Glenn Greenwald discusses a recent gathering of neo-cons with Pres. Bush and highlights the fact that the President feels satisfied with himself because he trusts that God and history shall redeem him. I know little about the historian who was the "seminar leader" (for lack of a better word to describe the luncheon), although the guest list, including Gertrude Himmelfarb, Kate O'Bierne, and Mona Charen, is indicative of the kind of people Bush likes to surround himself with - namely, sycophantic, mindless "journalists" who have been giving bad advice and offering nonsensical opinions for far too long for anyone's good. Be that as it may, I find it interesting that Bush is relying upon one God and one pagan muse to redeem his sorry administration, because I do think that neither one will offer much help.
I shall leave God for a moment and concentrate upon history for a moment. can history redeem those thought irrevocably lost? Almost certainly. Consider Harry Truman, long thought to be a dismal failure. With David McCullough's biography, and a spate of scholarly studies, we find the haberdasher's time to be less bad than we once thought, although Truman's failings - his tendency toward extreme partisanship, his ward-heeler's approach to Presidential appointments that led to scandal (much the same as with Bush) - are still plain for all to see. Yet Truman benefits from something Bush lacks - Dean Acheson, George Marshall, Arthur Vandenberg, and Clark Clifford. In other words, Truman surrounded himself with advisers and informal assistants, both Republican and Democratic, who were among the best in our nation's history. Name a Bush appointee who is on a level with Truman's Secretary of the Interior, let alone his Secretaries of State (Jimmy Byrnes, who had to leave office due to incipient schizophrenia; retired Gen. George C. Marshall; Dean Acheson).
Despite his many political failings, Truman was, by all accounts, a cranky but otherwise likable fellow. Bush, on the other hand, from all that I've read, is irascible, temperamental, and not a "people person". The idea of George W. Bush being able to plow a straight furrow with a mule-drawn plow after retiring from the Presidency (would he wear his Andover or Yale tie?) is beyond my comprehension.
History redeems those who have redemptive qualities. Otherwise, it takes a look at the record, public and private, and renders its verdict. Indeed, the frequent recollection of the restoration of Truman and his Administrative legacy is cited because of comparative uniqueness (although Ronald Reagan's Presidency is apparently undergoing a similar re-evaluation). This particular kind of lightning rarely strikes the same office twice in the same century.
As for resting comfortably in the arms of the Almighty, all I can say is this - just because one feels one is free from sin before God does not mean that everything we do is either divinely ordained or approved by heaven. Indeed, one would hope for just a tad bit of humility before the Throne; Bush, apparently, doesn't quite understand the fact that God tends to love the sinner but hate the sin. George W. Bush may wind up in heaven - of that I am completely incompetent to judge (except in the case of Henry Kissinger) - but one wonders about the crowd waiting to greet him who might have a question or two for him, you know all those American service personnel, Iraqis, and sundry others who are dead as a direct result of decisions he has made. This may sound facetious, but I am quite serious; Bush needs to remember, should he be capable of doing so, that we are known by our fruits, and thousands of dead bodies in an ill-conceived, justified-by-lies, most likely illegal war are hardly a chalk mark in his favor, and there might be some who would question the soundness of his judgment and Christian commitment as he stands, metaphorically, before all those graves (it would have to be metaphorically, as he tends to not go to service funerals).
Perhaps, alone with God, Bush feels at peace. I do hope that, even once in the past four years, he has thought about the thousands who even now rest in peace with that same God, and that such thoughts brings a drop of sweat to his brow.
