November 9, 2010

• The most you can ask for?

  I heard an interesting discussion about George W. Bush’s legacy during which someone said something that I thought was incredibly stupid. 

  He started off not so bad. He basically argued that Bush’s far Left-wing criticizers were idiots who were hurting their own cause by criticizing him in ways such as calling him Hitler-like or arguing that he engineered 9/11 on purpose.

  Alright I was with him that far. I too think that those who criticize Bush to that extreme are being really dumb. You don’t accuse someone of being Hitler-like unless they are actually implementing the gas chambers or else you look like a damn fool. And you don’t say someone engineered a travesty as serious as 9/11 unless you have some convincing irrefutable evidence to that end. I’ve never seen any such evidence. And so I agree that making those kinds of accusations makes Left wing critics look pretty stupid and ultimately hurts their cause. It hurts because it distracts people from all of the very REAL things that you can PROVE that the Bush administration did that are very much worthy of critique. Things like starting a war in Iraq based on nothing.

  It’s the same with the Right wing though. When they make accusations of Obama like that he’s the Anti-Christ or a Maoist Dictator, or that he was born in Kenya or that he’s a Muslim or that he’s setting up Death Panels that makes those Right-wing critics look really very dumb too. And I do think that hurts their cause at least amongst your average main stream Americans. And it likewise distracts from all of the many REAL things for which Obama really does deserve criticism. Things like having a problem to assassinate an American citizen accused of being a terror suspect without trial or allowing the country to remain at a 9.6% unemployment rate.

  Well I shouldn’t really say it’s the SAME with the Right wing. There’s a huge huge difference. With those accusations on the Left I can think of NO major Left wing figures who had influence within the Democrat party who made those statements. I don’t recall any major Left wing scholars making those statements either. I don’t even recall any major Left wing media figures who kept harping on the Bush planned 9/11 conspiracy theory stuff. No. While it was a common sentiment amongst the masses on the Left who were speaking out their anger at President Bush it never rose to any level of prominence amongst the movement leaders. The closest it came is with the 9/11 Truth movement which attracted a lot of people on the Left and the Right. But even it over time moderated its propositions considerably from extreme accusations to simply calls of investigation. And the only major figure I know of associated with that movement was Van Jones and he was a minor low level perfunctory in the Obama White House who got fired. Even for him the extent of his involvement was simply the unwise signing of a single 9/11 Truth Movement petition.

  In contrast, those accusations I listed on the Right come right from the very highest echelons of power within the Republican movement. Presidential hopefuls like Sarah Palin argue for the “Death Panels” line. Several Republican Senators and Representatives and candidates for those offices have catered to the Obama Birther conspiracy. And some of the most respected major Republican media figures accuse Obama of being a Muslim, of being a Maoist, of being a Racist and wish for his administration to Fail.

  These are not equivalent. They could have been. Democrats probably would have been very successful had they given in to and catered to the conspiracy theorist crowd against George W. Bush. There were a LOT of people who believed that. A lot of people still do. And they are passionate about it. I think they’re very very very wrong and misguided. The responsible thing to do when encountering those philosophies is to deny them. And that, as far as I can tell is what most Democrats on a national level did. The two parties are not equivalent on that front.  Maybe in the future they will be, but right now it looks like the Democratic party is more responsible when it comes to trying to curb direct attacks based on unverified truths and lies. The Republican party used to be a lot better about that too but things have changed.

  Anyway, that’s basically aside. It suffices to say that I agree with the speaker that many critics of Bush go way overboard in their criticism. I totally understand being angry at Bush and disliking the way he ran his administration. I don’t understand accusing him of being a diabolic monster.

  But then the guy said something that completely through me for a loop. He said something like “Bush doesn’t deserve to receive such harsh criticism because he was elected by the American people and he did the best he could and that’s really the most you can ask for.”

  And I thought… REALLY?!?! Is that the MOST you can ask for??

  I could ask for a hell of lot more than that.  I could ask for all of our soldiers who died in Iraq’s lives back. I could ask for all the people who lost their lives in New Orleans from Katrina’s lives back. I could ask for NOT having a housing bubble and subsequent market crash that cost millions of Americans their homes and retirements. I could ask for a LOT.

  And would you really accept simply the fact that someone did their best as justification for their actions no matter how bad? Would you say that it’s okay that the rapist rapes an underage child because he “did his best” to resist their urges? Would you say that incompetent doctor whose mistakes result in the deaths of numerous of his patients should be praised simply because he never gave up and always tried his hardest but his hardest just wasn’t good enough?

  Here’s the thing. Since when is simply that they do their best the most we should expect from ANYONE let alone our LEADERS? Why is there this kind of pass we give to Presidents for simply being sincere and genuine and honest and hard workers? No doubt those are good characteristics for a President to have., but why is that enough?  Shouldn’t we want our Presidents to also be competent and intelligent and good leaders and good at their jobs and you know… moral?

  If we’re judging Bush solely on his sincerity well then even *I* would probably give him a pass. I don’t doubt that he believed in everything he did and thought it was the right thing to. The problem is, it seemed to me that he was kinda a dunce. He never thought anything through. He was easily manipulated, not particularly clever, arrogant and stubbornly unwilling to change. But most of all he was disconnected from reality. To him, it seemed that putting people in harms way didn’t way heavily on his soul. It was more like Cops and Robbers for him. You have to defeat the Axis of Evil, the badguys and have the goodguy Americans win. But it shouldn’t be that way. Going to war should be the heaviest hardest decision anybody has to make. And when you do it you have to be fully aware of all the consequences and understand truly that the thing you are going into is fundamentally your responsibility. On top of all that he was stubbornly locked into views that caused him to think of certain people as second class citizens and certain societies as less significant than our own and seeing the lack of religion as making you someone less deserving of respect or equal rights under the law. And he rejected science and thought it was perfectly okay to manipulate the facts to deceive people if it was in service of what he perceived as a greater “good”. All of that to me makes him far from deserving of the position of President.

  Perhaps you think that I’m being too harsh. And indeed I readily admit that I can’t KNOW that all of these characteristics are true of Bush deep down inside. I can only really judge him on his actions and those of the people under him for which he held responsibility. And MANY of those I truly do find deplorable. But I do think that whether these deeper personality traits ARE true of Bush is really important to ask and talk about if you’re trying to exonerate Bush for what happened during his term. I don’t think Bush should be judged as being a really good person simply because he happened to be sincere and a hard worker and he got elected. That might be the beginning of your analysis but it can NOT be the end of it. It’s not enough simply that he “did his best”. Some people’s “best” just isn’t good enough for the job they are being given. In that case we should totally ask for them to either work to become better so that their “best” is at a higher level or we should ask that they be removed and someone whose “best” is up to the task be put in his place. Even better if they be rational and honest enough to admit that they are in over their heads and take a job more suited to their ability.

  Doing your best is never the most you can ask of someone. If anything it’s almost the minimum you can ask of someone. It’s certainly not an adequate assessment system for a position as significant as President. You should also ask that people BE the best. Not everyone will be able to succeed at that, indeed no one really will completely, but that’s a real goal worth striving for and it’s a standard we can actually judge people against.

  • 8:14 pm
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