Bush League

"Bush league" is, I hope all know, a term from baseball which denotes a group of persons or teams put there because of a decided lack of talent. The political commentators are now beginning to try to summarize the Bush years and the
ush legacy. I think it can be summed up by saying that any President who has demonstrated extreme incompetence in office will be called a "Bush leaguer." This is, of course, unfair to senior Bush who was a tad bit above the competence level of his son.

In the commentator analysis I have read, I was surprised to come across the following remarks from Harvard University political history scholar Barbara Kellerman who opined: "I think it's possible when people have stopped being as angry at the Bush administration as they are now ... that they will realize that some of this is just ... the luck of the draw."

Kellerman, author of the book "Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters," noted that Bush has not had luck on his side for the past eight years.

"He [Bush] has been a quite unlucky president. Certain things happened on his watch that most people don't have to deal with -- a 9/11, a [Hurricane] Katrina, the financial crisis, being three obvious examples," she said.

"And yet they happened on his watch. He is being blamed," she said.

Let me start by saying that the problem with phrasing the question of a President's effect upon the future by talking about the president's legacy is one that is uniquely suited to the American culture's concentration upon the individual, the superstar, the celebrity. President's have unequal ability to bless or curse the rest of us by their actions. Their legacy may be something that determines the financial stability of the eventual presidential library they will build, but, for the rest of us it is what we have to live with for years to come - curse or blessing. You know where this is headed. President Bush was a "Bush Leaguer" not because of what happened to him but because of how he responded to what happened to the country. By the way, Harvard educated Kellerman, the financial crisis is unlike 9/11 (an evil force plotting to damage you) or Katrina (a natural force which cause extreme damage to human community). The financial crisis is the result of policy or the lack of it. Ups and downs in the economy are normal parts of life. What we are living through in this moment of extreme economic instability is the result of the last eight years of free reign to the market and the greed that feeds it. It is a fundamental mistake that causes extreme hardship. This will be the legacy of the Bush Leaguer - years, decades of suffering that did not need to occur because of mistakes: no WMDs, no Iraq connection to Al Quaeda, no welcoming as liberators, no oil revenues to pay for reconstruction, no cheap oil as a result of conquering Iraq, no Mission Acccomplished -istakes that cost us and the world tons of money, tons of suffering with no good gain. We pay the bill for decades to come in many ways.

President Lincoln is remembered as a good president because he got the question of slavery right and the country, though it paid a high price to resolve the question, only was better for what he got right. President Bush got the analysis of 9/11 wrong, he got the wars wrong, he got the economy wrong and the debris piles up on us and our sons and daughters. At least he and we could have come out even if he had "done no harm."

In fact, it is too light a thing to say that our current president will be remembered as a "Bush Leaguer." The consequences of what a President does are too serious a thing for us and our world to try to describe it in terms of the national pasttime.

Things always happen, but how we respond determines if what happens results in a blessing or a curse. I dont know what kind of political science or history they are teaching these days at Harvard, but I don't think that legacies are determined by what happens that is, more or less, out of our control, but rather by what we do that is within our control.

It evidently is not just a Harvard problem, this less than professional way of analyzing political affairs combined with some kind of implicit heroworshiping, US focused interpretation of history. Julian Zelizer, professor of history and political affairs, from Princeton stated, in the same CNN article on the web, that: "If you imagine that an Iraq in 10,15 years is actually a vibrant, stable democracy and other countries neighboring it move in that direction ... I think you'd have a strong Bush revisionism,"

Let's assume, contrary to everything that normal people could deduce from an honest appraisal of the current reality, that Iraq could achieve the kind of stable, vibrant democracy that, let's say, Iran has today, why is it that this would be attributed to Bush and not the Iraqis? I suppose the logic is the same US-centered logic that states that we saved Europe from Germany in WWII and it was not the huge strategic mistake of Germany to fight on the Russian front which sucked all armament and energy out the German military that resulted in the German defeat. Or, the same kind of logic which credits the fall of the wall in Berlin to Reagan and not to the interal forces within the Soviet Empire or to the long overdue breakdown of the rotting structures built to keep the Soviet system in repair way past the days of its usefulness. I guess Al Gore did invent the internet!

Drawing on the compassion left over from the first ten days of the "compassionate conservatives" who vanished almost immediately upon the inauguration of the Bush Leaguer, I have to say that it gives no pleasure to try to imagine how President Bush will be evaluated in years to come; the world would have been better to do this kind of evaluation after the first four years. Hardly anything good comes from criticizing someone whose mistakes are so obvious and so damaging to the world around them. What would be good is to remember what it means and the damage that can be done when Presidents get it wrong. This could be the best of the Bush legacy - his presidency taught us what to avoid in the future to ensure that we do not spend the rest of our careers in the Bush League.