It's Not Just Spitzer

Hubris is defined as exaggerated pride or self-confidence often leading to retribution.

In writing about the true meaning of hubris, veteran journalist Ann Marcus said in a recent piece about N.Y. Gov. Elliot Spitzer, one needs to understand that “The unyielding warrior is undone by the kind of fatal flaw he could not abide in others”. Politicians are particularly susceptible to the retribution that follows their failure to recognize their own flaws. Today former Governor Spitzer is clearly a poster child for a classic definition of hubris. There are, of course, many political luminaries from both parties who could have appeared on a similar poster at one time or another. Names like Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Jim McGreevy, Bob Packwood, Florida’s Mark Foley and Idaho’s Larry Craig come quickly to mind.
However, there is another politician who has repeatedly demonstrated his exaggerated self-confidence, arrogance, presumptuousness, and inability to admit being wrong. He has not recognized that his failures in so many areas will ensure a legacy laden with shame and dishonor. George W. Bush may well end up being one of the few men who will go to his grave without ever understanding what hubris actually means. In the case of Spitzer, Clinton, Foley, and Craig no lives were lost. President Bush on the other hand is directly and indirectly responsible for the death of thousands of American service men and women and no one knows how many tens of thousands of Iraqis. Either he has no idea or he simply does not care how badly he has damaged the Constitution, the presidency, and the faith of Americans in the ability of their government to treat people fairly. The list of failures begins with his gunslinger approach towards nearly every crisis he has faced as president.
After 9/11 President Bush had almost unanimous support to go into Afghanistan to get Osama Bin-Laden and eliminate the Taliban. But falling prey to his hubris he took his eyes off the prize in Afghanistan, and falsified the reasons to justify the invasion of Iraq. The list of failures also includes but is not limited to the following: retaliatory acts against opponents, ignoring pre-Iraq war intelligence, unwarranted secrecy & censorship, nepotism & cronyism, human rights violations, the growth of executive power spreading like a virus out of control, the abysmal response to Hurricane Katrina, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center neglect scandal, Executive Order 13233 that would have had a comfortable home in Nazi Germany, the failing economy, the decline of the US dollar, the lopsided balance of trade, our dependence on China as a supplier of capital & tainted manufactured goods, the total lack of a coherent energy policy and the denial of global warming as a real problem requiring immediate attention.
If there was any remaining doubt about this president paying mere lip service to the precepts of Christian morality, that doubt was dispelled with Mr. Bush’s recent veto of a bill that would have prohibited the CIA from torturing prisoners using methods like waterboarding. As a consequence, his acts of hubris continue unchecked and his legacy as a failure is assured.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future