When Barack Obama puts his hand on a bible on January 20th and is sworn in as the new President, it marks the beginning of a new era. But as anyone who has studied history — or worked for or run a big business — knows starting a “new era” can mean little if the new person in charge of an organization doesn’t study the errors of the previous one.
So now the question for thoughtful people begins: what are the lessons that could be learned from Bush presidency?
This isn’t an easy question to answer. Bush’s many critics will be tempted to say he did almost everything wrong in every single way but a closer examination may not find that to be totally accurate. And his many defenders — including Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney themselves in their seemingly unending series of interviews and final speeches — may seek to shift the blame to others, downplay their own failures, or phrase things in a way that questions the intelligence, wisdom or good faith of their own critics over the years who were pointing out flaws in policy, implementation of candor. (Just wait until Cheney’s book comes out..)
Now we have one of the first of what will be many stand-back-and-analyze pieces — this one coming from the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward who during the Bush years was alternately accused due to his books of being a cheerleader for the administration and someone who unfairly criticized it (it’s easy to figure out which side each accusation came from).
Here’s his list of lessons from the Bush years, with a few comments from yours truly:
1. Presidents set the tone. Don’t be passive or tolerate virulent divisions.
He points to a particularly nasty internal debate between National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in which Rumsfeld essentially acted like a classic bully…and Bush left the room saying the two could work it out. Micromanaging management (again as anyone who has worked for a company knows) can backfire. But personal dynamics are important in something such as high-stakes policy formulation so it shouldn’t be “may the best dominant personality win” — the idea is to create an atmosphere where the best information and options are completely on the table and coolly evaluated in terms of content, not the personality or dominance of its deliverer.
2. The president must insist that everyone speak out loud in front of the others, even — or especially — when there are vehement disagreements.
See an emerging theme here? And this refers to an internal dynamic that would up costing lives: the dissing of and dismissive attitude towards then Defense Secretary Colin Powell by Vice President Dick Cheney. Read the original piece.
The bottom line: Powell thought Cheney’s assertions that Sadaam Hussein was perhaps working with Osama bin Laden on Sept 11th — one Cheney has now reworked and toned down by STILL USES — to be “”ridiculous. But the way Bush had his administration set up, the full brunt of the debate was never witnessed by Bush. Secondary bottom line: this is more evidence that despite what talk show hosts contend, Cheney will go down as one of the most negative impacts on a George Bush.
3. A president must do the homework to master the fundamental ideas and concepts behind his policies.
Boil it all down and what Woodward argues in specifics is that Bush basically outsourced, then made the outsource product (the policy) his own, and then baced and pushed it to the hilt. But he let others do the heavy mental lifting – an they some dropped what they were lifting.
4. Presidents need to draw people out and make sure bad news makes it to the Oval Office.
Self explanatory. Bush worked in a bubble. American got to see this in display this week. Obama met with conservative and liberal commentators. Who did Bush and Cheney invite to their office? Conservative talk show hosts. Liberal talk show hosts, too? That will happen the day GM is on the edge of bankruptcy. OOPS! (Let me think of another example…)
Bush also would ASSUME he know his advisers views before they told him. That suggest he a)felt he really knew his advisers, b)typecast his advisers in terms of where they were coming from in terms of ideology and perspectives c)again was not inclined to do the hard work or questioning them in detail. Remember the old saying: Assume makes an “ass” of “u” and “me.”
5. Presidents need to foster a culture of skepticism and doubt. Here, it’s best to just quote Woodward:
Presidents and generals don’t have to live on doubt. But they should learn to love it. “You should not be the parrot on the secretary’s shoulder,” said Marine Gen. James Jones, Obama’s incoming national security adviser, to his old friend Gen. Peter Pace, who was then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — a group Jones thought had been “systematically emasculated by Rumsfeld.” Doubt is not the enemy of good policy; it can help leaders evaluate alternatives, handle big decisions and later make course corrections if necessary.
6. Presidents get contradictory data, and they need a rigorous way to sort it out.
7. Presidents must tell the hard truth to the public, even if that means delivering very bad news.
Again, Woodward offers examples from his books and reporting. But suffice to say that it’s now clear that Bush’s constant assertions at some of the worst moments of the Iraq war that the United States was winning will be coupled by historians forever with the Vietnam era LBJ administration officials who kept insisting there was a light at the end of the tunnel…even though documents that have come out since then confirm that all the saw was a dark ditch with no easy or painless way out in sigh.
Woodward adds this important point:
After 9/11, Bush spoke forthrightly about a war on terror that might last a generation and include other attacks on the U.S. homeland. That straight talk marked the period of Bush’s greatest leadership and highest popularity. Presidents are strong when they are the voice of realism.
8. Righteous motives are not enough for effective policy.
This also fits in with Bush’s argument that he should be credited for the fact hemade tough decisions. Some of this attitude seems to stem back to the aura Harry Truman acquired in his post Presidency years. But Truman has not been celebrated just because he was tough or made tough decisions. He was celebrated because made tough, sound decisions that were not popular at the time but held up to scrutiny. Just deciding is not a virtue.
9. Presidents must insist on strategic thinking.
10. The president should embrace transparency. Some version of the behind-the-scenes story of what happened in his White House will always make it out to the public — and everyone will be better off if that version is as accurate as possible.
Woodward offers his example, but it’s worth noting that early in his term the Bush team was blunt about what it intended to politically — govern as if it had a huge electoral mandate rather than the way it won, in a squeeker, in a highly divided nation, in a disputed election. Ditto on many long term foreign policy approaches. It was clear on how it intended to proceed.
But when it came down to specifics on a host of foreign and domestic matters, the administration developed a “credibility gap” that put it along side the Johnson and Nixon administrations. And historians will forever put these three administrations in the same category.
Johnson’s credibility gap was mostly centered on foreign policy matters.
Nixon’s was mostly centered on his personal veracity and the legality and ethics of the way he operated.
Bush’s has been centered on both.
Cartoon by Cam Cardow, The Ottawa Citizen
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.