by Sati Malik

Created on: November 08, 2008   Last Updated: December 01, 2008

On the morning of September 11, 2001 the Chief of Staff to President Bush whispered news of catastrophe into his ear. A second plane had just slammed into the World Trade Center in NYC. America was under attack! Looking visibly nervous, he sat in his place for some 20 minutes-in a Florida elementary school classroom listening to children read. It was the first time I remember him "staying the course" in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. What followed in the next eight years was a series of policy sins and omissions which are sure to define his presidency as one of the most unpopular in our 224 year history.

The legacy of George W. Bush will be one of profound moral failure, ironic, given the Manichean flourish of his rhetoric. Indeed, his profile won't be darkened by the 600 billion dollars spent and counting in Iraq; or the 2 trillion dollars reportedly evaporated in the collapse of the housing bubble and the ensuing Credit Crisis. After all, we've lost more in blood and treasure during the tenures of FDR and Lyndon Johnson. Instead the stinker will be the moral bankruptcy of his big ideas. For one,"The War on Terror" degenerated into The Patriot Act, "Gitmo"-and then Iraq: fabricated WMDs, Abu Ghraib, sectarian violence and profiteering of companies like Halliburton. And while we overstretched, Osama Bin Laden has evaded us. The intangible effects of these occurrences are already precipitating a global counter-hegemonic bloc outside the United States and a new isolationism within.

On the home front the "ownership society" devolved into class polarization: on the bottom end are the forsaken urban masses symbolized by the victims of Hurricane Katrina; on the top, the financial engineers of Wall Street, Washington lobbyists and oil executives, all feasting on incestuous relationships, lax regulation and generous tax cuts; and squeezed between these are the middle classes increasingly priced out of higher education, healthcare, and now their homes.

Admittedly, while the brushstrokes that paint Bush for posterity will be mostly dark there will be a few notable bright spots. He has created the world's largest protected marine ocean reserve, carving out a chain of pacific islands spanning 1,400 miles. After decades of radical secularism, he's reasserted the role of religion in American public life through his support of "faith-based initiatives" (which subsidizes religious charitable organizations) and the Defense of Marriage Act. In foreign and trade policy he's won rapprochement with Libya, better aligned us with rising powers China and India and peacefully halted North Korea's nuclear program. And, even though the Middle East is more chaotic as he leaves it, it is certainly more democratic.

Given the man-made catastrophes that eight years of Bush rule have nurtured, historians will make little room for his few accomplishments. Furthermore, the tentacular nature of the modern presidency is sure to put Bush ahead of Buchanan and Harding as our worst President ever. We must indeed think of the scale of impact. As we close out his unfortunate tenure I can't help but envisage the image of Bush in a flight suit swaggering aboard a metaphorical carrier called the U.S.S. Titanic above a "mission accomplished" sign. He'll soon fly off and leave us all to navigate in a treacherous sea.

Learn more about this author, Sati Malik.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.