The Unrepentant

Last week, when the five living U.S. presidents gathered in Dallas to attend the solemn opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, the atmosphere was pompous, exhilarated and, on the surface, well-intentioned. Democrats Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter applauded the Republican former president for his fight against AIDS in Africa. Bush Senior was beaming with pride as he stood next to his son. Only a day after the official idyll, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor rubbed salt into old wounds in an interview with the Chicago Tribune. The justice, who retired from the Supreme Court in 2005, expressed regrets over her role in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case.

At the time, her decisive vote gave the electoral victory to the Republican candidate. In the Chicago Tribune interview, O’Connor did not evaluate his presidency, but suggested that the highest — and unassailable — institution in the U.S. government system should not have interfered in the Bush-Gore dispute.

Having doubts about past decisions is not common in Supreme Court history, mainly because its justices are appointed for life. The former judge’s unprecedented statements did sound like self-criticism, but they also sounded like a reproach directed at the former Bush administration.

Former presidents are traditionally not inclined to publicly express remorse for their actions in the White House. Exceptions are rare. Carter was deeply remorseful for his failed attempt to free the American hostages in Teheran in 1979, while Clinton regretted not stopping the slaughter in Rwanda in 1994 (he only apologized to Hillary for the Monica Lewinski affair).

The presidential libraries of both presidents mentioned above do not dwell much on these topics. Neither do those of Bush Junior and Bush Senior. Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon’s museums share this same feature — the stress is on successes, not on failures. We all know that even the American president cannot foresee the future. The immense power of the post comes with the risk of colossal, and sometimes unavoidable, mistakes.

Bush Junior has always appeared immune to self-scrutiny. He shared many times that once he had made a decision he never looked back or thought twice, let alone harbored self-doubt.

“History will judge me” is what he usually says on the subject and thus briefly puts an end to the discussion. He could be more humble, though, since many wrong moves by heads of state became evident quite quickly, as they did with Clinton and Carter. It is hard to picture Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld sharing regrets even with regard to the well-known — by now — fact that they had no idea what to do with Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

They could have hit a dead end even if they had had the most thoroughly planned strategy, but today few people will disagree that it was irresponsible to launch a war without a peace plan.

There is a section in Bush’s library where visitors can test their own statesmanship instincts — after listening to recorded opinions of White House advisers, they can try to solve the problems the presidency faced at the time. Attack Iraq or leave Saddam in power? Send the army to help Hurricane Katrina’s victims or rely on local authorities? Save the big banks or let them go bankrupt?

Pointing out how difficult it is to weigh events in the heat of the moment, the display looks more like an excuse than an attempt to reassess Bush’s decisions.

In 1995, Robert McNamara, head of the Pentagon during the presidency of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, expressed his regret for remaining silent after he had realized that the war in Vietnam was a mistake.

While Bush was in power, McNamara appeared in a documentary in which he explains his views, offers guidelines and formulates several principles that the war in Vietnam taught him. Even at this stage, he refused to directly advise the president, who was pushing the country into another pointless war. McNamara’s position was that every statesman has to make his decisions and correct his mistakes by himself.

Those who suffered from the presidential mistakes, however, don’t much care who apologizes and who does not, or how the apology is formulated.