The Elephant in the Room: Was George W. Bush a Demagogue?
Interesting discussion so far, but I must say there's an air of unreality here. And I smell more than just a whiff of collective amnesia that makes me want to shout out to my friends here - "Wake up! Are we forgetting what just transpired in our beloved land of the free and home of the brave during the George W. Bush era?"
I'm really surprised that the question of whether or not George W. Bush was a demagogue hasn't been explored in-depth. Matt asked, "Why America today hasn't seen more support for the sort of demagogues that Mike so nicely describes in his book;" and Heather outlined some arguments as to why demagogues don't do better in America. But what about the disastrous train wreck that America just experienced for the last eight years, the administration of George W. Bush?
In the wake of 9/11, didn't we have a leader who in essence became a demagogue and used the popular support he garnered in the wake of those devastating attacks to run roughshod over our cherished constitution and take America into an unnecessary war of choice in Iraq on false pretenses and bad information?
Power grabs by the executive without Congressional and judicial oversights, unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping, mistreatment and, yes, even torture of those in the custody of the United States, and extraordinary renditions to countries with poor human rights records like Syria and Egypt - and there was very little public outcry against these measures, which were essentially a frontal assault on many of the foundational principles of our republic.
Just as troubling was a political and policy elite inside the Beltway that offered very few principled arguments against these fairly clear abuses -some might even say that the political opposition to the Bush administration was complicit in these years, and that the voices that argued against the constitutional abuses were branded as weak on fighting terror.
Granted, George W. Bush's demagoguery only carried him so far. His approval ratings in 2002 peaked 80 percent and even thus far have outpaced President Obama during his honeymoon period. One could argue that the apex of the Bush demagogue years was 2002 to 2006. But survey the damage that was done - not only to the constitution, but also to our national debate. Even in our discussion over Michael's book, we've largely avoided this elephant in the room - why did the American public just go along with the Bush administration in policies that so squarely contradicted our constitution?
I think Heather's fear explanation is part of the answer - it explains why our own society was so willing to cede so much authority to the executive branch in the Bush era. But I'm still troubled by two other questions:
1. If we fail to take account and punish the abuses done during the Bush-era demagoguery, how likely are these extra-constitutional practices to reemerge in the future and become part of what is accepted as conventional practice?
There is a strong inclination these days to sweep under the rug the constitutional damage done by the Bush administration, and it seems quite similar to what was done in the post-Nixon and post-Iran-Contra eras, too. What are the long-term consequences of avoiding a thorough investigation of these abuses? Are we inevitably slouching towards demagoguery and unchecked abuses in the future?
2. Back to my first post, if we don't have an honest accounting of what has been done, how much credibility will America have when it tries to promote constitutionalism abroad?
We can yammer on all we want about the need to promote constitutional ideals abroad, but if we don't have a serious safeguarding of them in our own backyard, how much credibility will we have as a country to do that overseas?
In the Bible, Jesus Christ said, "How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother's eye."
Until we have a more honest discussion about the Bush years and the dangers of demagoguery that America has experienced, I don't think we're likely to have a great deal of credibility to promote constitutionalism abroad.
Bush was demagogue without the "dema" - without the people or their knowlegeable support for any of his perversions. Americans were party through negligence to his deconstruction of our political charter; few were aware of his crimes simply because never before had an American administration been so successful at occulting every aspect of White House dominion, with full assent of the other branches of government and the media. Only in the days following 9/11, when the country was shattered and distracted, did Bush seem the man of the hour, the leader of the people. His priorities were so contained - and aimed economically upward - and his actions, really, so stumblebum that he never really leveraged any sizable chunk of political capital he so sought to squander. The Bush legacy was one of ugliness in the dark - secret torture rooms and insider deals; he and especially his neoconservative coterie were just to creepy and alien for mom and pop America to abide.
February 26, 2009 5:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bush was a demgogue, but like in every other aspect of his life he left the unpleasant details to his proxies.
February 26, 2009 5:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just finished Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here", which resonates strongly, set as it was in the Depression. Different, in that the demagogue in that story comes in offering socialist reforms. Same, in that there is the infantilizing of the public with slogans instead of speech. External as well as internal enemies are invoked, and the threat justifies ad hoc governing.
February 26, 2009 5:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great story. It was "Buzz W.", not "W. Bush"; it was Father Coughlin, not Rush Limbaugh; it was Huey Long, followed by Charles Lindbergh.
February 26, 2009 10:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
A demagogue gains popularity by arousing emotions, passions and prejudices. All successful politicians resort to those tactics so if we tag Bush with the epithet, we've got to apply it all around.
Bush's appetite for extra-legal power was insatiable and his willingness to abuse the justice system was boundless, traits that made him far more dangerous (in a relatively free-wheeling democracy) than any mere demagogue.
February 27, 2009 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excuse me, if you click my name and go back through my blogs, you will find at least 8 of them that deal with the outrages caused by bushco and the need to investigate and prosecute. I will do a reply to this with all the blogs. And you can take a look at all the people who posted comments - as well as the level of troll attacks simply for advocating that we obey the law.
Do not forget, TPM has many parts. And there are many more people reading than posting. And many people who are not regulars but still return to read often and post occasionally. It is unwise to make statements without careful checking. Do not arouse the ire of TPM bloggers!
February 26, 2009 5:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/02/justice-sneaks-in---on-little.php
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/02/is-freedom-possible-without-ju.php
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/02/in-the-service-of-justice.php
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/01/a-twice-told-tale.php
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/01/simple-justice---not-a-witch-h.php
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/01/civil-rights-and-justice.php
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/01/we-the-people-and-olc---why-et.php
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/01/what-howard-dean-did-for-me.php
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/01/memorize-dawn-johnson-weep-wit.php
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2008/12/blown-away---by-a-letter-to-th.php
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2008/12/bless-you-elizabeth-warren.php
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2008/10/widening-gap-between-rich-and.php
And please do not think I am the only one!!!
February 26, 2009 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
You tell 'm.
February 26, 2009 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama's lawyer said that Obama will protect the powers of the Executive Branch vested in Obama by Bush/Cheney. This proves Cheney right when he said that he thought Obama would appreciate what they did to the office.
Obama's Justice Department still supports the retroactive immunity for telecoms.
Obama is quietly trying to kill the Bush White House missing e-mails lawsuit:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/21/obama-administration-tryi_n_168843.html
Demagogues are not democracy's worst enemy, it's our banking masters who serve us demagogues and smooth talking hope-n-changers as public opinion dictates. Either way, the bankers win and their power is consolidated.
Soon enough we'll be cheering for global government, fronted by whatever public face the bankers deem appropriate for the time.
February 26, 2009 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is why Cheney/Bush should have been impeached and convicted, but, of course, Nancy had to take impeachment "off the table." I guess it would have been impolite to impeach war criminals. Let's send the "truth and reconciliation" commission after them. If that doesn't work let the International Court of Justice have a crack at 'em.
February 26, 2009 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Whadya say we skip the namby pamby truth and reconciliation commission and just send them all off the Hague right now and call ahead to tell them to have the gallows in good working order!
February 26, 2009 9:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is why i've said all along that demagoguery has become institutionalized in the US. Look at how the Demagogue Machine took down Clinton, and prepared the ground for Dubya.
Bringing it all back home to last week's discussion, Bush II was a copy of Reagan--to the extent that he was the smiling figurehead of fascism, letting others do the Party's dirty work under his umbrella.
February 26, 2009 7:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
It was bi-partisan, every step of the way. Pelosi and Obama are not your friend or your benevolent caretaker.
Same fascism, different department brigade. Broken system.
February 26, 2009 7:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is there any doubt that Bush was a demagogue? If Signer's answer to this question isn't "yes" then I'm going to be really perplexed.
February 26, 2009 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course he was a demagogue and yes, the discussion about how constitutionalism will protect us from him is more than a tiny bit surreal!
Our leaders failed us and yes, the opposition was complicit in many ways. What we need is an elite with some balls and courage and conviction. What we have are a bunch of people without the courage of any convictions and that is not only disgusting but has ominous implications for the future survival of the republic.
You wrote:
"I think Heather's fear explanation is part of the answer - it explains why our own society was so willing to cede so much authority to the executive branch in the Bush era."
I must object to your using the term "our society" with respect to being "so willing to cede so much authority to the executive branch". It was not "our society" it was our leaders who did it. We "the people" had no voice at all. We "the people" were screaming and shouting and blogging and protesting and our leaders looked away. We "the people" were manipulated, lied to, and we wanted the war stopped, troops brought home and the torture put to an end and our leaders refused to honor the will of the people. I think it is extremely important for the talking head class and the rest of the elite to get it through their heads that this was their failure, not just George Bush's failure. The elite enabled and went along with all the abuses our demagogue in chief perpetrated and often did so in effete opposition or even defiance of the will of the people. The outrageous retroactive immunity for telecoms who illegally spied on us is one good example of how the leaders failed the people and even spit in our faces.
In answer to your questions above:
1. If we fail to take into account AND punish the criminal behavior of the past 8 years the next psychotic governmental episode of the right wing will be even worse as each successive instance has been since the Nixon era began the abuse and criminal conduct of government. The only thing that will deter similar and worse crimes in the future is if those who contemplate such illegalities and immoralities know they will not be allowed to skate after having committed such crimes.
and
2. America will have exactly the amount of credibility it has now: zero. The world marvels at our blatant and ongoing hypocrisy.
February 26, 2009 9:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
"a person, esp. an orator or political leader, who gains power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people."
Um, no, if anything Bush raised antagonistic passions etc. while pandering weakly to fear and being seen by many as a puppet. The fact that much of America was "sheeplish" doesn't make Bush an arouser. He clearly wasn't a great orator, unless all his malapropisms etc. were deliberately done in a kind of reverse psychology method.
"why did the American public just go along with the Bush administration in policies that so squarely contradicted our constitution?"
Easy - a rather distinct lack of opposition leadership behind which opposition could be built. Grassroots opposition, from anti-war gatherings, to impeachment petitions, on down in size, was hardly lacking. But Congress and the mass media didn't take on the excesses, distortions, and pandering in a way which could let latent opposition be actualized via leadership. We might say that no counter-Bush demagogue rose up to lead a populist revolt.
The fact that the Democratic Party leadership basically rolled over for Bush does not make Bush a demagogue. It makes them weak and/or complicit.
February 26, 2009 10:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I really don't think Bush was much of a demagogue. Bush enjoyed a period of very high popularity only for a short while. He did indeed parlay that popularity into abuses of power, as many politicians do when they are popular. But his abuses continued during periods of middling popularity, and even low popularity.
What this shows is that our problems with runaway executive power are deeper and more structural than those posed by the occasional populist demagogue. Bush was able to seize and exercise vast undemocratic powers not because he was insanely popular, but because the institutions of our government are not so well-designed as is believed by flowery patriots like Michael Signer indulging their founder-worship, and singing paeans to the great constitutional genius and democratic virtues the American system. The president possesses vast powers by tradition and legal precedent, and if a president wants to assume even more power than tradition and precedent afford him, it turns out that is very difficult to stop him from doing so. He doesn't have to exercise hypnotic power over the mob, since the mob doesn't have much of a say in the workings of Washington anyway.
Signer is interested in examining the role of one particular kind of bogeyman, the demagogue. But there are all sorts of structural deficiencies in our political system that have nothing to do with the depredations of a single dark villain parlaying populist appeal into threats to democracy. These threats come from the ordinary workings of an imperial executive branch that was a flawed and dangerous construction from the very start, and for which the ineffectiveness of constitutional checks and potential for tyranny have become every more apparent and more actual with each generation. If you manage to get yourself elected president in the United States, you don't have to be a hero of the roaring crowd to start acting like an emperor. That option is built right into the institution itself.
February 26, 2009 11:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
In response to Brian's question about George W. Bush, here's an excerpt from the book on this exact topic -- the answer, simply, is that he was not. He wasn't good enough:
* * * * *
A recent Google search found “about 447,000” mentions of “Bush” and “demagogue” together.
While it’s clearly important to hold government figures to a high standard and to call foul when necessary, we also must avoid generalizing the category of “demagogue” to include all nefarious public figures. The casual, broad usage of the term demagogue misunderstands the precise relationship with the masses that a demagogue must create and sustain to qualify as a demagogue and threaten democracy itself. George W. Bush was, in fact, not a demagogue, because he failed at least two of the four elements: He was not a man of the common people, and he did not inspire overpowering emotional reactions among them. While he occasionally styled himself as a man of the lower classes—a famous example being his habit of very publicly clearing brush at his Texas ranch—he never successfully defined himself, in any powerfully convincing way, as a man of the common people. Even though the Ivy League-–educated businessman made attempts to seem like an ordinary Texan, these efforts did not convincingly create a mass leader persona, certainly not on the level of any true historical demagogue, whether Huey Long, George Wallace, or Hugo Chávez. On the contrary, Bush never hid his profound dependence on elites—the millionaire and billionaire donors and bundlers who comprised his “Rangers” and “Pioneers.” Even if he had tried to become a true common leader, these connections would have undermined that persona.
Furthermore, Bush never triggered the kind of passion among the masses that a true demagogue does. Despite his attempt to exploit a quasi-populist image for political benefit, his grasp on public opinion was always slippery, even inept. He lost the popular vote in 2000. Even before 9/11, his approval rating was relatively low, as it was during the majority of his presidency. Beginning in January 2004, his approval rating consistently fell below 50 percent. From January 2006 onward, his approval rating rarely went above 40 percent, and in 2008, it fell below 30 percent—one of the lowest ever recorded for an American president.
There is a lesson in the Bush presidency about the maintenance of our constitutional culture, however. The fact that large blocs of the American people seemed unbothered, for substantial periods of time, by the administration’s’ flagrant constitutional overreaches—whether in circumventing the established legal process for wiretapping or in the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the detention center at Guan-tanamo Bay—highlights the urgent need for increased civic education and political and legal activism about our constitutional rights and obligations. That large blocs of the people allowed the Bush administration seemingly to stir their emotions for political advantage—whether by confusingly changing the color-coded allegedly manipulating threat levels meant to describe homeland security risks in advance of the 2004 presidential election, or by staging redundant and divisive state-based referenda on gay marriage in 2004, or forcing by staging the vote to authorize force in Iraq a mere three weeks before the 2002 mid-term elections—was equally unsettling.
At the same time, the tremendous public agitation these abuses triggered of among other blocs of the people unleashed by these abuses suggests that America’s constitutional conscience is alive and well. While caricaturing Bush as Hitler substantially overstates the case, it’s a symptom of America’s historical, and sometimes overzealous, vigilance against those who would bully our Constitution. The fact that Bush’s approval ratings were solidly mired in the low 30th thirtieth percentile, dipping even into the 20s twenties during his last months in office, indicates that, although he held the office of the presidency, he did not hold the American people. Perhaps the best answer to the question or whether or not Bush was a demagogue is the simplest one: He wasn’t good enough.
February 27, 2009 12:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Was George W. Bush a Demagogue?" This is a feeble attempt at comedy right? Bush was and is a totalitarian dicator. "You're either with us or against us" remember that proclamation, and that was aimed as much at our fellow Americans old Europe allies as it was socalled "evildoers."
First, if we ever dare to prosecute a REAL investigation into the mass murder operations of 9/11, - the fascists and totalitarian dictatorship that was the bushgov will be forever damned for direct or indirect complicity in that horror.
Second, after that horror, the shaitans in the fascists totalitarian dictatorship that was the bushgov ghoulishly exploited the mayhem and dead of 9/11 to slime any opponent, or questioner, or anyone who dared challenge, or oppose, or dissent with the bushgov's fascist lurch toward totalitarianism, bandit capiltalism, wanton profiteering, and the radical rape, dismembering, dismantling, and reengineering of the rule of law and our Constitution. Anyone who dare to question the fascits demagogues in the bushgov were ruthlessly slimed in an orchestrated effort to undermine or silence ANY dissent, opposition, questioning, examination of the bushgov's fascist totalitarian machinations.
Look at, and examine the horrorshow landscape of the world today. Select bushgov cronies, oligarchs, and predator class operators including bush, azmodeous, - I mean cheney, rumsfeld, rice, and countless other fascists are swimming in imponderable wealth, while the rest of America, and the world suffers and endures the worst economic crisis since the great depression.
If Sibel Edmonds or Indira Singh are ever freed from the Ashcroft bushgov imposed fascist gag orders, - all these demagogues, fascists, and traitors will be forever damned, sent to jail or if there is a god hung for their treasons and treacheries.
February 27, 2009 2:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Pardoning Nixon opened the door for Iran-Contra as Iran-Contra let the Bushies know they could get away with almost anything with out consequense. If we don't prove them wrong and slap the guys at the top of the food chain hard (serious jail time) there will be a next time.
Bush has set the stage. Private armies are now OK, extra-judicial detention, warentless surveilance, rigged voting machines... All of those things were on display for the world to see and no one seemed to be able to put a dent in it. The next round they (and it really has been the same guys all along) won't stop.
If bush hadn't been such an incompetent and Cheney a wheelchair bound invalid would they have stopped this time? We may have just had a very near thing. Let's thank our stars, count our blessings but get busy cleaning up this mess. Damn the immediate political consequences, our Constitution is all we have between us and the wolves and she is in grave danger.
February 27, 2009 4:05 AM | Reply | Permalink