Jacob Weisberg
The journalist on the ‘tragedy’ of Bush, the passing of Buckley, and watching from the Internet
The Bush presidency is nearly at an end. And George W. Bush sounds nearly as anxious as anyone else to see him with his feet up back home in Crawford, Texas. As Clinton, McCain, and Obama battle to be his successor, many have now begun to look back at the Bush years. Not with nostalgia but, in many cases, with utter disbelief, as he leaves behind an unfinished war, a broken Republican Party, and long-term damage to his country’s reputation. With his public approval ratings stuck in the low-30s, it’s difficult for anyone beyond the ideological GOP base to call Bush’s two terms a wild success.
Journalist Jacob Weisberg presents his own vivid analysis in a new book, The Bush Tragedy (Random House), wherein the Bush saga is given Shakespearean dimension. It is G.W. as Henry V, keeping his father’s influence at bay, operating recklessly, tragically. Weisberg, the editor-in-chief of Slate, first saw Bush up close while covering the 2000 presidential race, where he witnessed a candidate alarmingly “incurious” and “aggressively ignorant.” If the scale of Bush’s failures surprised even his toughest critics, the roots to a Bush “tragedy” were already well established, and the repercussions will be felt by the rest of us long after he leaves the Oval Office in January.
–Steve Appleford
CityBeat: How did you end up with the word “tragedy” in regards to George W. Bush?
Jacob Weisberg: It’s trying to give the story a Shakespearean dimension. I’m saying it in the sense that there is a poignant human drama and a dynastic story. There is more depth to Bush’s failure than a lot of people think.
Would you describe it as a human-sized tragedy, or a national tragedy?
It’s a global tragedy, in the sense that Bush has done such harm to America’s status in the world, and American power and prestige. It’s been harmful to America’s interests and also global interests in a lot of ways. But there’s some range there. I think there’s a personal tragedy, a family tragedy, and a national and international one.
Do you think he has any awareness of this?
Yes. But I don’t know how much denial he’s really in. I think he has this way of coping that basically keeps the reality of how unsuccessful his presidency has been at bay. He’s very focused on the issue of historical vindication now. He’s making constant indirect references to that – in terms of his reading and talking about Truman. He is clearly very focused on finding some sort of vindication, including this desperate last-minute attempt to broker some Mideast peace agreement, which seems very unlikely.
He certainly recognizes that he’s unpopular and poorly regarded. Do I think he accepts himself that he’s failed? No.
Does he have a lot of help in avoiding that kind of acceptance?
I think so. The presidency is a very isolating job. Presidents get progressively more isolated over time. They don’t do a tremendous amount to fight isolation. It can end up overwhelming them. And I think he’s done very little to resist it. He’s surrounded himself with yes-people and has indicated very little interest in hearing the other side, and hearing negativity and being challenged.
Wouldn’t you say there’s a little bit of tragedy in most presidencies?
That’s a fair comment. There haven’t been a lot of wholly successful presidencies ever. You obviously have the Kennedy tragedy in that he was assassinated, the Lincoln tragedy. But even with the presidencies that didn’t end in an obvious tragic way, there’s some element of poignancy – tragedy that goes beyond the sort of balance sheet of what was right or wrong.
Some presidents really lacked that dimension too. I don’t think the Carter presidency had any tragic dimension – he was just kind of an unsuccessful president. Bush’s father was neither a successful nor tragic figure – he was just kind of a mediocre president. I don’t think his presidency did have that depth.
What about Bill Clinton, who was very popular when he left office, but did so with a certain amount of shame?
There’s a lot of that sense about the Clinton presidency – that he squandered so much of his position at the end with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It was impressive how much he was able to do, and how much he fought back from that. Although he was a successful president in a lot of respects, he couldn’t elect a successor. And, depending on what happens with Hillary, I think he would consider it a tragedy if Clintonism didn’t go beyond his own presidency.
When you covered Bush in 2000, what did you notice about him – and were you surprised by the kind of president he turned out to be?
In the largest sense, I wasn’t surprised. Though I thought he was likeable in many respects, I didn’t think he had the capacity to be a good president. He was too incurious, too aggressively ignorant about things, and I didn’t think he was likely to have the substantive understanding about issues you absolutely need in this age to be president.
In another sense, I was surprised. I thought he would be a much more centrist figure. He was a centrist governor in Texas: he had a lot of Democratic support, he tried to govern from the center. I thought he’d try to do the same thing as president. I was surprised that he governed from the right as much as he did.
Where does Vice President Cheney fit into all this?
I think [Bush] probably does feel pretty betrayed by Cheney. How explicit he’s been about that, I don’t know. But Cheney has clearly lost the biggest part of his influence in the White House in the last year or two, and I definitely get the sense that Bush has soured on him and doesn’t trust him the way he did.
Nixon once called George Herbert Walker Bush “the kind of person you appoint to things.” Is that the kind of thing George W. was rebelling against – the polite, patrician side of the family?
Very much so. He’s really molded himself in opposition to his father, both in terms of his personality and approach and his way of making decisions, and also in terms of substantive issues – particularly in foreign policy. He’s really defined his own worldview in opposition to his father.
Is part of the “tragedy” that George W. kept his father at arm’s length when he really could have used his advice?
I think so, in that the father was really trying to get through to him. Particularly on the eve of the war, and when the war was going badly, he was really trying to reach the son with some advice. He was in a tricky position. He didn’t want to foist it on him. But the son just wasn’t interested in hearing anything from his father.
One way of describing the tragedy is the son set out to vindicate the family by repudiating his father’s policies. He ended up making his father look like a much better president, but has probably brought the family dynasty to an end.
Any thoughts on the passing of William F. Buckley?
Yes, I knew Buckley a little bit. He came off as a tremendously appealing figure, partly because he had this tolerance for his opponents and because he took pleasure in political debate. But also because he was such a polymath and took pleasure in so many different parts of life – he could be a political pundit, but not have his life totally defined by politics. In that sense, he’s a model for political journalists.
I once watched him being interviewed on Hannity & Colmes, and it was interesting to see him struggle to get down to the level of Sean Hannity.
He was intellectually serious, and he followed his own views to their conclusion. He ended up opposing the war, and he was for drug legalization. He was the opposite of an ideological Republican as we know them now. He didn’t take the position that reflexively worked best for the Republican Party. He was a principled conservative.
Every election cycle, the Internet seems to grow more important in terms of how we elect presidents and deal with the press. How has it worked out this year?
I first started covering a presidential campaign for Slate in 1996, which is right after we started. That year and every presidential election since, I’ve said this is the year that the presidential election will be defined by the Internet. And this time it may actually be true! [Laughs] The biggest thing that has happened is that the political conversation has really moved online. If you’re not online, there’s really no way to participate in the big political conversation in this country.
Published: 03/12/2008
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