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Is the Bush presidency a "major catastrophe"?

By Jack M. Balkin

The New York Times is a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/business/19auto.html?hp"reporting/a that President Bush is considering letting GM and Chrysler go bankrupt after all. (This might help to explain why the Dow Jones is currently down almost 275 points, but I digress...) Key paragraphs include:br /br /br /blockquotePresident Bush said Thursday during an appearance [at the American Enterprise Institute] that he was ?worried about a disorderly bankruptcy? and the psychological implications it would have for an economy already staggering under the weight of a severe recession. He said he also felt an obligation not to saddle President-elect Barack Obama with ?a major catastrophe? on his first day. But, Mr. Bush, answering questions at the [AEI], said he was concerned about ?putting good money after bad.?/blockquotebr /br /It is not that I don't share Mr. Bush's concern or that I think it is self-evident what the proper response to the auto industry's problems should be. But isn't it really the case that Mr. Bush's very presence in office, for another 34 days, is itself a "major catastrophe" that could be avoided through the relatively easy step of having Dick Cheney resign, appointing Obama as his successor, and then resigning himself? As the most discredited president in the history of the United States, Mr. Bush simply has no political authority whatsoever to make the decision as to how to respond to the auto industry. Nor, sadly, does former Goldman Sachs chair Henry Paulson, who has scarcely inspired confidence in the markets or amont the general public by lurching from one policy to another over the past two months.br /br /It is good to know that Mr. Bush possesses enough civic virtue to wish to avoid presenting his successor to the Oval Office with a "major catastrophe" on January 20. But the catastrophe has already occurred, and at least some significant part of it is the Bush presidency itself. So why aren't people echoing Oliver Cromwell's speech to the Rump Parliament in 1653: "You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!" I note that the Economist has just published, in its own name a a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2008/12/in_the_name_of_god_go.cfm"blogpos/at entitled "In the name of God, go," referring to the Illinois gubernatorial scandal. Surely there are bigger fish against whom to invoke God's name and wish a rapid departure.br /span class="fullpost"br /br /br //spanspan class="fullpost"/spanspan class="fullpost"/span

Full post as published by Balkinization on December 18, 2008 (boomark / email).