Review: A Tragic Legacy by Glenn Greenwald

A Tragic Legacy: How A Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency by Glenn Greenwald. Crown, 320 pp.

There is an oratorical tone to Glenn Greenwald’s A Tragic Legacy, the rhythms and word choices of a trial lawyer making his case to the jury from opening statement to presentation of the evidence to closing statement. The defendant here, George W. Bush, is charged with a failed administration both proximately and primarily caused by his unbending Manichean world view, more about which in a moment.

Greenwald was an appellate attorney before turning author by way of political blogger, and appellate briefs do not admit the rhetorical flourishes of a trial; but it is the rare lawyer of any sort who does not at least fanaticize himself in command of the courtroom, mesmerizing the rapt jury. (The real aim of law school, after all, is to turn natural born anal retentives into oral aggressives and vice versa. Learning the law comes later.) In any case, A Tragic Legacy reads neither like the quiet work of a scholar nor the brisk, adjective starved prose of a professional journalist but, well, like the work of a lawyer who writes more clearly and interestingly than the average lawyer.

Okay, so there is a bit of damning with faint praise in that last, but for those who enjoy current events / political analysis books Greenwald's contribution is at least as worthy as the vast majority of the rest and better than more than a few I've suffered through in recent years. It needs to be said, however, that such books are not my cup of tea, lest the reader here take my somewhat tepid endorsement as more negative than intended. Disclaimer done, back to the book.

Manichaeism is the belief that the world is a battleground between roughly equal forces of Good and Evil, between the two of which there is no ground for compromise. A third century Persian religion, Manichaeism’s influences on Christianity were quickly deemed heretical (Satan may indeed exist but is surely no equal to God in orthodox Christian theology), but it is not the doctrinal Manichaeism that Greenwald accuses Bush of so much as the Manichaeism mind-set. As far as it goes, it strikes me as a fair charge. The question occurs, however, whether Greenwald required over three hundred pages to make his case or whether, more to the point, the reader requires plowing through same to be convinced that Bush’s simplistic moral absolutism has led to disastrous effect.

Here, striped of its quasi-theological trappings and with a few liberties of my own taken along the way, is a far shorter version of Greenwald’s thesis: Moral ambiguity and nuance are not George W. Bush’s strong suits. Raised in privilege, Bush has never had to suffer the consequences of his bad decisions nor even to abide, let alone compromise with those who were disloyal or who even merely disagreed with him. His conversion at age 40 to evangelical Christianity fitted him out not so much with a moral as with a moralistic lens processing the world in black and white, good and evil terms that were and still are largely indifferent to such trivialities as political theory or the rule of law. The enormity of 9/11 gave Bush both tremendous political popularity and thus political power but, more importantly, it became his blindingly bright focal point in the battle between good and evil with, of course, the Islamist terrorists on the side of evil and America and himself on the side of good. Public opinion, now that it has turned against him, be damned – Bush sees himself on God’s side and will not waiver in fighting the good fight.

Greenwald’s secondary agenda is a critique and criticism of contemporary conservatism and especially of what, I think over-broadly, he includes under the rubric of neoconservatism. Such conservatives (neo- or not) both cheered on and, among Bush’s inner circle of advisors, manipulated his policy and decision making at first. Now, however, the pundits, at least, have increasingly abandoned Bush rather like, to keep the religious metaphor going, Peter repeatedly denied Christ once things got ugly.

There is some truth to this, too, though I think rather less than Greenwald would have us believe. To cite, say, National Review’s Rich Lowery endorsing Bush for a second term as evidence of conservatives' belief in Bush’s conservative bona fides is a bit of a stretch. Political rhetoric is political rhetoric, and Bush was the better choice for conservatives in 2004, notwithstanding his manifold sins and transgressions against conservativism in his first term. The lesser of two evils is still the better choice and it would simply be naïve to expect advocacy journalists not to engage in, well, advocacy, especially in the midst of an election.

I don't recall there ever being a time when Bush wasn't the target of serious and often scathing criticism especially from economic / small government conservatives, nor will it do to conflate all conservatives of any sort who ever supported the war in Iraq as members in good standing of the neoconservative movement of the past few decades. Moreover, people do, after all, change their minds, the occasional disingenuousness in that fact which Greenwald accurately notes among some right-wing writers aside.

Indeed, one of the weaker points of the book is Greenwald’s heavy reliance on block quotes from various conservative pundits, both those who have continued to support Bush publicly (whatever they may believe in private) and those who have changed their public views, to make his case. There is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t quality about Greenwald’s take here, not to mention the very short shrift paid to the genuine differences and ongoing arguments inside what might broadly be called the American Right for far longer than the Bush years.

Though he takes some trouble at the onset to distinguish general conservative theory and principles from the actual policies of self-identified conservative office holders, Greenwald takes too little account of the differences between, say, Burkean or social conservatives and Hayekian or economic conservatives, nor do his occasional and arguably gratuitous swipes at Ronald Reagan’s administration take adequate account of the political realities precluding Reagan from dismantling more of the Great Society he inherited.

Speaking of which, Greenwald’s concluding comparison of Bush to Lyndon Johnson is insightful and, up to a point, quite apt. Johnson’s administration will forever be judged through the prism of the Viet Nam war which, unlike Bush, Johnson did not instigate but did significantly escalate. On the domestic front, his economic policies were doomed to failure because they were bad economics, but Johnson also did what no Kennedy could or Nixon would ever have done. This unlikeliest of civil rights champions pushed passage of civil rights legislation through force of will and a political ruthlessness and singlemindedness that would have made Richard Nixon, let alone George W. Bush, blush. That is Johnson’s real and lasting legacy. So what, then, is Bush's?

Greenwald concludes that Bush’s legacy will forever be not only his failed war in Iraq (and perhaps, worse yet, in Iran) with all the damage to constitutional law and America’s standing in the world it has wrought but also his failure, because of his Manichean obsession with terrorism, to accomplish anything on the domestic front beyond the unintended and tattered remains of the conservative movement in America.

Perhaps. Surely, much damage has been done to the American republic in these past six and a half years. As for Bush’s legacy in terms of his historical standing among other presidents, however, who cares?

For the Judeo-Christian theists among us, there is also a recurring theme in the Old Testament of God’s wrath being visited upon his errant people over and over again, nevertheless always sparing a righteous remnant for a new beginning. Theology aside and using that metaphor in purely political terms, especially for those of us who have always opposed the prospect of American Empire, it is at least worth suggesting that America is far better off now than it would have been had Bush’s holy war met with greater success. The Lord or, if you will, the Zeitgeist works in mysterious ways, after all.