How George W. Bush failed the GOP<\/a> by Rachel Maddow in The Washington Post.<\/p>\nThe Text:<\/strong> After a presidency, what comes next? Not just for the president but also for the members of the administration, the president\u2019s allies in Congress, his or her political party?<\/p>\nIn the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, no hearty saplings were ever able to take root in the shade of that big tree. No one expected Vice President Dick Cheney to ever be a contender for the presidency \u2014 part of his effectiveness was his willingness to say and do very unpopular things. When he snapped at ABC\u2019s Martha Raddatz, \u201cSo?\u201d as she questioned him about public disapproval of the Iraq war, he wrote the perfect epitaph for his vice presidency.<\/p>\n
But by the time the Bush era was winding down, the whole administration, including the president, was stewed in terrible, Cheney-level disapproval ratings. And now, almost no one who played a significant role in that administration is anywhere to be found in electoral politics, beyond the tertiary orbits of Punch-and-Judy cable news and the remains of what used to be the conservative \u201cthink tank\u201d circuit.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s true even for former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who had no formal role in his brother\u2019s administration but will probably always find the familial association an insurmountable obstacle to his own presidential hopes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Unlike the Reagan administration, the first Bush administration and the Clinton administration, the George W. Bush presidency elevated precisely no one to the ranks of national leadership who wasn\u2019t there before. The 2008 Republican presidential primaries were like some odd eight-year cicada hatch in which the candidates went underground in 2000 and then birthed themselves after Bush and Cheney were gone, as if the intervening years had never happened.<\/p>\n
The 2000 second-place finisher, Sen. John McCain? You\u2019re next in line for 2008! And four years later: second-place Mitt Romney? You\u2019re next in line for 2012!<\/p>\n
The unpopular presidency of George W. Bush has proved to be a blackball on the r\u00e9sum\u00e9s of a generation of Republican leaders. Maybe Cheney\u2019s daughter Liz will break the pattern next year with a successful Senate bid in Wyoming, but if you made it through that sentence without spitting coffee out your nose, you\u2019re in rare company.<\/p>\n
The fascinating turmoil in the Republican Party since 2008 is not just a personnel problem \u2014 it\u2019s also ideological. If you were putting together a legacy to inspire the next generation of conservatives, you wouldn\u2019t pick the Bush administration\u2019s trailing ends of land wars, budget deficits, torture, a crusade against gay rights and a financial collapse to rival the Great Depression. The isolationism and libertarian iconography of the Ron Paul wing of the party really does appeal to young people more than Bush-Cheney Republicanism. Social conservatives really do feel backed into a corner and ready to fight against a country that is turning against them faster than most pollsters can keep up. There really is something ripe for renewal in Republicans\u2019 self-conception as fiscal conservatives, when the clear pattern is that budget deficits grow under Republicans and shrink under Democrats. The Republican Party is a churning swirl of conflicting ideological currents, and that\u2019s going to take some time to work out.<\/p>\n
But part of the reason it may be taking so long already is those lost years: the period from 2000 to 2008 that effectively obviated the authority and the leadership potential of all of Washington\u2019s Republican elites. The George W. Bush administration didn\u2019t just cast too much shade on the next generation of leadership \u2014 it also apparently poisoned the ground.<\/p>\n
The Obama administration\u2019s ability to nurture and support the next round of national leadership in the Democratic Party is going to be a big part of its long-term legacy. Unless Vice President Biden\u2019s presidential hinting suddenly takes a turn for the serious, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is the obvious inheritor of the party\u2019s mantle. But, as in 2008, the Beltway may be overstating her inevitability. The grass roots aren\u2019t all with her, frankly, and it\u2019s yet to be seen if she\u2019s interested in trying to win them over. Mainstream press may buy big-dollar donors (and more mainstream press), but it can\u2019t buy the passionate volunteers and activists and excitement that are the oxygen for a winning campaign and sustained, effective leadership.<\/p>\n
The collapse of national leadership prospects for the Republican Party is one of the greatest political failures and most important legacies of George W. Bush. Barack Obama looks less likely to repeat that fate, but it depends on a strong grove of nationally viable Democrats starting to grow now. The crescendo of attention to Elizabeth Warren is a healthy part of that process, as is the growing national interest in such diverse Democrats as Sherrod Brown, Claire McCaskill, Cory Booker, Wendy Davis, Martin O\u2019Malley, Deval Patrick, Andrew Cuomo and Amy Klobuchar.<\/p>\n
Inside the White House, the task of growing one\u2019s own successors must seem like one of the less pressing items on the president\u2019s long daily to-do list. But the previous administration\u2019s trail of scorched earth and exiles has curtailed the prospects for the Republican Party and governing conservatism more profoundly than almost anything that administration pursued in terms of policy. It is a cautionary tale that Democrats and the Obama White House should heed sooner rather than later. Grow your successors, nurture your legacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Article: How George W. Bush failed the GOP by Rachel Maddow in The Washington Post. The Text: After a presidency, what comes next? Not just for the president but also for the members of the administration, the president\u2019s allies in Congress, his or her political party? In the eight years of the George W. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"George](\"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/george-bush.jpg\")
<\/p>\n