The Lasting Legacy of George W. Bush

George W. Bush did not give a prime-time address on the U.S. economy until seven years and eight months into his presidency, when, 10 days after the collapse of Lehman, he stood in front of the TV cameras and proclaimed himself a strong believer in free enterprise. “My natural instinct,” he said, “is to oppose government intervention.” Under normal circumstances, “companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business.” In his folksy but stern best, he went on to declare that these were not normal circumstances. “I know that many Americans are wondering, ‘How did we reach this point in our economy?’ ” He had recently asked his advisers the same question.

Although Bush was a businessman president—the first since Herbert Hoover, and the first ever with an MBA—business had not been his focus while in office. Terrorism had been. And when Hank Paulson asked him for permission to bail out AIG, Bush was stunned. It wasn’t that he was oblivious to the credit crisis, but he had an ordinary American’s faith that the pillars of the financial establishment were solid; even if two were knocked out, the edifice would stand. Bailouts, as Bush said on TV, went against his ideology and that of his party. He often spoke as if he were a regular Joe from Midland, Tex., a place where there was little sympathy for the plight of the big banks.