2008 will be a unique election, but Leon Hadar makes an argument that suggests why it will share many of the characteristics of the election of 1920:

But a more appropriate historical analogy in discussing the impact of the war in Mesopotamia is the disastrous outcome of American fighting in World War I.

The Wilson and Bush administrations have many things in common, and once we started to see Bush’s galloping Wilsonian idealism in action it was easy to imagine his Presidency ending in just as much failure and public repudiation as Wilson’s had done.  The two make for an interesting comparison, since Mr. Bush’s War has so far resulted in comparatively far fewer American deaths, it probably will not end up leading to a much greater slaughter a few decades hence and in contrast to Wilson Mr. Bush has not (yet) engaged in widespread efforts to round up and imprison dissidents against his war.  It is striking just how weak Mr. Bush has been as a President compared to the rather imperious Wilson (not that anyone should want him to start demonstrating Wilson’s sort of “strength”).  Inflexibility defines both men, but the man in the administration who most resembles Wilson’s demeanour–right down to the perpetual scowl on his face–is the Vice President.  Meanwhile, Mr. Bush seems to resemble no one in the Wilson administration more than Thomas Marshall, the Vice President so ineffectual and ridiculous that he refused to assume the Presidency after Wilson was incapacitated with a stroke for fear that it might appear to be a coup.  Mr. Bush has played the role of incurious legacy admission to Wilson’s obsessive academic.  Mr. Bush’s errors have proceeded from knowing little and being interested in even less, while Wilson’s were the errors of presuming to know and see all (even when he didn’t know much at all about the peoples and lands he was helping to divvy up).  Both certainly drank deeply from the poisoned well of optimism, but unfortunately for the world Wilson’s optimistic preaching was received by a weary and disillusioned world as a new hope rather than the misguided folly that it was.  With the benefit of the experience of the 20th century, most nations were less willing to embrace similarly unrealistic talk of hope, reform and liberation when Mr. Bush was offering it.  Wilson could speak as the representative of an America only just stepping fully onto the world stage, while Mr. Bush speaks as the representative of the world’s predominant power.  What sounded like a blessing coming from Wilson ends up sounding like a veiled threat coming from Mr. Bush.  Thus, bizarrely, Mr. Bush will probably be remembered more poorly than Wilson–who is still surprisingly highly regarded by many historians and politicians–despite the fact that he is merely a second-rate imitator of the far worse original.  (Not, let me insist again, that we want to have another Wilson!) 

As large as Iraq looms on the scene today, as politically significant as the war is today, and as much as it will sour the public on intervention in the near future, I think we may be surprised at how quickly the effects of the war pass away and recede into the distance.  Calamitous and awful as it has been, it still remains a war on a relatively limited scale and will wind up having a primarily regional impact.  It has acquired the prominence that it has because it involves the superpower, but it will ultimately probably possess the historical significance of the Boer War or some other colonial misadventure of the British Empire.  The disaster of Wilson’s intervention was global in nature, and it has continued to shape the history of the world ever since, almost entirely for the worse.  If the outbreak of war in 1914 was the most significant turning point in modern history (and it was), marking the end of old European civilisation and ushering in all of the horrors of the 20th century, American intervention in 1917-18 ensured that the consequences of the Great War would be even worse.  Princip’s bullet murdered nations, but Wilson’s overzealous conscience ruined whole continents. 

Mr. Bush’s legacy of failure will probably not be so enormous, but will be, like so much else he has touched, of minimal effect and importance.  Despite high ambitions and overblown rhetoric that mimic Wilsonian pretensions, mediocrity and smallness have been the chief characteristics of Mr. Bush’s policies.  Watching Mr. Bush trying to follow in Wilson’s disastrous footsteps is like watching someone of the stature and ability of Mussolini trying to reconstitute the Roman Empire.  Their ideological eyes are far bigger than their political stomachs.  Wilson really inaugurated and launched the idealist-interventionist school of American foreign policy, ensuring misery for many generations of Americans and foreigners, while Mr. Bush’s bungling will not even manage to kill off this dreadful thing. 

As Dr. Hadar suggests, there may well be a temporary “isolationist” backlash against the clumsy, mistake-ridden interventionism of the last several years.  Yet Mr. Bush will remembered as the head of an administration so incompetent in planning and execution that he could not even manage to fully discredit this approach to foreign policy, because he has ensured that the numerous mistakes in implementation will mask the fundamental mistake of meddling in other countries’ affairs.