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Policy and Politics: The Bush Administration and the 2008 Presidential Election

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Abstract

It was called the most important election since the Great Depression. The policies of the Bush administration established the storyline for the presidential election and determined its outcome. This could be seen in three areas: a failing economy, the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the expansion of executive powers. In particular, the collapse of the financial industry in the fall of 2008 correlated with the increases in the Democratic vote. The Bush presidency should be considered transformative, a highly significant period in American history. Not only did it set the agenda for the election, pitting an advocate for change (Barack Obama) against a candidate committed to continuing the Bush policies (John McCain), it also dictated the problems the in-coming administration would have to deal with.

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Notes

  1. See as examples: Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006); Charlie Savage, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2007); Benjamin R. Barber, Fear's Empire: War, Terrorism, and Democracy (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003); Richard M. Pious, The War on Terror and the Rule of Law (Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company, 2006); and William Crotty, ed., The Politics of Terror: The U.S. Response to 9/11 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004).

  2. See Eric Lichtblau, Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice (New York: Random House, 2008); Jack Goldsmith, The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007); David Cole, Justice at War: The Men and Ideas that Shaped America's War on Terror (New York: New York Review Books, 2008); David Cole and James X. Dempsey, Terrorism and the Constitution (New York: The New Press, 2006); Steven Strasser, ed., The 9/11 Investigations (New York: Public Affairs, 2004); and Alan Wolfe, Does American Democracy Still Work? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

  3. Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals (New York: Doubleday, 2008); Savage, Takeover; Goldsmith, Terror Presidency.

  4. Nancy Chang, “How Democracy Dies: The War on Our Civil Liberties,” in Lost Liberties: Ashcroft and the Assault on Personal Freedom, ed. Cynthia Brown (New York: The New Press, 2003), 40.

  5. Bruce Ackerman, Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 35.

  6. Chang, “How Democracy Dies: The War on Our Civil Liberties,” 33; see also Nancy Chang, Silencing Political Dissent: How Post-September 11 Anti-Terrorism Measures Threaten our Civil Liberties (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002).

  7. Frederick A.O. Schwartz, Jr. and Aziz Z. Huq, Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007), 27; see also Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, 2008); and Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003); Matthew Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg, Presidential Power: Unchecked and Unbalanced (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007), 367–68.

  8. James Carroll, Crusade: Chronicles of An Unjust War (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, 2004), 8.

  9. Andrew J. Bacevich, “New Rome, New Jerusalem,” in The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire , ed. Andrew J. Bacevich (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003), 97; see also G. John Ikenberry, “Liberal Hegemony or Empire? American Power in the Age of Unipolarity,” in American Power in the 21st Century, ed. David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), 83–113.

  10. Joan Didion, “Cheney: The Fatal Touch,” in The Consequences to Come: American Power After Bush, ed. Robert B. Silvers (New York: New York Review Books, 2008), 10, 5.

  11. John Newhouse, Imperial America: The Bush Assault on the World Order (New York: Vintage Books, 2004), xi.

  12. Newhouse, Imperial America, xi. In one of the most publicized and lasting episodes, it was the Vice President's office that outed Valerie Plame, a C.I.A. operative and the wife of Joseph C. Clarke, the former ambassador sent to Niger to investigate whether Saddam Hussein was receiving raw materials to build nuclear weapons from that country. This was the main argument (the presence of WMDs) given for going to war with Iraq. Clarke found no evidence of such activity and made his views known publicly. An infuriated Vice President then responded through his staff and sympathetic outlets in the media revealing Clarke's wife's C.I.A. connection, an act that was illegal under American law. Cheney's Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby later went to prison as a consequence but his sentence was commuted by Bush.

  13. Goldsmith, The Terror Presidency.

  14. Karen J. Greenburg and Joshua L. Dratel, eds., The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Karen J. Greenburg, ed., The Torture Debate in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Howard Ball, Bush, the Detainees, and the Constitution: The Battle Over Presidential Power in the War on Terror (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007); Philippe Sands, Torture Teams: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008); Mark Danner, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (New York: New York Review Books, 2004); Alfred W. McCoy, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, 2006); and David Cole and Jules Lobel, Less Safe, Less Free: Why America is Losing the War on Terror (New York: The New Press, 2007).

  15. See “The Torture Memos” in Greenburg and Dratel, The Torture Papers; Joseph Marguiles, Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006); Steven Strasser, ed., The Abu Ghraib Investigations: The Official Reports of the Independent Panel and the Pentagon on the Shocking Prisoner Abuse in Iraq (New York: Public Affairs, 2004); Erik Saak and Viveca Novak, Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier's Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo (New York: Penguin Press, 2005); Dave Lindorff and Barbra Olshansky, The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2006); Center for Constitutional Rights, Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush (Hoboken: Melville House Publishing, 2006); Anita Miller, ed., George W. Bush versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2006); and Dennis Loo and Peter Phillips, eds., Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006).

  16. Didion, “Cheney, the Fatal Touch,” 6.

  17. American Bar Association, “Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine”, (Washington, DC: American Bar Association, August, 2006), 1; see also T.J. Halstead, “Presidential Signing Statements: Constitutional and Institutional Implications” (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, September 17, 2007); and Savage, Takeover.

  18. Editorial, Boston Globe, October 7, 2008, A12.

  19. Transcript, Fox News Sunday, December 22, 2008).

  20. A New York Times commentary on Cheney's assessment on leaving office: “Vice President Dick Cheney has a parting message for Americans: They should quit whining about all the things he and President Bush did to undermine the rule of law, erode the balance of powers between the White House and Congress, abuse prisoners and spy illegally on Americans … it must be exhausting to rewrite history as much as Mr. Cheney has done in the series of exit interviews where he made those comments. It seems as if everything went just great in the Bush years.” New York Times, Editorial, December 23, 2008, A20. Andrew Sullivan in The Atlantic: “The vice president long ago became an enemy of the Constitution and all it represents. He should have been impeached …; and the shamelessness of his exit makes prosecution all the more vital. If we let this would-be dictator do what he has done to the Constitution and get away with it, the damage to the American idea is deep and permanent.” The Los Angeles Times in referring to Cheney as “nothing less than self-delusional,” editorialized: “ … undaunted by the irrefutable fact that America's prestige has plummeted around the world, notwithstanding the outcry by human rights advocates against torture and the fact that there is no meaningful peace in sight in Iraq or Afghanistan, Cheney soldiers on with the same cocky, we know what we’re doing and laws be damned attitude that has come to define him. Even though the American electorate rose up last month to sweep the GOP in an extraordinary rejection of Bush administration policy, he persists in defending eight years of morally and legally disastrous decisions.” The Andrew Sullivan, Atlantic and Los Angeles Times quotes can be found in the Boston Globe, December 23, 2008, A19.

  21. State of the Union Speech, January 29, 2002.

  22. Frank Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina (New York: Penguin Press, 2006); John Mueller, Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and Why we Believe Them (New York: Free Press, 2006); Scott McClellan, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception (New York: Public Affairs, 2008); and Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2005).

  23. President's Speech on USS Abraham Lincoln, May 1, 2003.

  24. Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006); Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin Press, 2006); Dana Priest, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003); and Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006).

  25. Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor in the Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush administrations and Zbiebnew Brzezinksi, National Security Advisor in the Carter presidency can exemplify the tenor of the assessments. First Scowcroft: “ … we are now in Iraq, and the war has created new conditions. In the Middle East as a whole, as far east as Pakistan, it has inflamed many of the resentments and hatreds and differences within the region, and brought them all to the boiling point. Whether it's Shia versus Sunni, whether it's Arab versus Persian, all of these hatreds are on the surface to a degree we haven’t seen in a long time. We have a very different region. It's also a region that contained two-thirds of the world's oil reserves. So we have a huge problem. The region is extremely unstable … we can’t get out of Iraq, and I think any new president has to recognize that.” Then Brzezinkski: “The arrogance was the thought that we could now define the rules of the game in an international system that was still somewhat interdependent, in spite of our overwhelming power, and that these new rules would permit us to decide when to start wars, how to start wars, how to preempt wars and prevent them … which then found application after 9/11 … our reactions have made 9/11 into at least a tactical triumph for Osama Bin Laden—which it couldn’t have been but for our reactions … . We have now become deeply engaged in it to the extent that we find ourselves stressed financially. The costs are unbelievable. Our armed forces are strained … we hear more and more reports of the vulnerabilities of our military. Our legitimacy and our credibility have been badly damaged … that was a dramatic, tragic, and avoidable turning point in our history.” Such assessments came to characterize the conduct and outcomes of the wars. Zbigniew Brzezinkski and Brent Sowcroft, moderated by David Ignatius, America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 39-40; see also John Freedland, “Bush's Amazing Achievement”, in The Consequences to Come: American Power After Bush, ed. Robert B. Silvers (New York: New York Reviewof Books, 2008); and James A. Baker, III and Lee H. Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way ForwardA New Approach (New York: Vintage Books, 2006).

  26. Quoted in Didion, “Cheney, the Fata Touch,” 20.

  27. In assessing the Bush administration's record, The New Yorker's “Talk of the Town” was unsparing: “There's a lively debate among historians over the question of whether the record of the forty-third President, compiled with the indispensable help of a complaisant Congress, is the worst in American history or merely the worst of the sixteen who managed to make it into (if not out of) a second full term … the record is appalling.” Strong stuff! This was written in 2006 at the time of the off-year congressional elections. Hendrik Hertzberg, “Talk of the Town”, The New Yorker, November 6, 2006, 45.

  28. Thomas Pilippon, “The Evolution of the U.S. Financial Industry from 1860 to 2007: Theory and Evidence” (http://www.[NewYorkUniversity]sternfinance.blogspot.com, October, 2008).

  29. Larry M. Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Kevin Phillips, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (New York: Viking/Penguin Group, 2008); and Paul Krugman, The Conscience of a Liberal (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007).

  30. Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008).

  31. Results here and below from New York Times polls, July-November, 2008.

  32. “History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market—but too much … ” President Bush, Speech to Wall Street, December 15, 2008.

  33. “Our plan is working … violence is down dramatically. Al Qaeda is driven from its safe havens. Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds are sitting together at the same table to peacefully chart the future of this country. There is hope … . This is a future of what we’ve been fighting for—a strong and capable democratic Iraq that will be a force of freedom and a force for peace in the heart of the Middle East; a country that will serve as a source of stability in a volatile region; a country that will deny a safe haven to al Qaeda. As a result of these successes … the American people are safer … .We are leaving the next President with a stable foundation for the future.” President Bush, Speech at Prime Minister's Palace on Signing the Security Agreement with Iraq, December, 12, 2008.

  34. ABC News Interview, with Charles Gibson, December 1, 2008.

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Crotty, W. Policy and Politics: The Bush Administration and the 2008 Presidential Election. Polity 41, 282–311 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2009.3

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