Critics Take the Lead in Defining Bush's Legacy

By Michael Abramowitz
Monday, February 4, 2008

P resident Bush and his advisers have long insisted they are not interested in dwelling on his presidential legacy, saying they want to "sprint to the finish" in getting things done this year. But if that's truly the case, they may well be ceding the field to their critics.

Part of that can be seen in some of the titles that have cropped up in bookstores, from "The Bush Tragedy" and "Utter Incompetents: Ego and Ideology in the Age of Bush" to "The Fall of the House of Bush" and "Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy."

A negative verdict on Bush also animates the work of the Bush Legacy Project, launched recently by the liberal advocacy group Americans United for Change, which announced plans to spend $8.5 million over the next year to keep the public focused on what it considers the administration's many failures.

Much of the money will be devoted to advertising: The group aired a spot in Kansas City last week, timed to coincide with a Bush fundraiser Friday for Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.). The group is also planning to create a Bush Legacy Bus, a rolling museum that will carry such artifacts as a piece of timber from a flooded home in New Orleans or the combat boots of a fallen soldier in Iraq. Organizers intend to take the bus into the congressional districts of GOP lawmakers to remind voters that Bush received key support for many of his policies from rank-and-file Republicans.

"No one shows up to be with Bush, but they vote with Bush on the floor," said Brad Woodhouse, the president of Americans United. The group receives much of its funding from unions and made its mark in the effort to sink the president's plan to create personal accounts in Social Security.

The effort calls to mind the previous Reagan Legacy Project, in which anti-tax activist Grover Norquist sought to persuade states and localities to name buildings after the 40th president to burnish his place in history.

Norquist, in an interview, allowed that he found what Americans United is doing to be "interesting," noting, "If you define what happened, then you get to define the lessons of history."

But he expressed skepticism the group would gain much traction, saying that neither of the leading GOP presidential contenders, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, are "handcuffing themselves to the Bush legacy."

Woodhouse said the group's efforts may have been subconsciously influenced by the example of Reagan, whose approval ratings improved over the last two years of his presidency after reaching a nadir during the Iran-contra scandal. "We are all aware of how the Reagan legacy has really framed the public debate for 20 years," he noted.

But that might not have happened if Reagan's approval ratings had remained low until the end of his presidency, and it is not inconceivable, Woodhouse adds, that Bush's ratings could climb 10 to 15 points between now and Jan. 20. That's what the Bush Legacy Project aims to stop, though Woodhouse says the effort is not just about tamping down public approval for the president.

"What we are worried about," he said, "is that people will say Bush was a bad president, but his ideology was okay."

Conservatives are reacting with scorn to the new initiative, characterizing it as the latest incarnation of what they consider to be an irrational hatred for Bush among many liberals. Asked for comment about the group's expenditures, White House press secretary Dana Perino said, "Is that the price of bitterness these days?"

Bush's Vegas Stop Fills GOP Coffers

President Bush has been to Las Vegas nine times since he was first inaugurated, but last Wednesday was the first time he ever stayed overnight in Sin City. He and his aides (and the traveling press corps) did so in luxury, staying at the Venetian, the palatial casino resort run by Sheldon Adelson, the chairman of Las Vegas Sands Corp. and a big force in GOP and philanthropic circles. (He is part of the money behind Freedom's Watch, the conservative foreign policy group formed as a kind of counterpoint to liberal groups like MoveOn.org.) Adelson and his wife, Miriam, were in the loading dock at the Venetian Thursday to greet Bush and jumped into his limousine to ride with him to his speech sponsored by a conservative think tank.

After the speech, Adelson -- who was at the White House in November for the official dinner for French President Nicolas Sarkozy-- hosted Bush at a Nevada GOP fundraiser at his home in the Tournament Hills gated community. A Nevada GOP official would not provide figures for the total take.

Guess He Drinks Out of the Bottle . . .

Bush spent the night Thursday in Kansas City, Mo., at the five-star InterContinental hotel, but because he usually goes to bed early, it's unlikely he watched the hard-hitting investigative piece by the local television station KCTV about the lack of cleanliness of glasses and mugs in hotel rooms.

The television station booked rooms at Kansas City hotels and placed hidden cameras to see how hotel staff handled the glassware when they thought nobody was watching. According to a report on the KCTV website, the station put toothpaste on some of the glasses or left soda in others to make it clear they had been used.

Among the hotels identified as a problem: the InterContinental.

Here's how the station described what happened at the hotel: "The undercover camera captured video of the housekeeper grabbing the glasses, putting them under the tap, running the water and wiping them out with her bare hands -- no soap. She steps back into the room to straighten up, spots a bowl of strawberries on the counter, rifles through them and then eats one. She then wipes down the dirty countertop and uses the same towel to dry the glasses." (A call by KCTV to the hotel manager went unreturned; the station says a hotel official threatened to call the police when a reporter showed up to discuss the matter.)

KCTV quoted an infectious-diseases specialist warning that guests risk infection if glasses are not properly sterilized. White House spokesman Tony Fratto, who traveled with Bush last week, said the president is not sick and pointed out, helpfully, "The president usually drinks bottled water."

State of the Union: One More Time?

Your columnist was deluged with e-mail this past week over a phrase in a story stating that last Monday's State of the Union address was "likely" Bush's last. How could that be, readers wanted to know, since Bush is leaving office (they thought) on Jan. 20, 2009.

The Constitution says the president "shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union," so it is theoretically possible for Bush to report again before he leaves office. Indeed, Presidents Jimmy Carter and Dwight Eisenhower both delivered written addresses shortly before they left office, and Gerald Ford and Lyndon Johnson appeared personally before joint sessions of Congress in their final days, according to CBS Radio's Mark Knoller.

But not to worry, Bush haters, the White House is, in fact, assuring us that last Monday's speech was his last State of the Union. In a briefing, White House counselor Ed Gillespie described the speech as the "final" such speech to Congress. "We can't imagine him doing another one," said White House press secretary Dana Perino. "It'll be the last."