Bush Compares Himself To Harry Truman
Early on in his term, some conservatives were comparing George W. Bush to Ronald Reagan — saying that he had carried the Reagan Revolution that began replacing FDR’s New Deal mentality and orientation with conservative ideas several steps farther.
Bush, it was said, was far closer to Ronald Reagan than his country club Republican father, George Bush I.
But then came a host of issues, and some Barry Goldwater/Ronald Reagan conservatives began angrily breaking with George W. Bush, so you don’t hear that much anymore.
In fact, what followed were some analysts — some of them Republicans — comparing Bush to President Jimmy Carter, who until recently had seemingly become the quintessential poster boy for a bumbling President.
But now, Bush has his own idea of whom he resembles, and whose era this most resembles: he is like (he says) President Harry S. Truman:
President Bush implicitly compared himself to Harry S. Truman in a commencement address at the United States Military Academy on Saturday, saying Truman acted boldly against the “fanatic faith” of cold war communism in the same way Mr. Bush’s administration has responded to the threat of terrorism since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.“By the actions he took, the institutions he built, the alliances he forged and the doctrines he set down, President Truman laid the foundations for America’s victory in the cold war,” Mr. Bush told the class of 2006.
Mr. Bush has compared the struggle against communism to the current war against Islamic radicalism in previous speeches, but his address on Saturday was his most developed on the theme. He left it unsaid that Truman was deeply unpopular at the end of his two terms in office and that it took a generation to appreciate his achievements.
“Like the cold war, we are fighting the followers of a murderous ideology that despises freedom, questions all dissent, has territorial ambitions and pursues totalitarian aims,” Mr. Bush said. He added that “like Americans in Truman’s day, we are laying the foundations for victory.”
The president made a passing but pointed reference to the present standoff with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. “The message has spread from Damascus to Tehran that the future belongs to freedom, and we will not rest until the promise of liberty reaches every people in every nation,” Mr. Bush said.
The comparison of the two eras is not inappropriate. There are obviously huge differences between The Age of Terrorism and the Cold War, but most assuredly this battle will also be an extended one. The issue of nuclear weapons also looms in the background — although this time a strategy of mutual deterrence is not feasible.
But there is one key difference between George Bush and Harry Truman.
Truman believed “The Buck Stops Here” and had a sign that said so in his office. Yours truly remembers during the 60s when HST had his own filmed television show how the peppery old President was blunt-spoken and every word that came out of his mouth seemed like it came from his gut and his soul. Like him or not, what you saw was what you got — and every centimeter of his being seemed to scream that out to you.
With George W. Bush, the buck stops everywhere but at his desk.
It stops with Michael Brown, CIA officials who don’t agree with his policies, the mainstream news media, intelligence agencies that don’t give him all the information or connect the dots on pre-911 information, etc. He was supposed to be the business-school CEO model President, but if a CEO pleaded ignorance or delegated blame to the extent he did, that CEO would have been forced out by angry stockholders long ago.
And these days, except for his most lock-step supporters, many Americans in both political parties and — increasingly — those who don’t belong to any party feel they need to hire a lawyer to parse every word that comes out of his mouth. Was there a loophole in there somewhere? And then they need to hire body language experts to see if gestures or smiles off camera signal whether the words were from the heart or the product of an earlier rehearsal with Tony Snow.
Bush possesses Truman’s determination to take unpopular stands and stick with them, to take a risk on a bold policy. But he often passes the buck rather than accept that it’s his. And he has become to the image of sincerity what Haagen Daaz is to diet food.
President Bush: I studied Harry Truman. I watched Harry Truman. Harry Truman was a favorite President of mine.
You are no Harry Truman.
12 Responses to “Bush Compares Himself To Harry Truman”
Bush has been compared to Truman by several writers, mostly of the Weekly Standard crowd, since 9/11. He didn’t invent the comparison – he adopted it from others going back 5 years, and I for one consider it an apt comparison in a limited sense. It only goes so far – for all his bumbles, Bush never dropped a nuclear weapon on anyone, but he’s never been put in a situation requiring such extreme decisions. Iraq was a pretty easy decision, given Saddam’s dozen years of menace and the utter hopeless of an Iraqi insurgency (against him), so certainly Bush should explain better what has gone wrong and why, and stop the buck more frequently. If only his admissions of guilt weren’t quickly spun by a media (that I’m part of for better or worse) quick to assign weakness to any sign of confession. This goes both ways, Joe.
Bush, who once said of history’s verdict on his Administration, “We’ll all be dead then,” is probably hoping for some long-term rehabilitation of his reputation, like Truman got some 20 years after he left office.
The only way Bush can be rehabilitated 20 years after he leaves office is if half the world drops dead, and the other half are fools and liars.
Longer term? Actually, I think Bush is a symptom of a lot of bad things. The biggest of them all is that Americans have embraced intellectual and moral bunkum in all things. As a culture, we’ve fallen hard core for superficial reasoning, logic that’s false on its very face, and a deep disregard for information that isn’t predigested to conform to what we already want to believe. Ours is a senescent culture and Bush is the perfect leader-avatar of that.
Having given up on improving his standings in the polls, Pres. Bush is now concentrating on his legacy. I guess he’s desperate now, as he’s comparing himself to a liberal Democrat! As no president goes down in history for enacting tax cuts, his legacy is largely tied up with the war on terror and, more specifically, the war in Iraq.
I can see some apt comparison between the Cold War and the war on terror; both are ideologically based, are not against a specific country and both are without a foreseeable end.
But Harry Truman was remembered for a lot more than his decision to use the atomic bomb to end WWII, and his actions as a pioneering Cold Warrior. He helped post-war Europe recover thru the Marshall plan, pushed his Fair Deal thru Congress, which provided money for public housing and expanded Social Security, and provided humanitarian aid during the Berlin Airlift. As a Senator, he saved the U.S. 15 billion in a tough fight to limit war profiteering. His origins were humble, and he suffered fools badly. He didn’t keep his cronies around if they bungled their responsibilities. On the most part, he was trustworthy.
He was unpopular at the end of his second term, because of the Korean War-which was a stalemate-that is what he and Bush have in common.
I see W more as Hoover than Truman.
It’s been over 70 years since Hoover was president. In another 70 years, how will history look at W?
My guess is that he will be viewed as a failure, probably a worse failure than Hoover. Hoover seems (through the lens of history) to be a genuinely honest and caring person. Just as Jimmy Carter has used his life since being president to enhance his reputation, Hoover’s life prior to becoming president will always reflect well on him.
I know it’s immoderate thing to say, but I can’t see W doing anything to help humanity after he leaves office. He just doesn’t strike me as that kind of person. Cashing in on fame and fortune, partying big time (since he would no longer have to keep up appearances), but helping people? I could always be wrong. Maybe deep thought course beneath his brow and a truly compassionate heart beats in his chest. Maybe constant smirking and fumbling of the facts have masked the real man, but I doubt it.
One commom trait Hoover and Bush II seem to have in common is that their ideology blinded them to what was happening in the real world. Hoover beliefs, specifically about economic volunteerism and self-reliance, kept him from a reality based approach to the crisis. Viewing the world through his ideological prism hampered his effectiveness.
Also, both Bush and Hoover had very close corporate ties. Several sources have accused Bush of trying to dismantle FDR’s New Deal, but unlike Hoover, Bush does seem to be a Big-government Republican.
The people who are making megabucks off of Bush’s theivery will be dead in 50 years as well. I suspect the people of the future will hear the truth. The one that we aren’t hearing now. At this point in time the media is enjoying their Bush windfall too much to let the people know what is really happening.
Kitebro—That’s assuming the Constitution hasn’t been rewritten and the fourth amendment taken out of it! We’re going down that long, slippery slope when we start prosecuting reporters who embarass the administration.
Truman and Bush: Their surnames say it all!
Poor Harry Truman must be rolling over in his grave!
As much as Bush protests it, he’s very aware of his standings in the polls. And he cares -a lot. His first tactic in dealing with the ratings was to act as though they don’t really matter-he’s doing what good leaders do-what’s best for America.
Now that he’s giving commencement speeches-he can’t go in as the worst president since Herbert Hoover-so he tells the graduates he’s actually a great president-we just don’t realize it yet! Only thru history’s prism will he be fairly judged (not by the MSM)
I’m not buying it–he’s as phony as a three-dollar bill!
The rumbling you hear from Missouri is Harry Truman fighting to get out of his grave and come kick that lying son of a b*itch’s teeth in!
I’ve studied the Truman Administration, the good and the bad, for many years; and the unmitigated gall of this incompetent scion of a decadent aristocracy trying to compare himself to Harry leaves me almost incoherent with anger. Even when I am most distressed by the mistakes Harry made, there is no doubt in my mind that it was his decision and his principles that were at work.
The comparison is invidious and nauseating.
This is a grossly sexist comment: “Truman and Bush: Their surnames say it all!”
Bush as Truman?? I live 20 minutes from both the home Truman retired to and his family farm. I drive past both fairly often. I was born and raised in this area and you learn a lot about Truman around here of course and a talk show host on the local NPR station has been in news in this town for decades and when the subject comes up can tell more than a few first person stories about Truman. If his show has an open day anytime soon I hope I can call in and ask him what he thinks about that comparison. It could be entertaining.
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TITLE: Truman – I don’t think so!
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The other day I had a post on historian Robert P. Watson’s thoughts on the legacy of George W. Bush. Watson saw George W. down there with the bottom dwel …