The Bush legacy

Even though George Bush is scheduled to occupy the White House for another two and a half years, many commentators have already declared his presidency to be over. Poll approval numbers seem to indicate that even his political base of religious conservatives and national defense hawks is abandoning him. The war in Iraq has gone poorly, and his latest domestic policy endeavors—chiefly the attempt to manage healthcare spending—have been widely regarded as disasters (and we all know how well the administration responds to disasters). Still, it may be too early to say definitively what this president’s legacy will be. After all, things could get a whole lot worse. But come what may, this much is certain: the next president will inherit a situation not altogether different from that inherited by Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

After the Nixon administration’s various transgressions, there was a wide-ranging movement afoot to limit the powers of the executive office. Congress reasserted itself by becoming more vigorous in its oversight responsibilities. It cut down to size various government agencies perceived as being too close to the executive office or simply too unaccountable (this, incidentally, included the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization that never quite recovered). Congress also drafted new legislation to limit the prerogatives of the executive, with the chief examples being the 1976 National Emergencies Act and the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, both of which placed new checks on the President’s emergency powers. In its oversight and legislative initiatives, Congress was widely supported by the public, which viewed both the Vietnam War and Watergate as egregious examples of presidential overstepping and left it to Congress to clean up the mess.

So when Mr. Ford—and particularly, Mr. Carter—assumed the Oval Office, they held a somewhat diminished post, and in the case of Carter, this combined with his weakness as a chief executive to ruin his presidency. What does this portend for the winner of the 2008 presidential election? He (or she, I suppose) can expect a much more vigorous Congress determined to be contrary in all things, party affiliations notwithstanding.

One might say that it is unwise or unfair to compare Bush to Nixon. I should clarify that, in comparing the two administrations, I am not alleging that the Bush administration is criminal (that’s a discussion for a different day). The analogy is one of checks and balances, of testing the limits of presidential power, and on that score the Bush administration is perceived to be quite aggressive. When it doesn’t like established precedents and procedures, it dispenses with them, putting itself at odds with the other branches of government. From Gitmo to wiretapping, the administration straddles a very dangerous divide between emergency powers and illegality.

If Bush’s approval rating were high, if his administration had demonstrated competence in its various programs and policies, then all of this would probably be moot. But an ineffective administration, especially one as aggressive and abrasive as this one, is simply setting itself up for a big fall. The truly unfortunate thing is not its own failure, but its ability to hamstring its successor to the Oval Office. In that event, the next few years of presidential politics will look nothing like The West Wing, but more like That ‘70s Show.