The tragedy of the George Bush presidency

The following commentary from the December 2006 issue of Current History (p. 403) is the most succinct description that I have seen of the terrible damage that the presidency of George Bush has done to our country and to the world. The tragedy is that actions taken in a short period of time—the almost six years of his tenure—will take decades, with striving and good fortune, to repair.

Voters delivered a ringing repudiation of the president in the November congressional elections. But his policies had already diminished America’s constitutional strength and moral authority. Instead of building on the spirit of national unity that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001, the White House divided and weakened the country by converting the war on terror into an instrument for instilling fear, bashing opponents, smothering checks and balances, and seizing more power for the executive.

The cost to American values has been high…The damage extends not merely to the nation and its reputation but across the world, in part because the administration has also squandered America’s traditional role of global leadership. The United States has lost prestige and power at a time when the world needs US help to strengthen the capacity of international institutions to address complex and daunting problems…

Declining US legitimacy and swelling anti-Americanism compound the difficulty, too, of democratic reform within countries…And now America, hobbled and distracted, its moral beacon dimmed, has less ability to help or inspire.