A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency

by Glenn Greenwald

  Republican concern over the president’s refusal to accept the evidence of this pending electoral devastation led to multiple press accounts in which prominent members of his party complained of Bush’s apparent detachment from reality. The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin wrote on October 16: “The question is whether this is a case of justified confidence—based on Bush’s and Rove’s electoral record and knowledge of the money, technology and other assets at their command—or of self-delusion. Even many Republicans suspect the latter.” Froomkin added: “The notion that President Bush is not just in denial—but is petulantly in denial—is taking on greater credence.”

  The election results, of course, vindicated Republican fears that the president had, yet again, simply refused to accept unpleasant facts—i.e., reality—which were in conflict with his faith-based certitude. The day after the election, the president held a press conference and was asked: “You said you were surprised, you didn’t see it coming, you were disappointed in the outcome. Does that indicate that after six years in the Oval Office, you’re out of touch with America for something like this kind of wave to come and you not expect it?”

  The president’s reply was instructive: “Well, there was a—I read those same polls, and I believe that—I thought when it was all said and done, the American people would understand the importance of taxes and the importance of security.” In his mind, Republicans lost the election not because Bush had embarked upon the wrong path or made the wrong choices—that is something that, by definition, cannot be—but because Americans failed to “understand the importance of taxes and the importance of security.” Americans failed to recognize the Good and that Bush was fighting for it.

  That “reasoning” was similar to the explanations issuing from the president prior to the 2006 election as to why he was certain, polls not-withstanding, that Republicans would win. Gigot interviewed the president in September and wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

  ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE—SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI?

  “That’s not going to happen,” snaps the president of the United States, leaning across his desk in his airborne office. He had been saying that he hoped to revisit Social Security reform next year, when he “will be able to drain the politics out of the issue,” and I rudely interrupted by noting the polls predicting Ms. Pelosi’s ascension.

  “I just don’t believe it,” the president insists. “I believe the Republicans will end up being—running the House and the Senate. And the reason why I believe it is because when our candidates go out and talk about the strength of this economy, people will say their tax cuts worked, their plan worked…. And secondly, that this is a group of people that understand the stakes of the world in which we live and are willing to help this unity government in Iraq succeed for the sake of our children and grandchildren, and that we are steadfast in our belief in the capacity of liberty to bring peace.”

  “I just don’t believe it”—it being the mountains of empirical data showing that Americans would remove his political party from power because of their profound dissatisfaction with his job performance generally, and with the Iraq War specifically. To the president, his decisions are so plainly and indisputably right, his course objectively grounded in what is Good, that it was literally inconceivable to him that Americans opposed his policies and would repudiate his party—notwithstanding massive and compelling evidence that they would. As always, empirical evidence was no match for his certitude.

  The compulsion to ignore or deny the credibility of conviction-undermining facts is equally evident in the president’s most mindlessly loyal followers. Hugh Hewitt is an evangelical Bush supporter with a popular talk radio show and blog. He also had the misfortune of writing a book in 2006—the same year, of course, when the Republicans suffered one of their worst electoral defeats in history—entitled Painting the Map Red: The Fight to Create a Permanent Republican Majority.

  In the three weeks prior to the 2006 midterm election, Hewitt repeatedly insisted that Republican candidates were tied or ahead even when the consensus of polls showed those candidates were actually behind, sometimes by substantial margins. He was not merely predicting that the GOP candidate behind in the polls would win (there is nothing wrong with being hopeful). Rather, he was insisting that the GOP candidates who were behind in the polls were, in fact, ahead in the polls.

  In response to e-mails he received objecting to his bizarre interpretation of the polling data, he explained his “thinking” behind this outright distortion of reality (emphasis added):

  I get a lot of e-mail asking me why I point to polls like the one favoring Steele when I discount some polls favoring some Democrats.

  Because this question comes mostly from lefties, I will pause to explain in as uncomplicated a fashion as possible.

  Polling methodology and models favors Democrats. So polls that show Republicans tied or ahead I see as indicating a race in which the Republican is in the lead.

  Polls that show a Republican within striking distance I see as a poll indicating a dead heat.

  It shouldn’t be that hard to grasp, even for a lefty.

  In Hewitt’s world, polling data—like all other data, from war zone reports to intelligence assessments and everything in between—can be ignored and disregarded at will when it is unpleasant because it is unfairly biased against the Republicans. Hewitt took the data that he disliked, literally changed it in his own mind to make it more pleasant, and then embraced the fictitious data as his reality.

  In fact, polling data for the 2006 midterm elections predicted results in the vast majority of races with almost complete accuracy. In the instances where there was a discrepancy, it was nearly in every case favorable to the Republicans—meaning the polling showed Democrats with a smaller lead than they ended up with (or behind by more than they actually lost by).

  Following is a chart comparing the final polls of Rasmussen Reports for the eleven Senate races it (and the rest of the country) identified as the “Nation’s Closest Senate Races” (Connecticut is the only race excluded here due to its confusing party breakdown). The table shows the final Rasmussen poll for each race, the actual election results, and the differential between the two and indicates whether the differential favored the Republican or the Democratic candidate:

  In the eleven Senate races identified as “the closest Senate races” (excluding Connecticut), Rasmussen’s polls predicted the exact outcome in two of them. For the nine races where there was a disparity, seven of the nine disparities favored the Republicans. Only two of the eleven races showed a gap in favor of Democrats, and in those two races (Montana and Rhode Island), the difference was minuscule—respectively, 1 percent and 2 percent.

  And it was not just Rasmussen. Polls in general were either remarkably accurate or, to the extent they were wrong, largely skewed in favor of Republicans (at least in terms of what they predicted versus the actual result). The Real Clear Politics average final polls (which averaged the outcomes of multiple polls from around the country) show that for the same eleven Senate races, the polling disparities favored Republicans in eight of the eleven races, often by considerable margins. In the three races where the disparities favored Democrats, it was by very small margins, of 1 to 3 points.

  The point here is not to criticize Hewitt for being wrong in virtually all of his prognostications about the midterm elections. It is natural for partisan desires to influence people’s predictions, and predicting races even within the science of polling, let alone without it, is extremely difficult. But Hewitt was not merely inaccurate. As is so common among Bush supporters (including, as demonstrated above, the president himself), Hewitt ignored, indeed consciously denied and rejected, information that undercut his beliefs, and insisted that even the most objective facts were “biased.” As Stephen Colbert put it during his highly controversial, satirical speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2006:

  Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man [the president] has
a 32 percent approval rating. But guys like us, we don’t pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in “reality.” And reality has a well-known liberal bias.

  Though it was satire, Colbert’s point captured exactly the manner in which Hewitt argued. And as noted, the president himself repeatedly insisted that the Republicans would win the election despite all of the data to the contrary ( just as he continuously insisted that the United States was making progress and even “winning” in Iraq for years despite abundant evidence negating such a claim). The president, like his zealous supporter Hewitt, was not merely waxing optimistic. Rather, both decided that empirical evidence was meaningless, because it was unpleasant, because it conflicted with their convictions, and it therefore could not be real.

  Among the most striking aspects of the Bush administration has been the extent to which loyalty has been demanded of, and received from, those who work near the president. The requisite loyalty is to George Bush the individual (and his decisions). In contrast to prior administrations, the Bush administration has marched in virtual lockstep. Leaks by senior White House officials unfavorable to the president have been almost unheard of, particularly when compared to past administrations. Dissident officials who stray from the president’s views have been inexorably excised from power.

  That such total fealty is expected in Bush circles is unsurprising. Political decisions grounded in pragmatism, with the paramount goal of reaching a certain outcome (i.e., “maximize American security”), are always subject, by their nature, to rational debate and examination. The mission is to find the optimal method for reaching the desired destination.

  By contrast, policies that are determined on the basis of faith and/or a moral calculus (“God wants every human being to live in freedom, and America is called to the mission of spreading democracy”) cannot be challenged because they stem from evangelical faith. As a result, faith-based decision-makers will accept input only from those who share the faith, and will ignore and even expel those who challenge or contest it. That can have the effect of reinforcing and, worse, creating perceptions of reality that are pleasing but fictitious. As Reagan and Bush 41 official Bruce Bartlett told journalist Ron Suskind in 2004,

  “This is why [Bush] dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,” Bartlett went on to say. “He truly believes he’s on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.” Bartlett paused, then said, “But you can’t run the world on faith.”

  The demand for loyalty is itself a by-product of his faith-based certainty. Certitude that one is right will naturally reduce, if not eliminate, a tolerance for those who question what has been accorded the status of unquestionable Truth.

  Bush’s moral conviction—his intractable certainty in his religious faith—even dictates the rules of behavior imposed on his staff. In his influential October 2004 article in the New York Times Magazine, Suskind examined the ways in which the Bush personality drives his presidency, and concluded:

  That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision—often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position—he expects complete faith in its rightness.

  The faith-based presidency is a with-us-or-against-us model that has been enormously effective at, among other things, keeping the workings and temperament of the Bush White House a kind of state secret.

  The president’s contempt for dissent is notorious. That he unleashes his temper at underlings is legendary and has generated a well-documented climate of fear in which his aides are highly reluctant to convey unpleasant news. David Frum described Bush in The Right Man as “impatient” and “quick to anger.” In a November 2005 Newsweek article, Evan Thomas reported on the breakdown of the communication lines to the president concerning Hurricane Katrina:

  It’s a standing joke among the president’s top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States, or, as he is known in West Wing jargon, POTUS.

  Thomas attributed the failure of the government’s response to Katrina in large part to the atmosphere the president created, in which aides are meek and fearful of delivering bad news:

  Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it’s mostly a one-way street. Most presidents keep a devil’s advocate around. Lyndon Johnson had George Ball on Vietnam; President Ronald Reagan and Bush’s father, George H. W. Bush, grudgingly listened to the arguments of Budget Director Richard Darman, who told them what they didn’t wish to hear: that they would have to raise taxes.

  When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn’t act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority.

  Thomas’s reference to the role played by the dissenting, highly intelligent Richard Darman in the Bush 41 administration is telling. According to David Frum, the president purposely staffs the White House with capable but less-than-brilliant individuals, precisely because he seeks those who will loyally carry out instructions rather than those who will prod, question, and deviate from his predetermined policies. In short, Bush affirmatively sought to prohibit Darman-like dissent:

  If you looked around the Bush cabinet, you saw very able, solid, and reliable people—but only one, Donald Rumsfeld, whose mind could truly be said to sparkle. If you looked at the White House staff, there was again a dearth of really high-powered brains. One seldom heard an unexpected thought or met someone who possessed unusual knowledge. Aside from Mitch Daniels in OMB of course Karl Rove, conspicuous intelligence seemed actively unwelcome in the Bush White House [emphasis added].

  Clinton had brought in eccentrics, some of them, perhaps, but also powerful intelligences, open to new ideas. The country could trust the Bush administration not to cheat or lie. But could the administration cope with an unprecedented problem? That might be rather dicier.

  The reason for the bias toward the ordinary was Richard Darman, the most conspicuously brilliant person in Bush 41’s White House. In the 1992 election, he attacked Bush 41 himself. And the lesson the younger Bush took from that experience was: no new Darmans.

  As Christine Whitman told Suskind of her (predictably short-lived) tenure as Environmental Protection Agency administrator: “In meetings, I’d ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!”

  Demands of rigid loyalty, along with a “kill the messenger” attitude toward bearers of news that undermines beliefs, are particularly dangerous for a president such as George Bush, who, by his own reckoning, depends so heavily on aides—not only for advice and counsel but also for basic information about what is going on in the world. In a September 23, 2003, interview with Fox News’ Brit Hume, the president boasted of the fact that he does not read newspapers, but instead forms his understanding of the world based upon what his closest aides tell him:

  HUME: How do you get your news?]

  BUSH: I get briefed by Andy Card and Condi in the morning. They come in and tell me. In all due respect, you’ve got a beautiful face and everything [sic].

  I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by peopl
e who are [sic] probably read the news themselves. But like Condoleezza, in her case, the national security adviser is getting her news directly from the participants on the world stage.

  HUME: Has that been your practice since day one, or is that a practice that you’ve…

  BUSH: Practice since day one.

  HUME: Really?

  BUSH: Yes. You know, look, I have great respect for the media. I mean, our society is a good, solid democracy because of a good, solid media. But I also understand that a lot of times there’s opinions mixed in with news. And I…

  HUME: I won’t disagree with that, sir.

  BUSH: I appreciate people’s opinions, but I’m more interested in news. And the best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.

  Over time, the president’s staff has become increasingly monolithic and loyal to the president’s worldview and core convictions, and correspondingly less burdened by dissent. Thus, the great paradox of the Bush presidency is that as his presidency and his war in Iraq have collapsed around him, the world he occupies has been designed to affirm unceasingly that he is on the side of Good and is thus entitled—even obligated—to remain on the path of righteousness even as opposition to that course grows and evidence of its failure expands.

  DESIRES FULFILLED

  That the president is accustomed to an environment that caters to his beliefs and desires is to be expected, in light of his upbringing as the eldest son in a powerful and wealthy political family. While the president was growing up, his father was a congressman, U.N. ambassador, Senate nominee, Republican National Committee chair, and CIA director, and he was thus accustomed to having others create opportunities for him and grant his wishes, thereby being able to do what he wanted without much resistance from others. Perhaps most significantly, the power and prestige of his father enabled him to be saved from mistakes and disasters—including a series of failed business ventures—that created the expectation that no serious damage would ever result, even from reckless errors. Being repeatedly rescued—and continuing to thrive even in the face of repeated failures—can ultimately engender a sense of infallibility, or at the very least an implicit belief that one need not really fear, or even consider, the consequences of one’s actions.