A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency Read Online Free PDF Page B

is certainly a good argument to make that the nonexistence of WMDs was so harmful to the president only because the war that those weapons “justified” had been managed so ineptly, to the point where America actually appeared to be losing. Many Americans, perhaps most, hate a losing war more than they hate an unjust war. To be burdened with an image of weakness and defeat is arguably more damaging for an American president than to be revealed as dishonest. A substantial bulk of the Iraq-fueled hostility toward the president had as much to do with the fact that he failed to win the war—that he seemed to be losing —as it did with the fact that he justified the war in the first place with pretexts that were revealed to be false. But in all events, the confirmed nonexistence of WMDs did not mean merely that the war was sold on false pretenses. The revelation itself was a failure, a defeat. It brought embarrassment to the United States and vindication to war opponents. And even many Americans who were not bothered by the invasion were deeply disturbed by the humiliation when America appeared in the eyes of the world as incapable of doing anything right in its attempt to subdue Iraq.
By early 2006, the vast majority of Americans irreversibly opposed the war in Iraq—the centerpiece of the Bush presidency—and believed that it had been a mistake to invade. Worse, Americans largely believed that they were misled into supporting the invasion of Iraq not by virtue of erroneous intelligence but due to deliberate deceit . The Washington Post reported at the end of 2005: “A clear majority—55 percent—now says the administration deliberately misled the country in making its case for war with Iraq—a conflict that an even larger majority say is not worth the cost.”
This staggering unpopularity is all the more striking considering its contrast with the political omnipotence the president enjoyed for the first two and a half years after the 9/11 attacks. On one level, this near-complete reversal is difficult to understand because the president has not changed his approach or his worldview in the slightest. But on another, the collapse of his support is due precisely to the fact that the president’s governing approach and mind-set never change, even when his policies are glaring failures and the issues he is forced to address are entirely unsuitable to his worldview.
It is difficult to overstate the extent to which the Bush presidency imploded, but the November 2006 midterm elections provide a potent illustration. The Republican Party’s smashing electoral defeat in the 2006 midterms was as rare and as mammoth as was that party’s midterm victory in 2002. For only the third time in sixty years, there was a change in control of the Congress, as Democrats took over both the House and the Senate.
The magnitude of the Republican losses was staggering. The Democrats defeated six Republican senators to take control of the Senate, and picked up a total of thirty-one House seats. Six governorships switched from Republican control to Democratic, returning majority control of governorships back to the Democrats, by a margin of 28 to 22.
More notably still, not one incumbent House Democrat lost, and therefore not one single Republican challenger won—the first time since 1938 that one of the two major parties failed to defeat a single House incumbent. All incumbent Senate Democrats also won. Thus, the 2006 midterm election was only the second election in U.S. history in which one of the major parties failed to defeat even a single incumbent from the other party.
Dissatisfaction with the president’s Republican Party was so pervasive that it extended down to multiple state races. All incumbent Democratic governors won re-election as well. Democrats seized control of four different state legislatures previously under Republican control, while Republicans failed to take over any Democratic-run state legislatures. The 2006 rejection by