World Historical Incompetents

JB

There is an amusing discussion over at Crooked Timber, based in turn on an article in Inside Higher Education by Scott McLemee, over whether George W. Bush should be considered a World Historical Individual in the Hegelian sense.

I think this discussion admirably shows the limitations of Hegel's theory of history as much as the limitations of George W. Bush.

I have a much more modest suggestion, or rather two suggestions. One concerns the effects of the lethal combination of great incompetence and great power; the other concerns the role of contingency in history (as opposed to Hegel's notion of the inevitable working out of the Idea in history).

The paradigm cases of Hegel's world historical individuals are people like Caesar, Napoleon, Alexander, or in our day, people like Mao or Stalin, who through force of will reshape history and then are destroyed by its forces. George Bush does not seem to fall into this camp. He seems, rather, to be among those many leaders who were simply over-matched by the situation they found themselves in, and squandered the great power they held at a moment in history to the long lasting detriment of their country and the interests they stood for. Bush is like the impetuous but ignorant monarch or tribal chieftain-- there are so many of them-- who attacks the wrong country at the wrong time, and whose empire is then weakened or, in some cases, destroyed. He is among history's losers, who drags his country down with him, and these losers are not world historical individuals. If the catastrophe they engender by their incompetence and bad judgment is really significant-- take the destruction of the world order produced by World War I as only one example-- then they are world historical losers. But no one should or would confuse the last monarchs of, say, Austria and Russia with world historical individuals.

Instead, I would call such leaders world historical incompetents-- people who, put in the wrong place at the wrong time, with skills unable to the task, manage to destroy a great deal that was once thought valuable or good, and thus, unwittingly, change the world in ways they had no intention of doing.

Whether George W. Bush is such a world historical incompetent, only time will tell. But right now it looks like he is doing everything he can to qualify.

My second point concerns contingency in history, a familiar theme. Just yesterday Al Gore announced that he was not going to run for President in 2008. I am sad to hear it, but I am even sadder that he was not permitted to enter the White House in 2000, even though he won more votes than George W. Bush, and in my opinion, won more votes in Florida as well. I have discussed these issues at great length elsewhere and won't repeat the reasons for my conclusions here.

In hindsight, however, it seems to me clear that the United States would very likely have been better off if Al Gore had taken office in 2000 rather than George W. Bush. He might have proved incompetent, but it is hard to believe that, given his experience in government and in foreign policy, he could have been much more incompetent than the stubborn and inexperienced George W. Bush. There is hardly any doubt, moreover, that he would not have attacked Iraq following the terrorist attacks on September 11th, if those attacks would have occurred on his watch. (Remember that both officials in the Clinton and Bush administrations could be charged with negligence here.) Moreover, if Gore had proved bad at the job, he might have served only one term, especially since, unlike Bush, he would have gotten little cooperation from Congress, which was of a different party and would have been doing everything it could to undermine him.

How did Bush become president in 2000? Part of it is due to superior skullduggery on behalf of the Republicans, and part of it is due to Gore's inability to win Tennessee, his home state, the limitations of his campaign, and his unwillingness to send Bill Clinton out to campaign for him until the very last moment. Part of it was due to Teresa La Pore's design of the butterfly ballot. In short, the catastrophe of the Bush Administration was caused by a host of contingencies that no one could have predicted, but which, in hindsight, put an ill-prepared, stubborn and ignorant man in the most powerful position in the world, and he, true to his nature, proceeded to screw things up royally.

Had George W. Bush stayed as governor of Texas, or commissioner of Baseball-- the job he really coveted, or even a gladhanding Texas businessman-- which he was for many years, he might have had much less chance to destroy anything so great. His incompetence would not have been so magnified, and the country would not have had to pay so great a price. But sometimes, by bad chance or dumb luck, the wrong person at the wrong time with the wrong set of skills is handed enormous power, that if, badly wielded, will change the world forever in ways no one desired. Then the world witnesses something that is as unfortunate as it is unnecessary: a World Historical Incompetent.
Posted 12:01 PM by JB [link]