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Substantial majorities of the American public approved of both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, but each of these past presidents had serious flaws.
George W. Bush reveres Reagan and despises Clinton; yet he has managed to combine the worst aspects of both men: ignoring facts that do not fit with his preconceived views, as Reagan did, and trying to parse words in a misleading way, as Clinton did.
Bush Combines the Worst of Reagan and Clinton
By Robert S. McElvaine
Two of President George W. Bush’s predecessors have been much in the news over the course of the 2004 campaign. The death of Ronald Reagan brought a lengthy period of eulogizing, in numerous print and electronic hagiographies, of Ronald Reagan, the former president the incumbent most admires. Then there was a major media blitz surrounding the publication of the memoir of Bush’s immediate predecessor (and the one he seems most to despise), Bill Clinton. Finally, former President Clinton’s heart bypass surgery brought him back into the forefront of the news.
How fittingly ironic it is, then, that President Bush has, throughout the campaign, demonstrated how he combines some of the worst elements of Reagan and Clinton.
Reagan has been praised effusively since his death for being steadfast, “staying the course,” never admitting error, and having “vision.” Such attributes can indeed be positive. But to an ideologue such as Reagan or Bush, facts that do not support their beliefs are simply disregarded or denied.
President Reagan had frequently insisted that he would never trade arms for hostages. When he was finally obliged to make a statement to the American public about what had actually happened in the Iran-contra affair, Reagan said in a televised address in March 1987: “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.” Later, however, Reagan returned, as he always did when his heart and the facts and evidence did not mesh, to believing his heart.
How similar to Reagan members of the current administration have sounded as they have maintained their the-facts-be-damned attitude and continued to pretend that what they want to believe about Iraq and al Qaeda and about Saddam having had weapons of mass destruction is accurate, despite the complete lack of evidence and the contrary findings of the 9-11 Commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee. The President himself makes statements such as: “The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda” is “because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.”
Wishing doesn’t make it so—unless you are Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et. al.
For his part, Bill Clinton infamously defended his statement, “There is no sexual relationship” by saying, “It depends upon what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” The Bush Administration has resorted to exactly the same sort of lame defense-through-parsing of its false pre-war claims that Saddam Hussein “has” weapons of mass destruction. Vice President Cheney says that what the Bush administration asserted in its rationale for war was correct because Iraq had the capability to produce such weapons. It depends on what the meaning of “has” is.
And, as for the other major reason for going to war, that Saddam had ties with al Qaeda, it seems that depends on what the meaning of “ties” is. Cheney says that one confirmed contact, which the 9-11 panel said resulted in nothing whatsoever, constitutes “ties.” The evidence suggests that the Bush Administration is confusing “lies” with “ties.”
Cheney said in the summer of media treatment of the 9-11 commission’s finding of no ties between Iraq and al Qaeda, “They fuzz it up.” To any independent observer, it should be obvious that the people who are trying to “fuzz it up” are the leading figures of the Bush Administration. They have been trying to fuzz it up from the beginning, and have been sufficiently successful in doing so that they got a majority of the American public to believe that the war in Iraq is a war against those responsible for the September 11 attacks, which is so “fuzzed up” that it is an outright lie. To Dick Cheney, though, a lie is something that is not yet proven.
President Bush has asserted over and over again that the United States is safer from terrorism as a result of his war against Iraq. That is the question upon which the public’s judgment of Mr. Bush’s War—and so of his presidency and whether he should be reelected—should rest.
The simple truth is that his war against Iraq has undermined our war against terrorism.
In light of the obvious facts that the war created much greater hostility to the United States in Islamic nations, geometrically increased the number of terrorists, and turned Iraq into what it had not been prior to the war—a center for al Qaeda—if Bush and Cheney hope to make that case they will have to do a lot more of the counter-factual selling, parsing of words, and fuzzing up of facts employed by Reagan and Clinton in their worst moments.
{ Robert S. McElvaine teaches history at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, is the author of Eve’s Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History, and is currently completing his first novel and screenplay, What It Feels Like . . . . }
AUTHOR'S PHOTO AVAILABLE AT: http://home.millsaps.edu/~mcelvrs/McElvaine-headshot.jpg
Contact information:
Robert S. McElvaine
Elizabeth Chisholm Professor of Arts & Letters
Chair, Department of History
Millsaps College
Jackson, MS 39210
e-mail: mcelvrs@hotmail.com
Web: http://home.millsaps.edu/~mcelvrs
http://evesseed.net
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