Obama should be like Bush

By Michael J.W. Stickings

At least according to TNR's Jonathan Cohn.

Cohn argues that has actually accomplished a great deal as president, from overhauling the tax code to reforming education to gutting the regulatory state to rewriting "long-standing doctrine on foreign policy and human rights" to launching "a war that overthrew a dictator, destabilized a region, and committed the U.S. to an occupation whose end is still unknown."

Put another way, Bush has been a profoundly transformational president, achieving "a realization of goals that he, his fellow travelers in the conservative movement, or both had sought for years or even decades." Indeed, he has been a failure not because he didn't try, and not because he didn't do anything, but because he tried, and did, and essentially succeeded: "America today looks radically different than it did in January, 2001. And it looks that way because Bush made it so."

Now, this is, of course, an oversimplification. To the right, Bush failed in part because he didn't succeed, as with, for example, social security privatization. And where he did succeed, it's not like all conservatives were with him, as with the Medicare drug plan. Even with the Iraq War, some conservatives were against him from the start, and, certainly, many more of them abandoned him once the prosecution of the war, and the occupation, turned out to be a disaster.

Much of this comes down to perspective: Was Bush a failure because he wasn't conservative enough or because he was too conservative? Furthermore, was he a failure because he wasn't successful enough or because he was too successful? (Or has he been a failure simply because polls show the American people overwhelmingly think he has been one?) These are questions that can be asked on an issue-by-issue basis.

Still, I think Cohn is generally right. Regardless of what has worked and what hasn't, regardless of some notable exceptions, regardless of partisan perspective, Bush has been a fairly "successful" president in terms of achieving his goals. (Again, whether I, or we, approve of what he has achieved is not the issue here. To me, needless to say, he has transformational in a very bad way.)

And how has he been so successful? Part of it, a large part, is that he was in the right place at the right time. Specifically, he was able use 9/11, and the widespread fear it generated, to consolidate his power and, from there, use his popularity (both partisan and, in those early days, more general) to promote his agenda. (The Bush of 2000, remember, was hardly so radical, however much right-wing radicalism may have been lurking beneath the surface.) Cohn doesn't delve into this, instead focusing "his stubborn focus on goals and willingness to push political boundaries aggressively," which Cohn identifies, rightly, as "[o]ne of Bush's most remarkable qualities."

It is this stubbornness -- or, to put it more positively, single-mindedness of purpose -- that, Cohn argues, would serve Obama well as he pursues a similarly "ambitious agenda": "And while I'd hate to see Obama systematically ignoring policy experts and manipulating intelligence -- or deliberately stoking partisan division for the sake of winning elections -- I wouldn’t mind if, like Bush, Obama showed the same sort of singular focus."

It won't be enough for Obama just to "think big," as Cohn puts it elsewhere, assessing a point made recently by Fareed Zakaria, one with which I also agree. Obama will have to have the will and determination to translate his big thinking into action. And, in this respect, being like Bush wouldn't be such a bad thing.