Self-correction and self-renewal are the most important assets of American democracy. And the Bush years have given us a lot to correct. This week, The Economist argued that the three most notable characteristics of the Bush presidency were partisanship, politicization and incompetence. I think "incompetence" should be singled out. After all, it is hardly unusual for governments to display a certain level of partisanship and politicization. Yet you don't have the level of mind-boggling incompetence displayed during the Bush years in most functioning Western governments. How else can one explain the decision to invade Iraq with only 150,000 troops and without planning for post-combat occupation? How else can one explain the response to Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in 2005?
Incompetence becomes even more dangerous when it is mixed with mendacity. There is no reason to doubt the narrative of Vice President Dick Cheney when he keeps saying that everything changed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Cheney strongly believed and feared that the next attack on American soil would kill not just 3,000 but hundreds of thousands because it would come in the form of nuclear terrorism. This fear caused all the focus to shift to an old and familiar enemy: Saddam Hussein. Iraq, after all, had weapons of mass destruction. Saddam had used them in the past against his own people. He could now share them with terrorists determined to strike the United States. It did not take very long for the Bush administration to manipulate intelligence in order to exaggerate the threat posed by Baghdad and to fabricate a close relationship between Saddam and al-Qaeda. The result was a war of choice waged with faulty intelligence and political incompetence. This divided the country that had been brought together by Sept. 11 and undermined popular support for the central theme of the Bush presidency: the war on terror.
Not surprisingly, Bush administration supporters find consolation in looking at long-term history. They take comfort in knowing that low popularity when leaving office does not automatically translate into a failed presidency. Their hero is Harry Truman. Like Bush, Truman departed with very low ratings, but his performance came to be seen much more favorably after a couple of decades. Today historians consider Truman a visionary who understood the threat posed by the Soviet Union and communism. And he is credited as the architect of containment policies against Moscow. Similarly, Lyndon Johnson ended his presidency with highly unfavorable ratings because of Vietnam. But the civil rights bills pushed through Congress during his administration are today widely credited for having transformed American society into one that, 40 years later, was ready for an African-American president.
Who knows -- if Iraq one day emerges as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East and Afghanistan becomes a similar success story, we will probably regret the harsh criticism that the Bush administration had to constantly endure. For now, however, we can only hope that the next administration will not repeat the same mistakes of the Bush years. And indeed, if there is anything to be cheerful about regarding the Bush legacy, it is the willingness to change that this legacy has generated. Genuine change does not come without necessity. Desperate times require radical departures. Let's hope that the next four to eight years bring competence and pragmatism to Washington. Not only America itself, but the whole world urgently needs better leadership.
