President Bush's Historical Legacy, & What He Can Do to Improve It, Including an Open Appeal to President Bush, for the Sake of the Future

According to a recent article in the Washington Post, President Bush has been spending some time discussing and contemplating his historical legacy. This article paints a picture of Bush as paradoxically both a sadly isolated and yet spiritually serene man, who takes refuge in his faith that he is "doing the Lord's work," even while he struggles to understand the burdens of his historical situation, and the shadow his presidential legacy will pass on to the future. For the sake of us all, and for the sake of this President's historical legacy, I sincerely hope he has not already reconciled himself to simply continuing the disastrous course he is on.

Although time is increasingly short, he still has more than twelve months to chart a dramatic turn-around and change of policy, if only he is willing to summon the spiritual will to admit the severe mistakes of his past course of policy, and summon the best minds to his side to chart out an alternative course to address the massive policy challenges related to global warming, poverty, and war that will otherwise be his administration's dark legacy to the future.

Amid the tumult, the president has sought refuge in history. He read three books last year on George Washington, read about the Algerian war of independence and the exploitation of Congo, and lately has been digging into "Troublesome Young Men," Lynne Olson's account of Conservative backbenchers who thrust Winston Churchill to power. Bush idolizes Churchill and keeps a bust of him in the Oval Office.

But I wonder if any of the sages, and especially the historians and philosophers, who have met with Bush have really challenged him to confront the most fundamentally destructive aspects of the legacy his Presidency will pass on to the future of this country, its people, and the world--a legacy that consists of:

• greatly increased violence as a result of the massive destabilization of the Middle East caused by the ill-considered and poorly planned imperial adventure to "save" Iraq and promote democracy abroad with little understanding of how such imperial adventures work instead to destroy the chances of democratic development abroad and undermine democracy at home in the US (because of the costs and pressures of war that undermine truth and trust in government and the fundamental institutions of society).

• a legacy of perpetual war and massive military spending that is wasting billions of dollars a month in Iraq that could have been used to address many of the major domestic social problems in the US that a truly "compassionate conservatism" would have addressed: poverty, collapsing infrastructure (getting so bad that major bridges, like the one in Minneapolis, are beginning to collapse), Social Security, Public Health.
  

• An entire decade of missed opportunities and precious time lost for addressing the crisis of global warming, which by itself may quickly become the darkest legacy of this President, through his inaction, as the toll of catastrophic climate change begins quickly to mount in the decade ahead.
  

Indeed, the inaction and interference of the Bush regime in global efforts to begin to address global climate change in the first decade of the 21st century may, within the next decade, become the foundation of the harshest historical judgments of all on an administration that may come to be blamed for inaction during the most critical decade for turning the tide on global warming.

Instead of taking up the noble and necessary battles against global warming and global poverty and disease, the Bush administration chose to waste this country's great resources, energy, and vital life and blood on a fruitless and ill-considered foreign crusade, corrupted by war profiteering and incompetence.

Is this the Historical Legacy the Bush administration wishes to pass on to posterity, for all to remember it by?

If Bush seeks a more positive legacy, he now has less than 18 months to chart out some dramatic changes of course, by first openly admitting the terrible mistakes of the past, coming clean with the American public about those terrible and fundamental mistakes of historical judgment and hubris, and in all humility before God and his fellow humanity, demonstrating in the time remaining to him that he has truly repented of his past errors and wishes to begin to make amends for the mistakes of the past by charting a new course into the future.

And if he truly wishes to salvage his historical legacy, so that future historians will be able to write that he at least finally came to admit the error of his ways, and began to pave the way to a dramatic change of course for the next administrations after him, then the way for him to begin is to make dramatic changes of course in three policy areas that will most dramatically shape his historical legacy: war, poverty (the dramatically increased gap between rich and poor, and the destruction of the middle class), and climate change:

• On climate change, President Bush should declare his intention to work with Congress to pass, before the end of his presidency, the most dramatic change in the country's energy, environmental, and climate policies, to reduce global warming emissions by a minimum of 80% by 2050, and to dramatically increase fuel efficiency standards of US-produced autos by requiring that the fleet of new US autos produced in 2018 achieve at least 40 mpg avg fuel economy, and provide government investments to guarantee that major US auto manufacturers are able to introduce affordable plug-in hybrids for sale by no later than 2012.
• On the war, President Bush should admit that the whole strategy for intervening in Iraq was fundamentally misconceived, and clearly declare and commit the country's best diplomatic resources to working with ALL the countries in the region to negotiate a region-wide settlement of the Iraqi conflict, to be policed by the countries of the region in collaboration with the best leadership of the UN, with full support and funding by the US. If the US could spend billions of dollars a month on an ill-planned war strategy in Iraq, it should now commit itself to spending at least 10% of that to support a diplomacy-driven strategy of regional cooperation and settlement that funds the UN to take leadership and play the role it should have been allowed to play from the beginning.
• On poverty and the rising gap between rich and poor in the United States, as a result of the decimation of the middle class through the loss of middle-income jobs, the President can reverse course and begin to build a brighter legacy for the future by reversing his strategy of tax cuts for the rich, which have placed ever greater financial burdens on the middle classes of people. He can chart a dramatic reversal of policy by declaring his intention to support the Democratic Congress in a campaign to bring back greatly increased rates of progressive income taxes on both the salaries and the investment incomes of the wealthy who earn over $300,000 a year.
  

If President Bush truly wishes to bring light to the dark shadows that the legacy of his first six and a half years in office are already casting over the future, he can begin to change how he will be remembered by making dramatic alterations in his policy in each of the three areas noted above, while also committing himself to getting rid of the most secretive and civil liberty-destroying aspects of the PATRIOT Act.

On the other hand, if President Bush wishes to guarantee that history will view him as one of, if not the, worst Presidents in the history of the country, then all he needs to do is continue on the path he has already charted for himself, believing against all evidence to the contrary that he has been "doing the Lord's work." If he wishes to persist in that terrible delusion, he is of course free to do so, and the supine Congress will probably allow him to get away with it for another sixteen months, with what dire consequences for the country and the world we can still only imagine. But if the past is prologue, chances are things will only continue to get even worse, if the President continues in his current direction. And this Legacy may grow even darker than we can yet imagine.

An Open Appeal to the President of the United States

So, dear President Bush, I appeal to you, for the sake of this country, for the sake of democracy, for the sake of the future of the world, as well as your own historical legacy: If you really care about not only your own historical legacy, but about the kind of world you will be passing on to the next generations of this country's children, please make dramatic changes in your present course of policy.

Would you not like the children of the future in their history classes to be able to learn of President Bush, that he had the courage in his last year of office to admit his mistakes and to begin to pave the path that would allow the United States to begin to pick itself up from the terrible missteps it took after 9/11, and to rise to the great challenges of global cooperative leadership that the world would require of the United States in order to help it to address the great twenty-first century problems of global warming, terrorism, poverty, and disease?

Would you not hope that this is what the future will be able to write of you? Or would you rather force future historians to write of you that instead of changing course even when almost everyone told you the country was headed in the wrong direction, that you stubbornly persisted on a path that drove the country ever deeper into chaos and left the next several administrations after him burdened with dealing with the disastrous impacts of terribly failed policies on both the domestic and international fronts, so much so that the United States was never able to recover its former respected role of leadership in the world of nations?

Which destiny will you write for yourself, Mr. President? The answer is up to you: Only you can change the history that will be written about you, and however much you might try to hide the real history of your past administration, you should know that the mere evidence of your administration's efforts to hide the facts of the history of the present from future historians will be enough to condemn and convict you in their eyes.

For history, in the end, is about truth before humanity and the Eternal; and this Truth will not be denied. It cannot be hidden; it cannot be refuted; it cannot be subverted or silenced. It will out in the end. So the only way to alter the truth of the history of your administration and its legacy is by changing the nature of its truth--by dramatically admitting the errors of its previous policy, and fundamentally changing its policies to address the growing crises of poverty, disease, climate change, and perpetual war (including terrorism).

Again, Mr. President, the choice is yours, for better or worse--for the sake of this country, its people, and the fate of the world, as well as your historical legacy. The choice is yours, and I hope for the sake of us all that you will make the right one--

Sincerely,

Satyagraha