Passing on Problems
USA Today has an article out today that states something that has been obvious for quite some time; that the next President of the United States is going to inherit a host of problems from the Bush Administration.
The 44th president will move into the Oval Office with an agenda defined in large part by the 43rd president.
In many ways, it will be George W. Bush's third term.
Among pressing issues left on the table: What's next in Iraq. How to restore America's reputation around the world. Whether to extend tax cuts that expire in 2010. What to do about Medicare's looming shortfall. And how to complete the job of helping the Gulf Coast recover from Hurricane Katrina.
No new president gets a clean slate — global politics and the economy don't run in neat four-year cycles — but presidential scholars say the unfinished business Bush will leave for his successor is unprecedented since at least World War II.
"I can't think of a single modern president about to bequeath to his successor such a difficult agenda and such a damaged presidency," says Paul Light of New York University.
None of this should be a surprise. In the case of the Iraq War, Bush has as much as said that the solution would be left to his successors, and with that, his supporters will do everything they can to pin the blame of its loss on those successors as well. Bush’s latest speech gives the same message; stay the course, beg for more time, don’t make any actual decisions, and hope to stumble along for another Freidman or two until he can hand off the unwinnable mess to someone else to act as the fall guy.
And while the Iraq War is the most prominent of the messes that Bush will leave to his successor, the other issues he will be handing off are no less serious, and in some cases, will be even harder for the next President to resolve.
Domestically, there are a series of economic timebombs waiting for the next administration. The Medicare and Social Security shortfalls looming from the bulge of retiring baby boomers is just the beginning. The Bush tax cuts, aggravated by war spending, and the massively expensive and inefficient prescription drug benefit have all made those looming crisis’ even more difficult to deal with. Added to those problems are the huge budget and trade deficits that will have to be balanced out someday, probably painfully, and more painful the longer they are allowed to grow. And thanks to the size and importance of the US economy, its inevitable tumble will affect the rest of us.
Internationally, the question of the US’s credibility and international reputation becomes the most pressing long-term issue. In addition to the Iraq War, projects like the extra-legal prison at Guantanamo Bay and no-longer-so-secret CIA prisons in former Soviet satellites have eroded America’s moral authority when it comes to criticizing other countries behaviour.
Without that authority, the US has much greater trouble using its “soft power” to affect change. Despite its name, soft power is usually far more effective at convincing folks to change their behaviour than the military kind.
And the deterrent value of America’s military power has also suffered greatly under Bush. The continued ability of a bunch of lightly armed insurgents to tie down the world’s most expensive military machine has given new heart to all of America’s enemies, and has allowed countries like Iran to conclude a US attack is virtually impossible at present and to act accordingly. Given how close the US Army is to cracking under the strain it has been placed in, and how long it will take them to recover, that perception is not too far from the truth.
There is one small ray of hope here. If the next President moves quickly to distance himself from many of the policies that have caused most of the damage to the US’s image, I figure a lot of the people who used to have a high opinion of the US will be willing to treat the Bush Administration as an anomaly and forgive the rest of the country. On the other hand, if the next President fails to move in a new direction and return to the ideals of America’s past, the damage will become rooted and take decades or longer to reverse or recover to pre-Bush levels.
There are a couple points that worry me. The first is the simple fact that Bush has another 18 months in power. While his actions are slightly more constrained with the Democrats in control of Congress, he could still do something like launch an air attack on Iran that will make the current mess he’s handing off even worse.
The second is some version of a Black Swan; a successful terror attack in the US being the most likely, but any major event that the US isn’t prepared for could quickly change the calculus for both the current and subsequent administrations, and I have the feeling that it is unlikely to change things for the better.
Given those headaches, why do so many candidates want the job? Well, for one thing, with big problems can come big prospects.
The presidents most highly regarded by history are those who took over in troubled times and negotiated them with skill. Franklin Roosevelt followed Herbert Hoover amid the Great Depression and then led the nation during World War II. Ronald Reagan is credited with restoring America's resilience after the Iranian hostage crisis and oil shocks of Jimmy Carter's tenure.
"I think the last president to have as much danger and opportunity was when Roosevelt got elected in 1932," Biden says. "The next president — I mean this literally, not figuratively — has a chance to change the world, to put the world on a different trajectory than it is on now."
A lofty goal for certain, and I can’t argue with the perception that America is in need of a great President, or possibly a string of them, to lead the country over the next several years. Of course, that more than anything tells you what kind of President Bush is.
