A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency by Glenn Greenwald Read Free Book Online

to address a trend, or tacking to accommodate new winds. For him there is no new data, only determination.

But whereas certain fans began abandoning Bush on the ground that he is too stubborn and resistant to change even in the face of failure, others began turning against him on the exact opposite ground—namely, that he had become too weak and irresolute. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum—whose 2003 book had anointed Bush The Right Man and “tells the story of Bush’s transformation: how a president whose administration began in uncertainty became one of the most decisive, successful, and in the US at least, popular leaders of our time”—painted a picture of Bush in a November 2006 Wall Street Journal op-ed as a weak, confused, defeated figure:

The Bush administration woke up yesterday morning to a deeply ugly political situation. Those polls that show the president below 40 percent approval? They would look even worse if they surveyed only Republican members of Congress. As for the president’s opponents: They are slavering for a nice two-year-long munch on the administration’s haunches.
Worst of all, the administration seems to have exhausted its energy. Frustrated by Iraq, wounded by Katrina, thwarted in its two most recent major domestic initiatives (Social Security and immigration), the administration looks baffled, uncertain and often strangely passive.

John Podhoretz has long used his pundit space in the New York Post and National Review to hail the greatness of George Bush. Further, his Bush Country (2004) is devoted, literally, to establishing Bush’s greatness. Therein, he described the invasion of Iraq as “the gift George W. Bush has given to the world” and even praised him as the “best presidential speaker since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” A more adoring fan of President Bush would be hard to find. Yet in his New York Post column, Podhoretz called a December 2006 press conference regarding Iraq “unquestionably the most dispirited performance of his presidency.” Podhoretz went on to argue that the performance was indicative of a weakened, crippled president:

The question was this: How would Bush, who himself had only suffered electoral success since seeking higher office in 1994, handle defeat? The answer: Not well….
As usual, the president took pains to warn the enemy in Iraq that “they can’t intimidate America.” But, by offering no real sense that he knows what “the way forward in Iraq” is, he seemed unsteady—and unsteadiness is exactly the quality that should and will gladden the hearts of the enemy in Iraq.
If you combine the effect of yesterday’s press conference with his remarkably depressing interview with The Washington Post the day before—when he said that victory was “achievable” in Iraq, a defeatist word that must have had Winston Churchill rolling in his grave—you can’t help but feel that Bush has had the stuffing knocked out of him by the twin blows of the November election results and the bloody chaos in Baghdad.
Yet this is not a moment when we or the troops in Iraq can afford to have a winded and stunned president.

Fundamental shifts in one’s perception of President Bush are now commonplace from those who had previously revered him. Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward has written a three-book series about the administration, with a focus on the president’s personality traits and decision-making methods. Bush at War , the 2002 first of the three, is almost entirely brimming with praise for Bush the Great and Strong Leader.
But in September 2006, Michiko Kakutani, book critic of the New York Times , noted that in State of Denial , the third and last in the series, the president described by Woodward appears to be a completely different person than the one he glorified in his 2002 treatment:

President Bush [in State of Denial ] emerges as a passive, impatient, sophomoric and intellectually incurious leader, presiding over a grossly