{"id":14064,"date":"2007-12-28T11:10:15","date_gmt":"2007-12-28T16:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14064.html"},"modified":"2007-12-28T11:10:15","modified_gmt":"2007-12-28T16:10:15","slug":"what-it-takes-to-improve-the-bush-gangs-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/what-it-takes-to-improve-the-bush-gangs-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"What it takes to improve the Bush gang’s legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the NYT<\/i> this week, Robert Dallek reviews<\/a> Elisabeth Bumiller’s new book on Condoleezza Rice, “An American Life: A Biography.” One gets the sense the book probably won’t be too hard-hitting — Bumiller has a well-earned reputation for passivity, and Dallek notes the biography’s “above-the-battle tone” and refusal to “offer any decisive judgments on Ms. Rice’s performance.”<\/p>\n

Most notably, though, there was this gem:<\/p>\n

Ms. Bumiller says that if President Bush and Ms. Rice can produce a settlement in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians and an end to North Korea’s nuclear program, it would give them claims on success that would significantly improve their historical reputations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After struggling a bit, I think the word I’m looking for here is, “Duh.”<\/p>\n

As Scott Lemieux<\/a> added, “And if I discover a way of powering cars entirely with oxygen, emitting a vapor that would result in the immediate killing of cockroaches and paralysis in the hands of every Hollywood producer about to sign a contract with Joel Schumacher and Uwe Boll, my reputation as a world-class scientist would be greatly enhanced.”<\/p>\n

Yglesias<\/a> gets in on the fun, too: “By the same token, if earth’s yellow sun gave me the powers of a kryptonian, I’d be a super hero. If my blog had Engadget’s traffic, I’d be the most popular political blogger. If George Bush could breath underwater, he’d be a fish.”<\/p>\n

To be sure, if Bush and Rice can bring peace to Israel (after seven years of intentional neglect) and solve the North Korean nuclear crisis (which they helped exacerbate through a meandering and misguided foreign policy), then sure, the progress would certainly “improve their historical reputations.”<\/p>\n

But given the likelihood, and seven years of foolishness to reflect on, I’m still pretty confident that history will not be kind.
\n
\nWhat’s more, perhaps it’s predictable given Bumiller’s past, but it’s striking that the NYT<\/i> reporter seems unwilling to draw conclusions.<\/p>\n

She admires her extraordinary rise from a childhood in 1950s segregated Alabama to the highest office ever held by an African-American woman. But Ms. Bumiller understands that Ms. Rice’s place in history will rest more on her record in the Bush administration. And “with 18 months left in office,” Ms. Bumiller wrote as she finished her book, “it was still too early to come to definite conclusions.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Really? It is? After multiple failures, many of them catastrophic, can’t we draw some<\/i> “definite conclusions” about the merit of the Bush administration’s approach to foreign policy?<\/p>\n

Ms. Rice’s record here as both national security adviser and secretary of state will surely undermine her historical standing. “She knows very well that if she doesn’t do anything” about the Middle East, “she will be Iraq,” a European diplomat who was a friend of Ms. Rice told Ms. Bumiller.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Count on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the NYT this week, Robert Dallek reviews Elisabeth Bumiller’s new book on Condoleezza Rice, “An American Life: A Biography.” One gets the sense the book probably won’t be too hard-hitting — Bumiller has a well-earned reputation for passivity, and Dallek notes the biography’s “above-the-battle tone” and refusal to “offer any decisive judgments on Ms. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}