Examining the Bush legacy in 'The Decider'

Chris Matthews Host of 'Hardball' • Profile

As George W. Bush prepares to leave the White House, Hardball takes a hard look at his legacy. Beginning with 9-11 and now ending with Chapter 11 for many Americans, the Bush presidency was marked by war and crisis.

ARI FLEISCHER, FORMER BUSH PRESS SECRETARY: There's really been nothing that's been quiet about the last eight years.  And the reigning question is, will history show, also, that he made the right decisions? 

We deconstructed "the Decider" and his decisions and their ongoing consequences.

August 2001 – it was a slow news summer of Chandra Levy and shark attacks. George W. Bush spent the month on vacation at his ranch in Crawford but dangers were lurking in the shadows. On September 10^th, 2001 Hardball was devoted to a topic very much on everyone's mind now, the economy.

(Hardball, September 10, 2001)
CHRIS MATTHEWS, Hardball – September 10, 2001: Rising unemployment fuels the blame game in Washington. Is the downturn President Bush's fault?

Just hours later, we were all asking different questions.

(TODAY Show, September 11, 2001)

KATIE COURIC, FORMER TODAY SHOW ANCHOR: "We have a breaking news story to report.  Apparently a plane has just crashed into the world trade center here in New York City....”

EUGENE ROBINSON, COLUMNIST, THE WASHINGTON POST: I think his presidency was, in a sense, shaped by what happened that day.

On the morning of September  11^th, George W. Bush was in Sarasota, Florida reading to school children in a classroom. 

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, FORMER BUSH WHITE HOUSE SECRETARY: Andy Card had walked in and whispered into his ear "Mr. President, a second plane has hit the second tower, America is under attack." And I could see in the President's face—he was just looking there, I'd never seen that look in his face.

Like all Americans, he was shocked and his initial statements suggested 'The Decider' was not quite sure of his next move.

BUSH, SARASOTA, FLORIDA; SEPTEMBER 11^th , 2001: Ladies and gentlemen, this is a difficult moment for America.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL, EDITOR, THE NATION: I think there was a sense after George W. Bush kind of disappeared in those first frightening hours after the towers were hit, and the Pentagon.  Where he didn't quite know how to orient himself.

And that morning, the people he relied on to inform his decisions were scattered. 

TOM KEAN, 9/11 COMMISSION CHAIRMAN: The kind of people who would be advising the President were not there.

Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Peru, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was at the Pentagon, which had just been hit, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney were in the secure command center beneath the White House.

Against staff and Secret Service concerns for his safety, the president decided to return to Washington.

RICHARD CLARKE, COUNTERTERRORISM ADVISER: He had gathered his wits and was in the take-charge—kind of mode, and wanted to be back here calling the shots—and making decisions.

BUSH ADDRESS FROM OVAL OFFICE 9/11/01: We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.

MICHAEL GERSON, COLUMNIST, THE WASHINGTON POST: He immediately saw this broader context.  It was not an isolated attack. Now that didn't come from his foreign policy advisors. It very much came from the top down.

The United States had clearly been attacked and was at war but who was the enemy?

CLARKE: I think we all said we were at war.  We differed over perhaps the rest of that sentence, as to who we were at war with.  Seemed to be pretty obvious we were at war with al-Qaida.

Before 9/11, confronting Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network had not exactly been high on this president's ‘to-do' list.

KEAN:When the Bush Administration came into office it wasn't a priority. People knew it was there. The Clinton Administration told them it was there as a problem.

BOB WOODWARD, WASHINGTON POST: A month before 9/11, there was this famous, top-secret presidential daily briefing that had the headline "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”  They didn't get energized, andas the President told me, his blood was not boiling about Bin Laden and al-Qaida before 9/11.

But by September 14^th Bush's blood was boiling.

BUSH ON SEPTEMBER 14, 2001: I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people—and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!

GERSON: An entirely unscripted moment.  And it showed both elements to me of Presidential leadership. The rhetorical element kind of summarizing the feelings of the nation in grand words fit for history. And I could help contribute to that.  But also then, this determination of character that comes after a crisis.

George W. Bush was now a war president with a war council. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, and CIA Director George tenet had become his closest advisers.

CLARKE: He had put together a team in the national security field that looked like the dream team.

That so-called dream team designed a wide-ranging new foreign policy for this president and a new war.

MARY MATALIN, POLITICAL STRATEGIST: The global War on Terror was a response to the reality that this enemy did not have borders, did not have states, was not—territorially ambitious, it was ideologically ambitious enemy that—in no way responded to previous strategies.

BUSH TO CONGRESS ON SEPTEMBER 20, 2001: Our war on terror begins with al-Qaida, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.

RON SUSKIND, AUTHOR: In some ways, Bush is then really at his best.  Why?  Because what he's doing is he's channeling the very real emotions of not only the United States, but, the world.

Less than a month after 9/11, the Bush administration launched the War on Terror.  The first front was obvious. 

BUSH STATEMENT ANNOUNCING AFGHANISTAN WAR ON OCTOBER 17, 2001: On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against al-Qaida  terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

ROBINSON: The decision to attack Afghanistan was absolutely inevitable after nine one one.

STEPHAN HAYES, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: I think that decision was made almost immediately.  And I think several people, in effect, made it.  And made it independent of one another.  And then got together and confirmed this.

The war was waged in a new and strategic fashion with lots of air power and fewer American troops. 

DANA PRIEST, THE WASHINGTON POST:  President Bush will get a lot of credit in history for what he did right after 9/11, in rallying the country, and then coming in with a war plan that would get U.S. troops, and U.S. equipment, into Afghanistan very quickly.

By December, Afghan rebels working in concert with American and British forces had seized Kabul and defeated much of the Taliban leadership, which had been collaborating with al-Qaida.

WOODWARD: It looked like we'd won the Afghan war, the Taliban had been overthrown, the base camps that Al-Qaida had in Afghanistan had been destroyed.  He was really on top of it. But over time Bush's initial success gave way to a bloody stalemate.

DAVID FRUM, FORMER ECONOMIC SPEECHWRITER FOR PRESIDENT BUSH: There's now a big question mark about whether or not—especially staying in Afghanistan was such a good idea.

JIM MIKLASZEWSKI, CHIEF PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT:  Nearly seven years after the U.S. drove the Taliban and al-Qaida out of Afghanistan. The fight has now turned more deadly than ever.

Since 2001 more than six hundred U.S. soldiers have been killed in the Afghanistan war, 2,500 wounded with no end in sight.

WOODWARD: I think we're, somewhat, in this never, never land with the al- Qaida and bin Laden now, because the energy and the resources were siphoned off for a new front, a new war.

Of course, that new war was Iraq as Bush made the decision that could define his presidency.

BUSH GIVES STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS ON JANUARY 30, 2002: Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror.

KEAN: Did we take our eye off the ball?  Of course we did.

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