Acrimony sown by Bush will forever define his presidency
As his presidency enters its final two weeks, George W. Bush is hoping that history will give him high marks on two scores: having prevented another terrorist attack at home - a topic he has said he might address in a farewell speech - and being seen as "somebody who liberated 50 million people," as he put it in a National Public Radio interview. The latter comment reflects his confidence that the failures of his Iraq policy will be lessened if and when a successful democracy emerges.
But Bush has also used a series of postelection interviews to mitigate his standing in two areas where history is unlikely to be kind: his use of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, and the extent to which his actions and the way he defended them divided the country and alienated many US allies.
"I regret saying some things that I shouldn't have said," Bush told CNN, referring to having used the phrase "dead or alive" to describe his manhunt for Osama bin Laden, and saying "bring 'em on" in response to the Iraqi insurgency. The comments made him seem too eager to fight, he said.
His biggest regret, he told ABC News in early December, was the failure of prewar intelligence on Iraq: "A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein," Bush said, reinforcing the argument that his misstatements about Iraq's weapons programs were good-faith interpretations of flawed intelligence, not exaggerations to promote war.
Any historical account of the Bush presidency will make note of many other factors, as well. On the downside, his regulatory failures, his insufficient response to Hurricane Katrina, and his industry-friendly energy policy. On the upside, his rallying of the nation after 9/11, his initial success in routing the Taliban in Afghanistan, and his aggressive action to combat AIDS and malaria in Africa. In between - as matters likely to be viewed differently along the ideological spectrum - will be his tax cuts, his efforts to increase federal aid to faith-based organizations, and his creation of a Medicare prescription-drug benefit.
But the ultimate verdict will probably come down to a face-off between his two big pros, as he and his defenders see it, and his two big cons, as his detractors see it. Will he be remembered as the man who protected the nation while charting a bold new policy in the Middle East? Or as the man who squandered more good will than most of his predecessors combined?
Future events will play a role in determining whether Bush's self-described positives are positives at all. An attack on the United States using nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union, for instance, might spotlight weaknesses in his efforts to lock up loose nukes. And Iraq could fall back into chaos.
His negatives, at this moment, seem less likely to change over time. History may vindicate his removal of Hussein, and may come to view his decisions after 9/11 as having helped secure the country against terrorism. It may even forgive him the bevy of mistakes in Iraq - the failure to send enough troops, the lack of a workable post-invasion plan, the decision to disband the Iraq military, and even some of the flaws in prewar intelligence. But it won't forget how he handled them.
The utter confidence with which he declared in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq had "gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction," will be weighed against the more measured assessments of some CIA analysts, United Nations inspectors, and other world leaders. His assertion in the same speech that Hussein harbored Al Qaeda was emphatically disputed then as now.
But instead of acknowledging his mistakes, Bush chose to fight back against those who pointed them out, suggesting any questioners were being disloyal to American troops. By making his war a test of patriotism itself, with the blood of soldiers in the balance, he split the country in the most acrimonious way possible, sending ripples of anger into practically every home in America. He broke friendships and divided communities, amid a fog of assertions that kept the real Iraq picture unclear while serving his political purposes.
The acrimony under the surface of Bush's America after 2003 will be visible to history in every film clip, newspaper article, radio transcript, and blog. And the ultimate anger may well be directed at Bush himself.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond. He can be reached at canellos@globe.com. 