Alan Brinkley: The personality flaw that's made Bush one of the worst presidents ever - for HNN

Alan Brinkley: The personality flaw that's made Bush one of the worst presidents ever - for HNN
Source:New Republic(1-13-09)
[Alan Brinkley is provost and Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia.]
We are less than two weeks away from the end of the Bush era, but it is not too early to assess how this important presidency went so disastrously wrong.There are already shelves full of books criticizing Bush and his administration, and there will undoubtedly be more as records become available to revealwhat will almost certainly be a generation's worth of damage that we have not yet even recognized. But the whole of Bush's failure is not simply the sumof his administration's parts. The key to his behavior is less ideology than a critical aspect of his character....
Bush, like Hoover, has blanketed himself with principles and commitments. But, unlike Hoover, he has built an administration that seems almost purposelydesigned to ward off any challenges to the President's goals and to protect him from the need to compromise with other areas of government. To a remarkabledegree, the Bush White House has created defenses from other areas of government--Congress, the states, leaders of other nations, even other parts of hisown administration--in a way that seem designed to create something like an autocracy. This was not because power itself has been Bush's principal goal.He was, apparently, a happy man serving in one of the weakest governorships in the country. But the accumulation of power in the White House has protectedhim from the need to negotiate and make compromises with others.
For whatever reasons--his difficult family history, his problems with addiction, his failed careers before entering politics, his strong religious convictions--Bushhas seemed to be comfortable only when he could make quick and firm decisions, however complicated the issue, and then move on. Admitting mistakes or changingcourse seems almost contrary to his nature. The "unitary executive," which Dick Cheney has so energetically implemented and defended, was the perfect vehiclefor Bush's tendency to prefer conviction over practicality. When Congress passed laws that challenged his convictions, the White House changed them throughsigning statements. When the Supreme Court struck down policies Bush believed in, the White House largely ignored the decisions. When military leaderspointed out the futility of wartime strategies, Bush ignored the generals and waited for Rumsfeld to replace them. When Hurricane Katrina devastated NewOrleans, Bush was not only slow to act, but also never took any significant steps to repair the damage that his administration had done to the agency thatwas supposed to have helped rebuild the city. FEMA today is little better prepared for another Katrina than it was in 2005....
Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2009 at 8:16 PM