Bush, No Buck Stops With You
By Larry Johnson on October 11, 2007 at 3:25 AM in Current Affairs
Defenders and apologists for the abysmal Presidency of George W. Bush have taken to seeking solace in the refrain that, like Harry Truman, Bush may not be popular now but by golly good molly, wait a decade or so and we will be singing his praises. Here’s a representative list of this genre:
The President Within. George W. Bush is downright Trumanesque. by Peggy Noonan
The Truman Show by William J. Stuntz
Unlikely Compatriots (President Bush has much in common with Harry S. Truman) By Saul Singer
Last year, over at TPM Cafe, G. John Ikenberry did a credible job of showing that such a comparison is a bunch of hokum. As someone who was born and raised in Give Em Hell Harry’s hometown I wanted to toss in my two cents.
George Bush is not qualified to hold Harry’s slop jar. (A slop jar for you youngsters was a convenience in the old days for folks who did not want to trek to the outhouse in the dead of night in the depths of winter to answer nature’s urgent call). My grandmother worked on Harry’s campaigns (and she rigged votes in a local election to ensure that sidewalks were installed in Sugar Creek, but that is another story for another time). And I remember seeing Mr. Truman walk the streets around his home on several occasions when I was in junior high school. That was in the late sixties. My how times have changed.
Is W a Truman waiting to emerge once historians have a chance to weigh his accomplishments? Jesus God is that a knee slapper. Harry Truman could point to ending the War in the Pacific, the creation of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan and the salvation of Europe, the creation of the CIA and the National Security infrastructure that served this country thru the Cold War, and the integration of the military.
Name one positive accomplishment that George W. Bush will be able to preen about? Just one. Homeland Security perhaps? The DNI? Maybe Guantanamo? Can’t do it can you?
While one can make the case that Bush and Truman had a significant number of folks working for them who were “ethically” challenged, at the end of the day Harry still had a clear sense of right and wrong. His backing of the work of Eleanor Roosevelt on the International Declaration of Human Rights stands in stark contrast to the endorsement of George W. Bush of torture and confinement without habeus corpus.
The more I watch George W. Bush, a disaster of a human being and leader, put our nation at risk and trash fundamental constitutional rights, my longing grows for a leader like Harry Truman. He was not a big man, physically that is, but he sure knew how to cast a giant shadow. He never had to dress up in a flight suit and declare “Mission Accomplished”. He didn’t hide out in the Alabama National Guard, he fought on the front lines in France in World War I. And he embraced the challenges of leadership thrust upon him in a way so profound that he changed the course of history for the good. The best Bush can hope for is that the fire he has started in Iraq and the fire he failed to extinguish in Afghanistan somehow burn themselves out before everything in the region is ablaze. Bush’s legacy is the anti-Truman. We miss you Harry. Too bad you are not around to give George W. some well deserved hell and advice. The country would be in your debt, once again.
by Ronald Scott
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