The Disaster that was the Bush Administration –-- Chapter 11, The Bush Decline

In our continuing series documenting the Disastrous Reign of Error of George W Bush, let’s check in with yet another Crisis Handed Off to Future Generations:

Partisans of President Bush may blame Obama for presiding over a strategic retreat, but it is the Bush administration that assured and accelerated such a retreat.

As Robert Pape of the University of Chicago writes in The National Interest: "America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other internal economic weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today's world of rapidly spreading knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back at the Bush administration years as the death knell of American hegemony."

[…]

Pape went back to the 19th century to correlate the rise of the great powers like Britain and the commensurate growth in their share of world product. He found the Bush decline had no precedent.

If you look at everything Bush touched with his reverse midas touch, the Challenges President Obama faces as incoming President are legion.  From this perspective, his first term will be dedicated to cleaning up after the previous cast of clowns. If he can stem the Bush Decline, he will be considered a great success in my book.  

He has a lot of work to do.