home > by publication type > articles > Cut Your Losses, Save Your Legacy
Email
| Author: | Peter Beinart |
|---|
February 1, 2007
Time Magazine
President Bush is taking the long view. He has been reading biographies of George Washington. He recently bemoaned “short-term historians.” He keeps mentioning Harry Truman, a President reviled when he left office but rescued by posterity. Bush says he doesn’t think about his legacy, but more and more, it’s what he seems to think about most.
I wish he wouldn’t. In theory, thinking about your legacy should be humbling. But in Bush’s case, it’s making him increasingly reckless. Bush knows that historians will see him through the prism of Iraq: if the war is a failure, so is he. So he’s paying any price to win. Were he focused on the present, he might see that the war is already lost. Instead, he’s gazing over the horizon, trying to dig himself out of his Iraq hole and making it ever deeper as a result.
To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1.800.537.5487, fax +1.410.516.6998.
For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1.212.434.9516 or email publications@cfr.org.
Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies— produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? With the insights of geopolitical experts and investors, the authors examine this nation’s adversity-driven culture to answer this question and offer prescriptions for a global economy on the rebound.
In Forces of Fortune, Vali Nasr presents a paradigm-changing revelation that will transform the understanding of the Muslim world at large. He reveals that there is a vital but unseen rising force in the Islamic world—a new business-minded middle class—that is building a vibrant new Muslim world economy and that holds the key to winning the cold war against Iran and extremists.
In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia E. Sweig presents a remarkably accessible portrait of Cuba's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years, including its internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
Complete list of CFR Books
Copyright 2009 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.