Quote of the Day (George McGovern, on George W. Bush)

“I don’t have any personal malice toward Bush. I wish him well. I’ve talked to him on a number of occasions. He’s a congenial, likable guy. I’ve always admired his father, and I hope things will go well for him. I don’t think Bush is a bad man. I just think he was mistaken in so many judgments he made as president. But I wouldn’t throw a shoe at him.”—George McGovern, quoted by Justin Ewers, “Q&A: George McGovern: The Original Liberal on a ‘Second Lincoln,’” U.S. News and World Report, Special Year-End Issue, 2008

(Had I been old enough to vote in 1972, I would have cast my ballot for McGovern as President. Even given my distaste for the New Left movement that he championed and that, to a large extent, represents the shock troops of the current Democratic Party, I would still vote for him over Richard Nixon. One of the reasons is his essential decency and generosity of spirit—something he shared with onetime Presidential rival and longtime Senate colleague, Hubert H. Humphrey. That quality comes through powerfully in the above quote.

So much of the commentary from the left on Dubya has been so predictably vitriolic, without any attempt to allow for the President’s better qualities—including loyalty and the personal charm that McGovern mentions—that for a long time it was easy for middle-of-the-road/independent voters to dismiss most of their criticisms out of hand. In that respect, of luck in enemies, Bush has been, like Bill Clinton, most fortunate.

But now the day of reckoning is at hand, and I’m afraid that the saddened-but-critical tone adopted by McGovern is appropriate in judging Bush’s place in history. Bush, as our first MBA president, surely understands that the top official in an organization is accountable for results. In the case of the Presidency, that comes down overwhelmingly to the two issues that Americans use, almost invariably, as yardsticks for judging their leaders: peace and prosperity.

Even if you ascribe 9/11 to a bipartisan asleep-at-the-wheel attitude toward the rising Islamofascist menace, or if you think that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the Mideast, you cannot get around the fatal underestimation of the Iraqi insurgency and of the forces needed to quell them by Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

That, coupled with incompetent planning for the post-Saddam regime (what Atlantic Monthly writer James Fallows astutely calls “Blind Into Baghdad”), made an already by-no-means-sure military occupation of Iraq into something infinitely more drawn-out and perilous.

At this point, even after the surge, prospects for a multisect democratic state in the Mideast are at best uncertain. Not a lot to show for 4,000+ American service personnel dead. And the winking at torture shamefully degraded the moral standing of the United States in the war on terror.

The economy is even worse. If you want to know the extent of the problem—aside from headlines about sagging employment, consumer confidence, or retail sales—think of it this way: What other time, since the beginning of FDR’s first term, can you recall before this past September when a run on American banks was a distinct possibility, when panic was in the air?

By neglecting the regulatory functions of government—even stripping them—Bush produced an economy like a runaway bicycle—built for speed, but unable to brake and destined to crash. Now, because of the money thrown hurriedly at banks by Treasury Secretary Paulson—not to the staggering sums that Obama will have to produce not just to restart the economy, but just to get it out of the water—the danger exists, for the first time in a generation, of inflation reignited.

There is, finally, this: Hurricane Katrina. You can argue that blundering by a Democratic mayor and governor didn’t help. But at this point, even Bush partisans have to acknowledge considerable bungling of rescue efforts by the administration. Remember this: an entire American city, New Orleans, was lost on the President’s watch. Who knows if we’ll ever see it close to its old form?

McGovern regards Obama as another Lincoln. Without the oath of office having been even administered to the President-elect, that remains to be seen, no matter how much you admire his cool or his eloquence. But there is no doubt that Bush has created the need for another Lincoln, FDR or Washington—maybe even someone with all of these men’s qualities—to cope with our tsunami of troubles.

Amid a crisis that threatened the stability of his government, Lincoln noted, “We cannot escape history.” Neither can George W. Bush. Give him points for congeniality, as McGovern does, then get out your historical yardstick. I think he’ll rate below average. And if Obama can’t rescue the economy or stabilize the Mideast, Bush runs the risk of being judged far more harshly than that, with Pierce, Buchanan and Hoover.)