Bush
administration for misusing, suppressing and distorting scientific advice. And
it has been signed by more than 4,000 scientists, including 48 Nobel prize
winners.
I do think that most environmentalists underestimate the ability of the market to produce solutions to environmental problems. However, implementing voluntary restrictions will in most circumstances cause the market to produce perverse results, where the companies that actually go to the expense and effort to implement the restrictions cannot compete profitably with those companies that do not implement them. The result is that the companies that employ efforts to protect the environment go out of business or are bought by those that do not, leaving only those companies that are the biggest polluters.
I think the way to harness the market forces for environmental problems is to set outcomes, such as emissions levels, and leave it up to the companies how to reach those government-set emissions. Sadly, the Bush administration has had the most perversely pro-fossil fuel energy policy in decades. As a consequence, most companies know that it does not make business sense to reduce their polluting.
At his particular point in our history, I think that there is another, more immediate reason to try to move as quickly as possible away from oil as an energy source: national security. If we depend on energy from corrupt regimes in the Middle East that brutally suppress their people and use the U.S. as a convenient external scapegoat, then these regimes know that we cannot really pressure them to do much of anything. Our threats are hollow. Given the frustration and lack of clear success of even our huge efforts to impose our will (even if, or perhaps especially if, these are benign) on Iraq, our threats to these regimes seems even more hollow.
In addition to lessening our dependence on Mid-East oil, many of the more environmentally friendly energy-producing technologies (such as solar panels and wind turbines) would be less centralized than our current system, leaving our energy systems less vulnerable to crippling terrorist attacks that would have widespread effects. Imagine where we might be in a few years if we had spent even one-quarter of the $200 billion we have allocated to spend on the Iraq War on developing alternative energy sources instead? Progress in this area is extremely unlikely under a Bush administration that is so closely tied to the fossil fuel industry.
I should probably make it clear that this section is about character, not personality. Sadly, people’s gut feelings about candidates often seem to be based more on personality than character. Having a nice personality is, well, nice. But the character of the President of the United States is far more important than whether he would be one of the first people you would invite to a barbeque at your house.
I think that character is a very genuine issue in any election for public office. In particular, I think that character issues that concern conduct affecting policy or affecting the public welfare are especially significant.
I think George Bush is probably a pretty good guy. I don’t think he’s a racist. I don’t think he has a lot of hatred in his heart (except, it seems, against Saddam Hussein, which I suppose is not something that in itself is too bad a thing). He’s someone who I wouldn’t mind going to a baseball game with. I think he is probably a very loyal friend. He has refused to criticize, even mildly, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice or any others in the innermost circle of his administration.
On one hand, I think Bush’s loyalty is admirable. But I also think that it explains a lot of what is wrong about his Presidency.
I think it is this code of loyalty that drove Republicans to demand attendees sign a loyalty oath at an event that was televised this summer. The Bush administration really does seem to have zero tolerance for any criticism at all or any independent thinking at all from those within the administration, particularly if the media is involved. I think this, and the resulting “groupthink” Rumsfeld referenced in his explanation of what has gone wrong in Iraq, is a real Achilles heel for American policy-making. I think it is critically important to get more than one viewpoint before deciding on issues of national importance. Failure to do this can create truly catastrophic consequences, such as what we are seeing in Iraq. The bitter hostility of the Bush administration to any criticism or independent thought ensures that these kind of mistakes will continue to plague their policy-making if they are elected to a second term.
Refusing to admit mistakes is a sign of weakness, not strength. Nietzsche said, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." This assumes that we learn from our mistakes. In order to learn from a mistake, it is necessary to realize that a mistake has been made. This is not something which the Bush administration does well. What makes this especially hard to swallow is the other side of this coin: Bush repeatedly takes credit for policies he actually opposed at the time. Examples include:
a) Bush initially opposed creating a department of Homeland Security. Since then, he has taken credit for it and attacked John Kerry for opposing it. (see THIS ARTICLE for more details)
b) Bush opposed creating a Congressional 9/11 Panel to investigate what went wrong leading up to and since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The he resisted its attempts to find out more information by stonewalling information requests from the Commission, refusing to testify under oath before the Commission, refusing to testify before the Commission without Dick Cheney by his side and at first refusing to let his National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice testify (he later gave in under intense pressure from the public and numerous outcries from his own party).
c) Expanding the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) while he was governor of Texas. (After the Texas legislature passed the Democrat-sponsored CHIP expansion bill, Democratic Rep. Glen Maxey said, Bush pulled him aside and said, "Congratulations on children's health. You crammed it down our throats." [Austin American-Statesman, 2/26/99; Baltimore Sun, 3/2/00]). After it passed, he took credit for it, including taking credit for it during the 2000 Presidential debates.
It is precisely the people that Bush has chosen to be fanatically loyal to that concerns me most. A person’s choice in friends and confidants says a lot about that person. The fact that Bush’s friends come from a very narrow range of the political spectrum says something about Bush’s tolerance for diverse perspectives. Bush’s refusal to acknowledge their shortcomings despite their significant failings (disbanding the Iraqi army despite well-informed advice not to do so, reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq in the face of military and political advice not to do so, failure to anticipate the Iraqi insurgency despite a multitude of warnings, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that was made possible by a culture of tolerance of torture (and in fact, a rationalization of its use), etc.) reveals Bush’s insecurities and how they affect national policy. I also think it shows that Bush sets a higher priority on his friends’ egos than on the wellbeing of the United States.
Dick Cheney and his buddies from the big oil companies in the energy sector seem to be pulling the strings. For instance, look at Halliburton, the company where Cheney used to be president. Before Cheney became Vice President of the U.S., less than 5% of Halliburton’s revenue cam from government contracts. Since Cheney became Vice President, government contracting revenues for Halliburton have increased more than 1,100%! There are a couple of interesting sections in Halliburton’s December 2000 10-K (a form that publicly traded companies must file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)). Keep in mind that this was written immediately after Cheney and Bush won the 2000 election. The 10-K’s analysis of the company’s business environment says that Halliburton “sees improving opportunities to provide additional support services to other United States agencies and to government agencies of other countries, including the United Kingdom.”
How in the world could Halliburton know that the United States and that the United Kingdom, the U.S.’s primary ally in the Iraq invasion, would have such increased need for the company’s services? The 10-K actually gets even more specific, citing an expected increase in “the magnitude of governmental spending and outsourcing for military and logistical support of the type that we provide”. This seems to be an almost specific reference to the multi-billion dollar contract that Halliburton won for logistical support of the military in Iraq without having to bid against competing firms. The fact that they were the only company contacted for this lucrative multi-billion dollar contract, despite not having any similarly-sized government contracts before and having been accused of overcharging the government before, is suspicious in and of itself. But the fact that they seem to have known they would have opportunities like this more than two years before the fact is positively ominous. It makes me wonder why, as Colin Powell, phrased it, Cheney has “a fever. It is an absolute fever” to go to war in Iraq. Click HERE for a link to Halliburton’s 10-K filings on the SEC web site, if you would like to see this quote for yourself.
In what I can only assume to be deference to Cheney’s non-renewable energy industry friends, I have yet to see the Bush administration pass up any opportunity to reduce protections for the environment or reign in the excesses of the major oil companies.
Bush needs to decide what his priorities are: loyalty to the friends that have a claim on him because they helped clean up his messes, or serving the broader interests of the American public he is supposed to represent.
Bush seems to genuinely believe in spreading democracy throughout the world and has demonstrated a commitment to doing just that. However, he and his administration seem to be willing to sacrifice democratic institutions here in the U.S. to accomplish his goals. A few examples:
Both George W. Bush and John Kerry come from wealthy families. Being wealthy merely means that someone has a lot of money. Being wealthy also implies having access to opportunities (such as attending Yale) that are not readily available to those who are not wealthy. Being spoiled means that someone does not take responsibility and does not clean up his messes. This, I think, defines the difference between Bush and Kerry.
To the best of my knowledge, George Bush has never cleaned up any mess he has ever created. He has always had the connections to have someone with the resources to step in and sweep up his mess or sweep it under the rug. If you can think of any messes he has created and actually cleaned up, please let me know. I would genuinely like to hear about it.
When someone does not have to clean up his messes, he gets used to not having to explain himself, not having to admit mistakes and not apologizing. All of these are traits Bush has demonstrated repeatedly during his administration. Earlier this year, when Bush was asked during a press conference to identify any mistakes he had made during his Presidency so far, he stammered and did not come up with anything he considered a mistake. His silence on this speaks volumes. Either he truly was so out of touch with reality that he thinks he has not made a single mistake or else he did not think he should be held accountable for his actions and so did not have to answer such a question.
Bush’s messes have included breaking the law, repeatedly breaking his word, an SEC investigation and other controversial messes. During the 2000 election, Bush admitted that he did not do anything noteworthy before he was 40. He seems to think that this excuses him from having his life before age 40 examined. I don’t think we can afford to humor him in this. Otherwise, we have essentially an 18 year old President of the United States (Bush is 58, minus the first 40 years of his life, would make him 18).
Examples of Bush’s messes are old and new and numerous. A few of them, in chronological order:
1) Vietnam: Not even bothering to show up for four months of the National Guard service that kept him out of Vietnam. Seriously, can you imagine George Bush, the son of a U.S. senator, showing up for four months of service in Alabama like he says he did, and literally not a single credible person, including his commanding officer, remembering seeing him there for four months? Even if you suspend all critical thinking for a moment and give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he did actually show up in Alabama. Then why can’t he name a single person he served with for that four months? Was he really such a snob that he did not have any real conversations with anyone? I truly can’t think of any explanation for this. Can you?
2) Bush’s oil companies: Bush ran two oil companies that lost millions of dollars invested primarily by rich college friends and friends of his family. Bush generally had a reputation of trying hard and being a “straight shooter”. But, in the end, Bush walked away with almost a million dollars while his investors lost millions.
3) Texas Governor: Bush was governor of Texas for six years (1994-2000). A few facts about the effects of his governorship:
a) Bush spokesman Eric Woolson said, “Texas leads the nation in improving schools. It's documented, and it's clear for all to see.'' However, in 1994, Texas was tied for 40th (with New York State) among the 50 states and the District of Columbia on SAT scores (source: U.S. Department of Education, using College Board figures). In 1999, five years after George Bush became governor of Texas, Texas was tied for 46th place (with Pennsylvania). (Source: Associated Press, 8/31/99, quoting College Board figures)
b) Texas Ranked Near Bottom in Places to Raise Children. In a 1999 Children's Rights Council study, Texas ranked 48th in the nation in best places to raise children. The study measured 10 factors, including child immunization, death and birth rates, high school dropout rates and percentage of teen pregnancy. Under Bush, Texas dropped from previous rankings of 29 in 1995 and 36 in 1997. [Top Ten States to Raise a Child Study, 1999, www.vix.com/crc]
c) Bush Fought Expansion of Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), despite a record budget surplus. Even though Texas ranks second worst in the nation in the percentage of uninsured children (24 percent) and the number of kids lacking health insurance (1.4 million), Bush fought efforts to expand coverage to more children. In fact, Bush's initial 1999 budget proposal for the Children's Health Insurance Program would have denied coverage to 220,000 kids compared to the Democratic plan. In fact, while Texas had a $2 billion budget surplus, and $1.8 billion from the tobacco settlement, Bush had his staff lobby to contain expansion of the program, according to lawmakers involved in the negotiations. During the 2000 Presidential election, Bush claimed credit for the Democrat-sponsored bill that finally passed, despite his having opposed it tooth and nail. [Austin American-Statesman, 2/26/99; Dallas Morning News, 12/2/98; New Republic, 7/12/99]