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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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Opinions about Bush’s presidency—from readers, journalists, alumni, and visitors to campus—began appearing in our pages almost as soon as he took office. And of course, we weren't the only ones. I've read with interest the compendium of opinion letters about our former president. While I’m not surprised by the great majority being negative and mostly destructive, I wonder if you have fairly represented the minority view in number and tone. I’d simply like to go on the Yale Alumni Magazine record in support of GWB and remind your readers and my fellow alumni that, on the two occasions he competed for the highest office in the land, he won and has since retired undefeated. Somebody besides me must have liked, supported, and appreciated him and his performance.
I read with interest the letter by Alison J. Nichols '88MDiv in defense of former President Bush. I was struck by the difference between the way she seems to feel and the way I did when Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency. Although I supported him to the end it seemed such a relief when he was gone, and I know of no one who expected him ever to be judged an “extremely consequential president.” I suspect the reason for this difference is that Nixon was relentlessly pounded with demands to tell the truth. There have been no similar demands on Bush. There has not been a serious investigation into how we got into Iraq, and no John Deans have come forward to tell the truth. Nor has there been aggressive pursuit of truth by the press. Perhaps most disheartening, there has been no push by the “opposition” party to get the truth, even when they were in the majority, and our new president is content to “move on” without seeking the full truth about his predecessor and his administration. My fear is that because we have not been forced to grasp the enormity of the lies and atrocities of the Bush administration, the kind of people who ruled from 2001 through 2009 will be back, and we will once again let them in. As a retired military officer, I hope we never again see the likes of Bush as commander in chief of our military. If we must, I hope it’s not in my lifetime.
If you define demagoguery as a politician’s using fear to generate support for policies based on his personal advantage rather than reality, I think one can define the Bush approach as that of a demagogue rather than a statesman. Ill-considered wars based on the slogan of a “war on terror,” the indiscriminate (unconstitutional?) assumption of presidential perogative, and willful failure to exercise economic oversight have squandered this country’s good name, treasury, military and economy. Not to belabor the point, it is, I think, a sad state of the nation to leave as a legacy.
Yale should be embarrassed that former President George Bush even matriculated into, let alone graduated from Yale. I can’t help but wonder how much it cost Daddy Bush to get Sonny into Yale and by what means Sonny Bush finished his course work and graduated. I believe that Bush’s limited intellect is the underlying cause of most, if not all, of America’s current problems. Instead of selecting experts for advice he used his business cronies who, as it turns out, are not even capable of making appropriate financial decisions for the U.S. He confused disagreement with disloyalty. He initiated a poorly planned invasion of a country under false premises and his subsequent appearance on the aircraft carrier was the most infantile behavior I have ever witnessed in an adult. During his watch, civil liberties were compromised, scientific activities were suppressed, and U.S. agents inflicted light torture on detainees. For hardball activities, the U.S. outsourced severe torture (rendition). Under Bush, the environment and wildlife suffered. Women in need of family planning assistance suffered. He had no interest in, or compassion for, any living creature, human or other except for his business chums. He is held in contempt by most of Europe except by Tony Blair, whom the English do not like. Finally, then President-elect Obama asked him if he could move into Blair House at the beginning of the New Year in order to facilitate his daughters’ school transition. Somehow, Blair House was not available until mid-January. This episode demonstrates how petty and mean-spirited Bush is. How is Yale responding to this bad mark on its reputation and its role in the impending demise of the U.S.? Bush arguably will go down in history as the worst president ever. After eight years of the Bush administration, you have to be dumb to persist in being a Republican.
Now that we are almost rid of the Curse of the Bushes at a national level, the time would seem apropos for the Yale community to consider how and why this happened: the matriculation, pseudo-education and graduation from the university of a man who manifestly has no interest in and no aptitude for learning per se, yet managed to survive at Yale, evidently without attending many classes and certainly without bothering to read many books, by his own admission, yet received a degree, ostensibly certifying him as an educated being, during this period. History will no doubt record this person as the worst president, by far, to hold office in these United States, and, as such, an undoubted blight on Yale’s reputation as an institution of higher learning, besides leading to global economic catastrophe and devastation. It boggles the imagination to conceive of this occurring and yet it did, somehow inexplicably. Granted his relationship to other Bush Yalies must have helped. Yet such connections cannot explain the totality of the fiasco, i.e., who wasn't doing his/ her job to allow this travesty to go on? What is therefore needed is an exhaustive investigation of the entire sorry episode, with a view (hopefully) of avoiding a reoccurrence in the future.
Almost 60 years ago I was standing at a U.S. Army base in Northern Germany. We were waiting to board a troop transport for our journey to America. Our family survived the war, its aftermath, and the Communist takeover in 1948. But then we had to flee, and after a very difficult year in Austria we were finally on the way to our new home. America was to be my new country. Every morning I went to the flag-raising while the bugle played reveille. I was so proud, so optimistic, so happy. The years that followed were good years. The U.S. kept its promise of opportunity, fairness, and justice. Until 2001, when President Bush ushered in a climate of fear, greed, dishonesty, unfairness, and injustice. Now, after hearing President Obama’s inaugural address, I have hope again.
The fact that George W. Bush is about the most unpopular president in history does not necessarily mean he is the worst president in history. … He is neither evil nor stupid. But his inclination to lofty rhetoric with inadequate preparation or inconsistent follow-through has doomed even his better ideas. (And not every idea was so wonderful.)
On behalf of those who are not cheering the departure of President Bush, I would like to thank and defend him for his honorable service to America. There are legions of us who recognize his decency, his many accomplishments (bi-partisan No Child left Behind, CAFTA, Medicare reform, tax cuts, Democracy in Iraq, liberation of women in Afghanistan, growth in the agricultural department, missile defense, unprecedented aid to Africa and Asia, denuclearizing of Libya, taking the lessons learned from Katrina to reform the emergency response system), and his unwavering commitment to keep America safe. Those who honor President Bush have not been bamboozled by billionaire George Soros and his left-wing sycophants who, through the Internet, set out to destroy Bush before he even took the oath of office. We have also not been swayed by journalistic muckrakers, out-of-touch Ivory Tower academics, or left-wing pundits who launched a vein-popping and unjust war on the character of President Bush. I and those like me respect and honor President Bush because after America was brutally attacked on 911, he never lost his will and sense of emergency to keep Americans safe. Despite nauseating teeth-clacking from the left, President Bush put policies and programs in place that have protected America for the past seven and one half years. We honor Bush for sending a strong signal to the enemies of peace and freedom that he believes in peace through strength and that he understands that talk-therapy is out of the question when dealing with the pathological hatred felt by those who want to destroy the infidels—and that would be us. We love and honor President Bush because he was never a poll-chaser. He had the leadership to ignore the the anti-war agitators, hand-wringers, and naysayers. Despite the ubiquitous haranguing that that has formed the negative narrative about him, he and our brave heroes have kept us safe. Although he has been cruelly, dangerously, and unjustly maligned, George Bush will be judged an extremely consequential president.
Yale has a lot to answer for—and I’m not thinking merely of George W. Bush or the school’s obviously deficient English department.
It is painful to find Yale grads who place themselves among the 25% of Americans who still, despite an unnecessary and disastrous war (just watch the movie The Valley of Elah), near-complete failure to cope with the Katrina devastation, violation of the Constitution, over-extension of the power of the presidency (for which a mumbling and timid Congress is partly to blame), assault on the separation of church and state, impedimenting of scientific research, mistreatment of veterans, and partial responsibility for the economic recession—to name but a few horrors—assert that the (thank God) outgoing president has done a good job. If people can approve of the worst president in history, then all terrible things are possible.
I fail to see much difference between George W. Bush and Bernie Madoff, other than that Madoff was smart enough to keep up his charade longer. Both lied on a grand scale, both evidently believed they were above the law, and both seem to think even now that they have done nothing seriously wrong. The undeserved honorary degree Yale hastily bestowed on Bush and the massive fraud Madoff perpetrated on his clients teach the same lesson: it’s foolish to blind faith in connections and money.
Without any doubt, George W. Bush is the worst president the country has ever had. From his first day in office it was obvious he was totally unqualified to be president. The only thing he accomplished was to give unnecessary tax cuts to the very wealthy. Everything else he touched was a miserable, misguided failure, and the country will be paying a huge price many years in the future. He was secretive, deceptive, and had no respect for the law, the Constitution, the Geneva Convention, science, the American people, or the rest of the world. Several times on national media he blatantly admitted to committing crimes, and yet to this day he remains clueless about it all.
From his Cabinet appointees, to his global assault on women of childbearing age, to the environment, to his military procurement and tax policies, Bush reveals himself to be completely in hock to the far right. He is shamelessly ramming it down our throats while the Democrats, the media, and the country at large still seem to be willing to give a new president the benefit of the doubt. He will inflict suffering on the poor, while rewarding his wealthy friends.
Yale Alumni Magazine: Your advertising company donated about $1 million in billboard advertising for the campaign of George W. Bush ['68] in 2000. What did you like about his policies? Stephen Adams '59: At the time, I liked the fact that he was considered a conservative Republican, his background was Yale, he was Skull and Bones, and his fiscal policies were considered conservative. … I have been disappointed, particularly in the fiscal arena. I wish there had been more attention in vetoing spending bills and government programs that need not be part of the economy.
“George W. Bush was hardly the obvious man for the job. But by a very strange fate, he turned out to be, of all unlikely things, the right man.”
I am a lifelong Democrat, but I have long felt that the many personal attacks directed at President Bush have been grossly excessive. In the case of Mr. Weisberg's comments, the attacks are simply petty. Does it really matter if someone did not follow in his father’s footsteps and join a varsity team?
It is hard to read the portraits of Bill Buckley without thinking of George W. Bush. Both seem to embrace a naive view about the world and how its institutions should work; both see the world in simplistic “either-or" “good-bad” ways; and both are all too ready to embrace the use of innuendo, half-truths, and outright falsehoods to further their agenda. … Why were such naivete, simplicity of analysis, and disreputable methods thought to be tolerable, even laudatory, by men educated at Yale?
Congratulations to Yale’s alumni for electing Margaret H. Marshall '76JD to serve as a fellow of the Yale Corporation. … President George W. Bush has publicly taken Justice Marshall to task [for writing a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court opinion legalizing same-sex marriage]. He has encouraged the people of Massachusetts to overturn her ruling through a constitutional amendment and thereby establish for our commonwealth a substandard class of citizen. Further, President Bush now urges the U.S. Congress to amend the U.S. Constitution and to deny equal access under the law at the federal level, while denying the individual states the right to decide this matter without federal interference. I believe that Margaret Marshall’s wisdom will prevail.
Groupthink becomes worse when the leader creates the concept that everybody has to be a team player. History will record that nobody has done this more than George W. Bush.
“In matters of public policy, no religious group should have a seat at the table.”
Since Bush was not a conservative, arguably he did no harm to conservatism. His failings were not those of conservatism but rather of a Wilsonian absolutism: faith in the universality of his favorite religiously-based abstractions and in the ability of government to impose those abstractions globally.
Somebody who knew President Bush well once remarked to me. “You'll notice he never asks questions.” “Why not?” I said. "Because he doesn’t know what it’s okay for him not to know.”
[W]e don't know exactly when we've crossed the threshold to disaster, which could come in many different forms. The Bush administration says, “We don't know where that threshold is, therefore how could we do anything?” The rational person would say, “We don't know where that threshold is, therefore we ought to be damn careful as we approach it.”
He had a certain charm about getting away with things, like DKE’s custom of “branding" new members’ on the butt, a less-than-noble tradition he managed to protect when it came under fire. Being that kind of bad boy may be OK if you’re cutting a history class or smirking behind your hand at some radical grad student leading your discussion section—but not when you’re staging a commander in chief’s flight-deck landing or a Thanksgiving Day pop-up in Baghdad.
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