Tonight, Larry "Shoulders" King had Bob Woodward on his show. Woodward's written another book saying Bush is a bozo who didn't lead, screwed up the Iraq war, so forth. Hardly a new idea for a book, but I guess they sell pretty well, which is why they get written in the first place.
Larry's interview ended like so many others regarding Bush: "How do you think history will see Bush?"
Woodward stunned the world by saying history will see Bush as a waste of space who screwed everything up, and that his legacy will suck.
Nonsense.
I have a voracious appetite for presidential biographies and, with the slight exception of Carter, almost no president is remembered very poorly. Over time, they all get their due, and time heals even historical wounds. A president's mistakes are pointed out (or hailed as virtues), and their missed opportunities are trumpeted (or not called "missed"), and in the end you are always left with this feeling: being the president is hard. And, on the whole, they all did the best they could. Sometimes they came up aces, other times not. So whether you dislike Bush or any other sitting president, it is complete hogwash to think that you know what "history" will say about them. No one knows. Not yet.
Nixon, the only president to resign from office, has managed to come back into the fold as the good president who did a good job, but made a bonehead move covering for his friends. Johnson, whose Vietnam war was a hurricane compared to Bush's Iraq rain shower, barely ever receives bad press today (come to think of it, he hardly receives any press at all). Kennedy, the philandering playboy and war lover, is remembered as a hero with a human touch. Truman, called "The Senator from Pendergast" in the '40s because of his political machine roots, is now hailed a tough, no-nonsense, hell of a guy. The US is still technically at war with North Korea because Truman didn't bring the conflict to a decisive conclusion, but hey, he fired MacArthur and had some good one liners, so let's give him a nice write-up.
I titter with laughter when I hear journalists or historians attempt to tell the future about a president's legacy. Lately, a good many of these fortune tellers have been lionizing Lincoln. Lincoln comes and goes as a topic of presidential history every ten years or so, and it looks like his number's up again in 2008.When you hear Lincoln's name mentioned today, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Illinois country boy was born with a halo. So let us harken back to an episode in the life of Lincoln.
Lincoln. The man. The myth. The legend. The Leader.
The scene: Lincoln on a stage in Pennsylvania. He has just finished a speech. Historian Shelby Foote writes:
He finished before the crowd, a good part of whose attention had been fixed on the photographer anyhow, realized that he was fairly launched on what he had to say. In reaction to what a later observer described as the "almost shocking brevity" of the speech, especially by the one that went before, the applause was delayed, then scattered and barely polite. Moreover, the photographer missed his picture. Before he had time to adjust his tripod and uncap the lens, Lincoln had said "of the people, by the people, for the people" and sat down, leaving the artist with the feeling that he had been robbed. Apparently many of those present felt the same way, agreeing in advance with what the Chicago Times would say tomorrow about the President's performance here today: "The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States." In fact, as he resumed his seat alongside his friend Lamon and heard the perfunctory spatter of applause whose brevity matched his own, the speaker was taken with a feeling of regret that he had not measured up to what had been expected of him. Recalling a word used on the prairie in reference to a plow that would not clean itself while shearing through wet soil, he said gloomily: "Lamon, that speech won't scour. It is a flat failure and the people are disappointed."
That speech was the Gettysburg Address. It's the one that starts with, "Fourscore and seven years ago..." Schoolchildren memorize it, and it is one of the two speeches whose words are carved into the walls of the Lincoln Memorial.
History's a funny thing.
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