Pacific Views

Early Assessment of Bush's Presidency

John Dean, writing at Findlaw has a couple of interesting articles (part 1, part 2) that review The George W. Bush Presidency: An Early Assessment conference. The Woodrow Wilson School hosted the conference and invited two dozen scholars to discuss this topic. Dean says that the papers (which you can find online here) have been assembled into a book.

If you don't like Bush, this material won't change your mind, but it will correct some of your thinking. If you're a Bush supporter, you will be disappointed to learn that in the eyes of professionals, and for good reasons, this president is making some potentially dangerous mistakes.

These two dozen presidential experts have placed the Bush II presidency in a nutshell, with its strengths and weaknesses laid bare. Absent another terror attack in the United States, this assessment will likely still be reasonably accurate at the time of the next Presidential election.

Dean particularly recommended the following two articles (pdf):
The Bush Political Ethos by Hugh Heclo, Princeton
The Bush Revolution: The Remaking of America's Foreign Policy by Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, The Brookings Institution

These are meaty papers and it does help to see how Bush is judged by the scholars. I think one thing we can all agree on is Bush has changed the face of America and will go down in history as one of the most memorable presidents -- in my opinion the worst we have ever had.

Posted by Mary at November 29, 2003 12:36 AM | TrackBack