Degrading History

I'm sure that this article, via Glenn Reynolds, is going to make its rounds among bloggers, but I still want to throw myself into the anticipated fray. Robert S. McElvaine, history professor at Millsaps College, wrote an article analyzing a poll taken among historians about the performance of President Bush:

A recent informal, unscientific survey of historians conducted at my suggestion by George Mason University’s History News Network found that eight in ten historians responding rate the current presidency an overall failure.

Of 415 historians who expressed a view of President Bush’s administration to this point as a success or failure, 338 classified it as a failure and 77 as a success. (Moreover, it seems likely that at least eight of those who said it is a success were being sarcastic, since seven said Bush’s presidency is only the best since Clinton’s and one named Millard Fillmore.) Twelve percent of all the historians who responded rate the current presidency the worst in all of American history, not too far behind the 19 percent who see it at this point as an overall success.

Among the cautions that must be raised about the survey is just what “success” means. Some of the historians rightly pointed out that it would be hard to argue that the Bush presidency has not so far been a political success—or, for that matter that President Bush has not been remarkably successful in achieving his objectives in Congress. But those meanings of success are by no means incompatible with the assessment that the Bush presidency is a disaster. “His presidency has been remarkably successful,” one historian declared, “in its pursuit of disastrous policies.” “I think the Bush administration has been quite successful in achieving its political objectives,” another commented, “which makes it a disaster for us.”

According to these historians, what are some of these disastrous policies? Professor McElvaine provides us with his own lengthy list:

• Presided over the loss of approximately three million American jobs in his first two-and-a-half years in office, the worst record since Herbert Hoover.
• Overseen an economy in which the stock market suffered its worst decline in the first two years of any administration since Hoover’s.
• Taken, in the wake of the terrorist attacks two years ago, the greatest worldwide outpouring of goodwill the United States has enjoyed at least since World War II and squandered it by insisting on pursuing a foolish go-it-almost-alone invasion of Iraq, thereby transforming almost universal support for the United States into worldwide condemnation. (One historian made this point particularly well: “After inadvertently gaining the sympathies of the world's citizens when terrorists attacked New York and Washington, Bush has deliberately turned the country into the most hated in the world by a policy of breaking all major international agreements, declaring it our right to invade any country that we wish, proving that he’ll manipulate facts to justify anything he wishes to do, and bull-headedly charging into a quagmire.”)...

If this list didn't sound like talking points straight out of Fahrenheit 911, verbatum, I think I would have taken it more seriously. Click through to the article for his entire list, and specific retorts to his bullet pointed claims have been argued ad infinitum, so there is no reason for me to sound like a broken record here. However, one of my favorite bloggers, Cobb, explains a truism that applies to this list: "symbolic logic wonks are particularly attuned to the fact that a false premise taken as axiomatically true can logically support any conclusion one wishes."

In making any judgment on another's critiques, determining their presuppositions is paramount to understanding the reasoning behind their conclusions. In this case, if many of the canards passed around about Bush are taken as axiomatically true, it can support his claim as being one of the worst Presidents in history. The hook, line and sinker that is swallowed by McElvaine demonstrates his presuppositions that skew greatly to the left. Seen in this light, Bush is the natural enemy to an historian who made a lengthly condemnation of "disastrous policies." Most of the policies that this President has engaged in have directly attacked the ideals that current leftists hold, such as faith in transnational progressivism, state driven social and economic equality programs, moral relativism, fear and loathing of the military and so-on. Its no wonder they think the world is caving in--it's because, to them, it is!

I've had a passion for history my entire life, and though I would never claim the esteemed title of "an historian", I nonetheless feel comfortable enough to sniff out suspect historical analysis when I see it, and this smells particularly putrid. No where in his analysis has he taken the myriad of variables and events that influenced Bush's leadership decisions in account. Taking those variables into account won't indubitably change his ultimate conclusion, but it does provide the reader with context that doesn't reside in a vaccum. In high school, if I had reasoned against Bush's Presidency using this laundry list without supporting them, it would have earned me a dirty sneer and an F.

Conversely, this doesn't make me a shill for the "Bush is Greatest American President" Club either. Many of the effects of his Presidency have yet to be felt, however I think it is safe to assume that McElvaine, and his agreeable collegues, guess that they'll be "disastrous." I somewhat agree. On one hand, they will probably be particularly disastrous to the secular and theocratic fascists that currently rule the Middle East. But, much to my chagrin, they'll be harmful (not disastrous) to small government principles.

The contrasts between us demonstrate where the labels "worst/disastrous/incompetent" breakdown. I hold the presuppositions that big government is generally bad and that the best way to keep September 11th from happening again is to destroy, through physical means, the ideology that fuels it. However, clicking through my archives, I have attempted to place all of my ideas, crticisms and analyses in some kind of historical perspective that are wide-open to interpretation. The "why" is much more important than the adjective that is used to describe it, and I provide no value to a reader if they haven't been given enough background or context to come to their own conclusions.

Anyway, McElvaine's article doesn't infuriate me in the least. I just find it extremely pathetic that making baseless, qualitative claims is what passes for argument among today's academics. Even worse, they have the audacity to wonder why no one listens to them.