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BUSH'S DAYS OF JUDGMENT

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By DANA MILBANK

The Washington Post

Published: January 11, 2009

WASHINGTON - Slowly, painfully, self-awareness has come to George W. Bush.

"Turns out this isn't one of these presidencies where you ride off into the sunset, you know, waving goodbye," the president told the conservative American Enterprise Institute in December.

It was just one stop on what amounts to a legacy-salvaging tour for Bush. At the same time, a Bush Legacy Project, under the auspices of Karl Rove, was at work on reinventing the president's image. But whatever they come up with, it will be difficult to displace in the public imagination the more obvious symbols of Bush's reign: The "Mission Accomplished" banner. The flight suit. Yellowcake. Curveball. Katrina. Brownie. The Pretzel. The Segway. The Shoe. An incipient depression. My Pet Goat.

When John Dickerson, then of Time magazine, asked Bush in 2004 about his "biggest mistake," the president was stumped. Now, however, he seems to be a walking confession booth.

"I think I was unprepared for war," he told ABC News' Charles Gibson.

"I am the president during a major economic problem," he told Fox News' Bret Baier.

"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system," he confessed to CNN's Candy Crowley.

His meeting with the institute, a think tank that has provided Bush with ideas and manpower, was bound to be a supportive audience. In the first row sat Paul Wolfowitz.

Institute President Christopher DeMuth did his best to polish the presidential resume during his introduction.

"It'll be many years before it is possible to take a full account of the Bush presidency," he cautioned. "His contemporaries - he, himself - will not have the last word on the matter."

DeMuth praised Bush's "major reforms" of taxes, his "firm" free-trade position, his "superlative" judicial appointments and even his "most important disappointment," Social Security.

Bush, slouched in a chair, his legs crossed and his jacket open, was considerably harder on himself. He spoke so softly that some in the rear stood, leaned in and cupped their ears to hear. "We lost 533,000 jobs last month," he volunteered. And: "Wall Street got drunk, and we got a hangover." And: "I came with the idea of changing the tone in Washington and frankly didn't do a very good job of it."

The 62-year-old president looked tired, and his rapidly graying hair showed the aging effects of the job. He presented a glass-half-full view of his policies.

"Obviously, we weren't successful about getting comprehensive immigration reform; nevertheless, I feel good about having tried," he offered. On Social Security, likewise, "it didn't succeed, but nevertheless I used the presidency, the executive branch, the concept of the presidency, to lay out in - a way forward."

He assured the conservatives that "I have been a firm believer in markets" before allowing that this "may sound contradictory to some of the policies that I have been making recently." At times, he seemed philosophical about his position: "Presidents will come and go with their strengths and weaknesses, but the ship of state sails on." At other times, he seemed defensive: "I'm looking forward to the true history of this financial crisis being written." But he had no doubt that Republicans would recover from their current woes.

"We'll come back, absolutely," he said. "And I'll be out there, the old sage, sitting around." Until then, the sage promised, he won't "spend a lot of time second-guessing" Barack Obama. "I believe once the president gets off the stage, you get off the stage and let the next man do the job."

For now, that's about as good a legacy as he can hope for.

Success And Failures

Bush claims success in combating AIDS in Africa, preventing new terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and snatching a measure of victory in Iraq.

In a speech on the Middle East recently, the president sketched out an optimistic portrait of a region that has embroiled the United States in war and conflict for eight years.

He has admitted to a few previously unacknowledged errors, telling one interviewer that he was "unprepared for war" when he entered office and that his "biggest regret" was the failure of intelligence leading up to the Iraq invasion.

But Bush shies away from one of the most damaging episodes of his tenure: the bungled federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The storm left thousands stranded in a drowning New Orleans, setting Bush on course to become the least popular U.S. president in modern history.

The Washington Post

Middle East

At the Saban Forum, an annual Middle East conference sponsored by the Brookings Institution, Bush offered a sweeping, optimistic defense of his policy in the troubled region, often minimizing or ignoring uncomfortable developments.

He said unseating Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was justified and portrayed Iraq as "a powerful example of a moderate, prosperous, free nation." He asserted that "important progress" had been made in the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and he hailed negotiations over Iran's nuclear ambitions - talks that he resisted early in his administration.

He also acknowledged, but played down, the setbacks that have bedeviled his administration in the Middle East.

"As with any large undertaking, these efforts have not always gone according to plan, and in some areas we have fallen short of our hopes," Bush said, adding that the war in Iraq "has been longer and more costly than expected."

The Washington Post

World Dominance

As Bush's term comes to a close, the United States has the world's dominant economy and its most powerful military. Yet its global influence is in decline.

The United States emerged from the Cold War a solitary superpower whose political and economic leverage often enabled it to impose its will on others. Now, the United States usually needs to build coalitions - and often finds other world powers are not willing to go along.

Bush has been widely blamed for the erosion of U.S. prestige. And the decline in U.S. influence is partly the result of the reaction to his invasion of Iraq, his campaign against Islamic militants and his early disdain for treaties and international bodies.

But the shift is also a result of independent forces, although hastened by an aversion to Bush. These include the steady ascent of China, India and other developing countries that throughout the past decade have amassed wealth and quietly extended their reach.

An illustration of the power shift came Nov. 15, when Bush convened world leaders in Washington to lay plans for dealing with the global economic crisis. In the old days, experts said, he would have limited the meeting to a handful of major industrial powers. But Bush realized that the world economy now has a larger cast of influential players, and invited all members of the so-called Group of 20, which includes countries such as Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey.

A report this year by the U.S. National Intelligence Council cites a shift of economic power from the West to the East that is "without precedent." In 2025, the United States will "remain the single most powerful country, but will be less dominant," it said.

Los Angeles Times

Europe

A particularly worrisome development from the U.S. perspective is the weakening of ties with Europe.

In the past, when the United States and the Europeans formed a common front on an issue, they had enormous leverage.

The United States and Europe have largely healed their rift over the Iraq war, but they remain divided on important issues, including climate change and Russia's resurgence.

Many analysts predict growing frictions over the joint effort in Afghanistan. "There's a re-balancing of power away from the West," said Charles Kupchan, of Georgetown University and the Council on Foreign Relations, "but also within the West."

Los Angeles Times

World Economy

As U.S. political standing has eroded, its economy remains powerful. Its gross domestic product of $14 trillion a year still dwarfs China's $3 trillion.

Yet American influence on world economic policy is declining, too. One sign: the failure of the United States and its allies to sell a new agreement to the World Trade Organization in the face of opposition from China, India and others.

"The influence of the U.S. private sector is as strong as ever," said Gary C. Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute of International Economics. "But the United States is much less able to shape world policy these days."

Many analysts expect that the economic crisis, which much of the world blames on the United States, will convince many countries that they shouldn't emulate the loosely regulated American economic model.

Los Angeles Times

Health Care Clinics

Although the number of uninsured and the cost of coverage have ballooned under his watch, Bush leaves office with a health care legacy in bricks and mortar: He has doubled federal financing for community health centers, enabling the creation or expansion of 1,297 clinics in medically underserved areas.

For those in poor urban neighborhoods and isolated rural areas, including Indian reservations, the clinics are often the only dependable providers of basic services.

As a crucial component of the health safety net, they are lauded as a cost-effective alternative to hospital emergency rooms, where the uninsured and underinsured often seek care.

The centers serve one of every three people who live in poverty and one of every eight without insurance. But a study released in August by the Government Accountability Office found that 43 percent of the country's medically underserved areas lack a health center site.

Recent job losses, meanwhile, are stoking demand for the clinics' services.

New York Times

Hurricane Katrina

Three years ago, Hurricane Katrina and its chaotic aftermath produced a collage of indelible images. Among those was a photo of Bush, viewing the devastation below from the distance and comfort of Air Force One as it jetted to Washington.

Now, some of Bush's closest advisers say his administration's response to the disaster marked a turning point. After Katrina in 2005, they say in a recent issue of Vanity Fair, his tenure entered a downward spiral from which he could never recover.

"Katrina, to me, was the tipping point," said Matthew Dowd, the president's pollster and chief strategist in his 2004 re-election bid.

"Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin," added Dan Bartlett, former White House counselor and longtime aide to Bush.

After New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast were left under water as state and federal authorities struggled to help survivors, Bush's numbers went into "free-fall," according to John Zogby, president of the polling firm Zogby International.

With the government's halting and confused response to the calamity, the "president broke his bond with the public," Dowd told Vanity Fair.

McClatchy-Tribune

Housing

Eight years after arriving in Washington vowing to spread the dream of homeownership, Bush is leaving office, as he said recently, "faced with the prospect of a global meltdown" with roots in the housing sector he so ardently championed.

There are plenty of culprits, such as lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk.

But the story of how we got here is partly one of Bush's making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials.

Bush pushed hard to expand homeownership, especially among minorities, an initiative that dovetailed with his ambition to expand the Republican tent - and with the business interests of some of his biggest donors. But his housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards.

Bush did foresee the danger posed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage finance giants. The president spent years pushing a recalcitrant Congress to toughen regulation of the companies, but was unwilling to compromise when his former Treasury secretary wanted to cut a deal. And the regulator Bush chose to oversee them - an old prep school buddy - pronounced the companies sound even as they headed toward insolvency.

As early as 2006, top advisers to Bush dismissed warnings from people inside and outside the White House that housing prices were inflated and that a foreclosure crisis was looming. And when the economy deteriorated, Bush and his team misdiagnosed the reasons and scope of the downturn; as recently as February, for example, Bush was still calling it a "rough patch."

The result was a series of piecemeal policy prescriptions that lagged behind the escalating crisis.

Today, millions of Americans are facing foreclosure, homeownership rates are virtually no higher than when Bush took office, Fannie and Freddie are in a government conservatorship and the bailout cost to taxpayers could run in the trillions of dollars.

New York Times

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