It underlies so many recent news stories, from the anxiety over having it disclosed that the administration is debating shutting Guantanamo, to the OVP claims it is not subject to the rules that govern the executive branch, to the federal appeals court throwing out the White House's legal opinion on enemy combatants. What will be Bush's legacy in the history books?

Being the president on 9/11, and the subsequent expansive powers the Bush White House claimed, some in secret, to conduct its war on terror. Disaster in Iraq after the relatively quick toppling of Saddam Hussein. Hurricane Katrina and the impossibly slow, third world federal response and the loss of much of New Orleans, and only partial recovery. Warrantless domestic spying on Americans. Cheney, and the singular powers and exemption from rule of law his office claimed, and advocacy for torture. Cheney's chief of staff convicted of lying and obstructing justice, and sentenced to prison. Perhaps a presidential commutation of his sentence. The connected story of the administration's faulty claims on WMD in Iraq, and the question of how that came to be.

Overthrowing the Taliban, but failing to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, the chief architect of 9/11, and continued instability in Afghanistan. The capture of several al Qaeda terrorists. Guantanamo Bay and the controversy over the administration's shucking the Geneva Conventions and habeas corpus. Abu Ghraib, and the black site prisons. Early talk of promoting democracy in the Middle East followed by US-occupied Iraq slipping into civil conflict and the exponential metastisis of terrorism and al Qaeda in Iraq, and the US working with corrupt and autocratic old stand-by regimes, including two whose citizens perpetrated the 9/11 al Qaeda attacks, to counter a newly dominant Iran, and we haven't seen exactly how that will all play out yet.

Denying global warming for most of his two terms, and bucking Kyoto and serious commitments to reduce global carbon emissions. A Constitutional crisis as the courts pushed back on Bush's claims of unlimited executive authorities to declare US citizens enemy combatants with no Constitutional rights and other issues; and, after the Dems took both houses of Congress in 2006, between the legislative branch and White House that had gotten used to no oversight. Perhaps the US attorneys scandal and the erosion of legitimacy at the Justice Department as the degree of partisan politicization that took hold in Gonzales' Justice Department and other federal agencies was exposed in a series of Congressional hearings, federal investigations and resignations playing out for the last months of Bush's term in office.

If I were a presidential advisor thinking of this list, I would be thinking of something bold and positive I might want Bush to be remembered for, among these other things. It doesn't look like it's going to be immigration reform. Middle East peace may be too hard, especially given recent events, notwithstanding Tony Blair's diplomatic talents, and they clearly aren't counting on it being Iraq as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. I'd pick a major high profile, non-military effort, something achievable, and humanitarian, and in the foreign policy arena, maybe massively increased US assistance to counter poverty and disease and conflict and promote economic development in Africa, and I'd have the president and Rice talking about it a lot. I'd appoint someone -- maybe Powell, or Sachs -- to be the emissary on it. I wonder if they are trying to think of something like that now that the efforts on several other fronts, including immigration reform, are faltering.

Posted by Laura at June 23, 2007 12:42 PM