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Tuesday, June 28, 2005
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THE REVENGE OF LBJ
(Editor's note: This article was re-edited and added to on the morning of Sunday November 27, 2005. I should note that these additions and further editing were not done to change my original opinions, but to elaborate on and to clarify them. Furthermore, I did not allude to subsequent events, lest they color my original judgements.
If I were to insert my curent opinion anywhere in this post, it would be here, in the preface. And that opinion is harsh. President Bush has since gone past the point of no return in becoming Lyndon Johnson. The nomination of Harriett Miers has lead the conservative base of his party to doubt his judgement, perhaps forever.
The left has always been against him, and he lost libertarian/conservatives like myself long ago. Without the social conservative base that he relies on, President Bush is in a position that President Johnson was in in late 1967 and President Nixon was in early 1974. President Bush now has over half of the American people distrusting his words, actions and motives. I do not see a way that he can recover from that and I cannot see a way that he can govern unless he does.
It took nearly a decade after he left office for the consequences of President Johnson's fiscal mismanagement to be seen. That will assuredly not be the case in regards to this President's spending priorities. Whoever succeeds Mr. Bush, be it a Democrat or Republican, will need to make drastic, draconian spending cuts to rectify this President's reckless excess. And make no mistake, those cuts will hurt real people and real industries, but they will be necessary, lest the United States become Argentina.
If anything, the consequences of Mr. Bush's fiscal mismanagement are much worse than Mr. Johnson's. The debt incurred by the Johnson administration was largely held by American citizens and American banks. Even the extraordinary debt incurred by the Reagan and first Bush administration were held by friendly foreign allies of the United States, who had a national interest in maintaining American supremacy. That is not true of the current Bush debt. A good percentage of the current debt is held by the People's Republic of China. This directly impacts on American foreign policy. Should the Chinese find that policy intolerable at any time in the next decade or so, they will be able to single handedly make the US dollar essentially worthless.
After six decades of proudly fighting communism, American policy makers may soon be in the position where they cannot make a decision without thinking of how it will be seen by their financial masters in Beijing. How any patriotic American an excuse the wholesale auctioneering of national soverignty is beyond me. For that reason alone, I am shocked beyond words that anyone at all still supports President Bush's ambitions. He has literally sold off the international prestige of the United States for a prescription drug benefit that even a "socialist" country like Canada does not enjoy.
In her memoir, Margret Thatcher derided the Progressive Conservative government of Canada's Brian Mulroney as being "more of the former than the latter." The same can be easily said of the "compassionate conservativism" of George W. Bush. This is not a detriment not only to this President, it is detrimental to the Republican Party as a whole. If a Republican wins the White House in 2008 - which I still believe is likely - that Republican can only do so by running away from George Bush as is humanly possible.
And, in that,George W. Bush is Lyndon Baines Johnson returned from the dead.
The photograph to the left was obtained from the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library, which I can't recommend highly enough as a resource for those interested in history and public policy. Of all the presidential libraries, the Johnson library has the most comprehensive and user friendly website. I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to its staff for their fine work.
-skippystalin, Sunday November 27, 2005 )
If President Bush is a reader of history, I would suggest that he do some research on the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson. As events develop, he is coming ever closer to sharing his fate and it might be helpful for him and his advisors to know what to expect.
When one examines, it becomes clear that Bush and Johnson actually have much in common. Both assumed the presidency in controversial ways (Johnson through the murder of his predecessor and Bush through a disputed vote count in Florida.) Both came to office with agendas more ambitious than the circumstances of their assumptions of power would suggest were wise. Both cut taxes at unwise rates while engaging in an unprecedented expansion of domestic program spending. Both prosecuted foreign wars while being less than honest with the American people. Both were re-elected after defeating weak challengers.
Once elected in his own right, President Johnson's fortunes began to evaporate almost immediately. Despite a massive landslide victory in 1964, the dark suspicions people had about him never abated. LBJ dug the United States deeper and deeper into Vietnam without ever explaining what he hoped to achieve or how he would do it. The Vietnam war, combined with his extravagant domestic spending and the 1964 tax cut created economic conditions that haunted the country for nearly 30 years after he left office.
Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress were significantly cut in 1966 and opposition within his own party grew until his showing in the 1968 New Hampshire primary drove him out of the presidency. Johnson was sent back to Texas a broken man, and died a mere four years - almost to the day - later.
Lyndon Johnson accomplished a great deal of good in his five years in office and always hoped that he would be remembered as one of the greatest presidents in history. Instead, he is reviled in many quarters to this day. You can count the number of times that his name has been spoken at Democratic conventions on one hand. While the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Medicare and the 1968 Fair Housing Act are among the most significant and popular pieces of legislation in the 60 years since the death of Franklin Roosevelt, they are not often associated with Johnson personally. Johnson became to the Democratic Party what Richard Nixon would later become to the Republicans, an almost Soviet-style "non-person."
Johnson's greatest legacy is that, for the first time in American history, it became acceptable for a majority of the people to openly question the integrity of the president of the United States. Johnson's policies - and his dissembling about them - created conditions that made it impossible for any Democrat to win in 1968 and crippled the administrations of his three immediate successors. Furthermore, LBJ's Vietnam policies crippled American foreign policy for the balance of the century.
Almost from the day he was re-elected last November, President Bush has seemed determined to follow Johnson's example. Yes, he defeated John Kerry (who was a spectacularly weak candidate), but he did so by the thinnest margin for a incumbent president in history. The President then launched an agenda that far exceeded his popular support.
Worse, parts of his agenda directly contradicted others. As he vowed to reduce the deficit that he himself is responsible for, he proposed Social Security reform that would have added one trillion dollars to that deficit. And that assumes that he is even telling the truth about his cost projections. It is instructive to remember that his tax cuts brought in nowhere near the revenue he thought they would and that his prescription drug benefit will cost nearly three times what he originally promised.
Politically, President Bush has boxed himself in. His approval ratings are so low, and he is personally so distrusted, that the congressional minority - one even more ineffective than the one Lyndon Johnson faced - can defy him with impunity. Worse still, Bush is beginning to see the first stirrings of opposition from his own party’s moderates that Johnson faced from Democratic liberals from 1966-68. With a ten-seat margin in the senate, Bush cannot even confirm his nominee to the United Nations. And there is no reason to believe that that internal opposition will recede anytime soon.
If anything, Republican challenges to the president are likely to grow. George Bush, in his four-year quest for re-election, has betrayed Republicanism itself. Since the end of World War Two, the greatest electoral strengths that Republicans had was their reputation for fiscal responsibility and ability to avoid open-ended foreign conflicts. It was instrumental in them winning the presidency in ten of the last sixteen elections.
Those advantages are now gone. If any Republicans again tout themselves as the "party of small government", the Democrats and the media can fairly point to programs like the prescription drug benefit and No Child Left Behind and properly ask that if that is "small government", what would big government look like? It can also be pointed out that the promises Bush made at his 2004 convention exceeded the cost of Kerry's convention promises by a trillion dollars. And that's a political best-case scenario. That assumes that the economy doesn't collapse completely under the weight of Bush's spending. Should that happen, there will likely be a generation of Democratic political dominance, as happened in 1932 - 1968.
That leaves Iraq, which is the most troubling issue the president faces. Mr. Bush was right to declare that his presidency is on the line there. I would suggest that far more is at stake. American foreign policy itself is on trial there. And it is losing just a little more every day.
As several in the administration have pointed out, Iraq is not Vietnam. The insurgency has no governing philosophy or a leader like Ho Chi Mihn. But that observation overlooks the fact that Vietnam was not lost in Saigon but in Washington. And it is in Washington that Iraq is currently being lost. Iraq is not in danger of becoming a military failure, but a political one.
I supported the war and I still do. While the administration did not create a compelling case for war, there were other - if unstated - reasons that made the conflict necessary. I have outlined those reasons before and I will not do so again now. The combat operations period was a stunning success, far more so than anyone had a right to expect. But the statements and conduct of President Bush and Vice President Cheney have been disingenuous at best and outright lies at worst. Assuming that Bush and Cheney believed what they were saying was true, they showed an incredible ignorance of history.
The single greatest canard was Cheney's contention that American forces would be "greeted as liberators." Other Republicans have stated that the insurgency was unforeseeable, notably because there hadn't been similar resistance in Germany or Japan in 1945. This may have been the silliest thing uttered by an elected official in my lifetime.
The single greatest reason that there was no German insurgency is that anyone capable of fighting was dead. Germany itself had been carpet-bombed for nearly two years. An entire generation of German fighting men had been chewed up on the eastern front. It should be remembered that Berlin was defended from the final Soviet advance by teenagers and senior citizens. Similar circumstances prevailed in Japan.
This was not even close to approaching the case in Iraq. The German people were subjected to five years of total war, while the Iraqi people were subjected to five weeks of very targeted bombing. The single biggest reason that there were so few Coalition causalities in Iraq was that their defenders melted away into the population, and most took their arms with them.
Almost as soon as the President stood before his "mission accomplished" sign, the insurgency had begun. That was compounded by Ambassador Paul Bremmer's highly regrettable decision to disband the Iraqi military. Suddenly, tens of thousands of trained Iraqi fighters were left with no means to provide for their families. Further, those in the army who might have supported democracy in Iraq and fought the insurgency were so embittered by Bremmer's decision that they joined it instead.
Worse still, the United States went into such a large country with such a light force that it couldn't secure the cities, let alone the borders. This allowed foreign terrorists to reinforce the insurgents by coming across the Syrian, Saudi and Iranian borders. This was met with President Bush's dare that they "bring it on."
The insurgency is further fuelled by the failure of the coalition to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure. Again, this was completely preventable. Security is essential for reconstruction, but with the small force currently in country, it is difficult for them to secure themselves, let alone any construction efforts. If the United States were seen as even attempting to rebuild the country, particularly in the Sunni areas, any popular support for the insurgents would evaporate.
It would therefore not be unreasonable to argue that the insurgency is, at least in part, a creation of the Bush administration. It is a combination of unintended consequences and incredibly poor foresight.
Not only has the President not done anything to rectify the problem, he is seemingly unaware that there is a problem at all. This has caused a dramatic drop in American public support for the war. While there was a surge in support following Iraq's January election, it was merely the end of the beginning in America's involvement and not the beginning of the end. The contentions to the contrary by the administration and their amen corner in the media and the blogosphere only made the subsequent drop in support a certainty when the violence resumed in a significant way. Yet, Vice President Cheney continues to insist that the insurgency is in its "final throes."
No, Iraq is not Vietnam in a military sense, but it is in danger of becoming that in a political one. The domestic political situation is nearing what it was in late 1966 and early 1967. This can be rectified, but not without cost. And for this president to rectify the situation, he would need to do things he has no history of doing. President Bush would need to admit mistakes and work to correct them. He would need to shake up his national security team. He would also need to go before the American people and be honest with them about the need for more troops, not less. And he would need to be clear that they will be there not merely until the 2008 elections, but until the 2012 elections.
I believe the American people can and will support this war again, but it will require complete honesty about what the objectives are, why they are important and what the cost is likely to be. The President should point out that cost of failure is not just a terrorist Iraq, but a broader war in the Middle East and southern Europe. A war that would not only cost hundreds of thousands of lives, but disrupt America's oil supply, possibly for decades.
If George W. Bush is serious about saving his presiency, he would do well to read the multi-volume biographies of of President Johnson by both Robert Dalleck and Robert A. Caro, as well as Johnson's own memoir, The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency, 1963-1969 and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
What President Bush will learn is that LBJ was one of the most exceptionally gifted politicians ever to hold the office of President of the United States. Johnson dwarfs Bush in the areas where they share strengths. I doubt that President Bush would even attempt to pass something as controversial in his own party as the 1964 Civil Rights Act or the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Not only did Johnson have the courage to introduce it, he was possessed of the legislative brilliance to pass it. In the period of 1957-1966, Lyndon Johnson not only brought his party away from its racist past, he transformed America for the better.
But both presidents are possed of the same negative qualities that destroyed one and will certainly destroy the other and further damage American political life. Neither is given to admitting error. Both tend to view foreign policy through the prisim of a best case scenario at the expense of what is realistically likely to occur. Both are Wilsonian optimists to the point of near-disaster and insanity.
I have no doubt that President Bush has the same dreams for the Muslim world that President Johnson did for African Americans. It is in this area that Bush can learn the most from LBJ. After the stunning advances of 1964-65, there were over a hundred riots in the Black areas of major cities between 1966 and 67. The backlash of disappointment from the white majority continues to this day. The riots furthered the trend of "white flight" to the suburbs and lead to a generation of "law and order" Republicanism that has only served to further Black alienation.
In 1965 the theory was the that allowing African Americans to participate in the civic process would increase voter turnout. But the cynicism that was roduced by the riots, Vietnam and Watergate has ensured decreasing electoral participation in every election subsequent to 1964.
The most common reaction to lifting oppression is releasing decades of pent-up anger and frustration. If this happened in the slums of Los Angeles and Detroit, there is no reason to believe that it won't also happen in Baghdad, Beirut and Cairo. And that could likely lead to a domestic political backlash within the United States. Just as "white flight" resulted from what was seen as the result of the inability of African-Americans to appreciate their newfound freedoms, the same could occur in foreign policy. If Muslims are seen as not appreciating the freedoms that American men died to give them, there could well be a restoration of an isolationist majority like the one that cut off all military aid to South Vietnam in the spring of 1974. Neither president saw the possibility of a backlash resultant from overly optimistic policies and both suffered for it politically.
Both presidents were possesed of great dreams. It was a lack of realistic foresight that destroyed Lyndon Johnson's presidency and crippled the Democratic Party to this day. President Bush is rapidly approaching the point of no return in making the same mistakes that Johnson did. Once he passes that point, the consequences for policy makers in both economic and foreign policy will be the same or worse as those faced in the 1960's and 70's. There is no reason to believe otherwise.
President Bush will be making an address from Fort Bragg, Georgia tonight. There are things that he can say and do to rectify this situation, but he almost certainly won't. Maybe later I'll write what he should say, as opposed to what he will. But I suspect that it will sound suspicously like President Johnson's address at Johns Hopkins University on April 7, 1965.
What a difference 40 years of history makes.
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