Esta semana en la encuesta del lateral pregunto cómo debería juzgar la Historia a Bush. En mi opinión su legado ha sido pésimo, tanto en materia de política doméstica (en particular su política económica) como en materia de política exterior (este artículo de Bandow resume los "logros" de su mandato).
El semanario británico The Economist también se pregunta cómo juzgará la historia a Bush y evalúa su legado en este editorial, equilibrado y duro al mismo tiempo. Y eso viniendo de un periódico que en las elecciones del año 2000 dio su apoyo a George W. Bush. Veamos la progresión (vivida por tantos otros conservatives y liberales a lo largo de estos años)
The Economist, año 2000:
By now, our scoresheet will be clear. The Economist, if it had a vote, would choose George W. Bush. It prefers his small government, pro-market philosophy. And, on the simple test of the two crises, he wins on points: behind on a foreign crisis, but well ahead in a domestic one.
The Economist, 2004:
Mr Bush's track-record has been very different. Whilst cutting taxes in a dramatic way that Mr Reagan would surely have applauded, he has relentlessly expanded both the scale and scope of central government—in order to advance the conservative cause. Mr Bush has tried to preside over the birth of a new political philosophy: big-government conservatism.
The Bush presidency has seen the biggest increase in discretionary spending since his fellow Texan, Johnson, was in the White House. In his first term, according to the 2005 budget, total federal spending will rise by 29%, more than triple the rate of increase in Bill Clinton's second term. The Bush administration raised spending on education from $36 billion in 2001 to $63 billion in 2004, a 75% increase; it has also pushed through the biggest expansion of Medicare, the federal health-care plan for the old, since the programme was created in the 1960s. More people now work for the federal government than at any time in history...
The Economist, 2009:
The fruit of all this can be seen in the three most notable characteristics of the Bush presidency: partisanship, politicisation and incompetence. (...)
The Iraq war was a case study of what happens when politicisation is mixed with incompetence. A long-standing convention holds that politics stops at the ocean’s edge. But Mr Bush and his inner circle labelled the Democrats “Defeaticrats” whenever they were reluctant to support extending the war from Afghanistan to Iraq. They manipulated intelligence to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had close relations with al-Qaeda. This not only divided a country that had been brought together by September 11th; it also undermined popular support for what Mr Bush regarded as the central theme of his presidency, the war on terror. (...)
A president who believed that America’s global supremacy was guaranteed by America’s unrivalled military power ended up demonstrating the limits of both. Many of America’s closest allies in Europe refused to co-operate with the Iraq war. Many of America’s rivals used America’s travails in Iraq to extend their power: Iran is more powerful than it was in 2000, and closer to acquiring a nuclear bomb; Russia and China have extended their web of alliances and strengthened their regional influence. Mr Bush’s recalibration of his policies in his second term suggests that even he recognises that America’s loss of soft power has cost it dear. (...)
Mr Bush now leaves behind a tax system in some ways less efficient than the one he inherited, in need of annual patches, and unable to fund the government even in good times. He also leaves behind a broken budget process. Any economic triumphalism is long gone. Many of the CEOs, most notably Donald Rumsfeld and Paul O’Neill, proved to be dismal administrators. Reaganomics helped to produce a giant deficit. The financial crisis has made re-regulation rather than deregulation the mantra in Washington, while government has acquired a much bigger role in the economy through its backing of banks and car companies. (...)
It is not all his fault. But for the most part, good policy repeatedly took a back seat to Mr Bush’s overweening political ambition. Both the country and, ultimately, the Republican Party are left the worse for it.
Creo que The Economist votaría la tercera opción en la encuesta.
