George W. Bush's Worst Legacy

By any measure besides winning reelection, the presidency of George W. Bush has been a disaster. His economic policies have been disastrous. His foreign policies have been disastrous. His environmental policies have been disastrous. His approaches to science, education and unifying the American people have been disastrous. Even his management of disasters has been disastrous. I'll go into specifics and touch on all these topics in the future, but there is an aspect of his tenure that is potentially worse than any of these. That's because as bad as these other performances have been, they are all correctable.

A new administration could, for example, restore fiscal sanity and begin reversing the $4 trillion in federal debt Bush will have amassed by the time he leaves office. A new president could return to basing decisions on facts and scientific research rather than the fixed prejudices of ideologues. A reasonable president could extricate our forces from Iraq, act in such a manner as to regain the respect and friendship of most of the world, and get Congress to adopt sensible environmental and energy policies. But it will be much harder to correct the horrendous damage he has caused to our foundational principles. It is conceivable that this damage will not be undone. And if not, America will become something other than it has always been, and will stand for the same thing most powerful nations have always stood for, not right, but power itself.

Bush's most dangerous role has been to use fear to get the American people to do and support many things they would never otherwise have done or supported. Franklin Roosevelt said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," and Bush has brought the import of this warning home to us in our own time. He has used fear to subvert the Constitution and our civic morality. He has used it to aggrandize his power, start an unprovoked war and secure the suspension of inalienable rights. He has effectively fanned it to equate disagreement with disloyalty, and to scare millions of Americans into accepting these impositions as natural and necessary. The first danger is that these erosions may become the norm. The second is that they demonstrate all too easily the vulnerability of the American people and system to the power of fear, and may serve as a road map for further incursions by future like-minded authoritarians. The slippery slope beckons.

Consider what has already been given up. This president speaks of a permanent "generational" state of war without end. He claims that his therefore permanent war powers extend to arresting people without charges and holding them indefinitely without trial, access to legal counsel, the right to face their accusers and call witnesses in their behalf. The presumptions are wholesale violations of the 5th and 6th Amendments in the Bill of Rights. He has directed government agencies to spy on Americans and conduct warrantless searches without probable cause in violation of the 4th Amendment and the FISA Act. At first he lied about doing this and admitted it was illegal. Later he admitted doing it but said it is legal.

He has required Americans to sign a loyalty pledge to him in order to attend his speeches, and has directed that those wishing to peaceably assemble to voice their opinions can only do so in fenced areas far from his person. These are violations of the 1st Amendment.

He selectively cherry-picked intelligence and fabricated other intelligence to falsely identify a foreign country as a threat and stampede the American people into supporting an unprovoked invasion of that country, an invasion his vice president and other members of his administration had signalled their intention to launch some three years before he took office, and which was secretly discussed in his first cabinet meeting after taking office. His administration then bypassed normal procurement procedures and awarded secret no-bid war contracts to politically favored corporations, including one formerly headed by his vice president.

He procured a resolution from the United Nations to require the accused country to open itself to inspection for weapons of mass destruction. When the country complied and none were found he ordered the international inspectors out and attacked anyway. This is a violation of the U.N. Charter, to which the United States is a founding signatory.

He sanctioned the use of torture against detainees, a violation of the 8th Amendment and the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners, which has been ratified by the United States.

He, his vice president, his domestic affairs advisor, and the vice president's chief of staff conspired to disclose the name of an undercover CIA operative for political advantage. This violates US statute. When the chief of staff was convicted of obstruction of justice for committing perjury about his involvement, the president commuted his sentence.

When he signs laws passed by Congress, he claims the right to issue signing statements which change the meanings of those laws. He has exercised this "right" over 800 times. Congress may pass any law, but the meaning of the law is what this president says it is. If this authority becomes accepted and established there will be no need for a Congress or a Supreme Court. This practice violates the Separation of Powers written into Articles 1, 2, and 3 of the Constitution by usurping the constitutionally mandated powers of Congress and the Judiciary.

It is of the greatest importance to American freedom that the next president disavows these practices, reverses them and works to foster a national consensus that such abuses are not justified and must never be repeated. The people must be watchful and insistent. If these practices stand the consequences will be dire indeed.