It's a trick question, right?
Posted on 04/15/2013 10:49:04 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
George W Bush: was he really that bad?
More than four years after George W Bush left the White House, his record is being reassessed and throws up similarities with Barack Obama, writes Alex Spillius
By Alex Spillius
1:10PM BST 15 Apr 2013
It is George W Bush’s particular achievement to be disliked by both sides in American politics.
Democrats of course excoriate the damage done to the budget by waging two wars while cutting taxes, his conduct after Hurricane Katrina and his shoot from the hip style, not to mention that fact that he presided over the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.
His own Republican party utterly rejected him during the 2012 campaign. Tea Party types saw him as a big-spender guilty of extending federal government, while few who once stood with him were prepared to defend his military achievements.
But presidents tend to look better, or at least different, from a distance, and with the opening of his presidential centre in Texas, there are suggestions that Bush the younger may be more fondly remembered than was thought possible when he left the White House in January 2009 as the most unpopular president in living memory.
He was certainly more socially liberal than his critics give him credit for. No Child Left Behind, whatever its faults and funding, was a centralised attempt to raise educational standards across the board.
A new prescription drug benefit scheme may have been expensive (though Bush himself argues its cost has been exaggerated) but its aim was to make medicines more affordable for the elderly.
Bush failed in his most ambitious social reform of immigration law, but he was defeated primarily by the Right of his party, not the Democrats.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
George Bush had the deficit down to $200B but you won't hear a word about that from either left or right.
Ridiculous statement.
They have shown over and over that they could care less about a socialist muslim infiltrator into the White House with a fraudulent elegibility.
One minor correction: It was Romney who strapped his dog to the roof of his car.
So who did you vote for in 2004?
Whomever the Libertarian candidate was. Was it Russel Means? Haven’t voted for a DemmyKrat since 1980 when as a young lad I voted for my Boll Weevil Congressman Kent Hance who two years later switched to the GOP.
Did the same thing in Bush 1’s re-election run in 1992. Those Bushes have been something else. Something other than freedom-loving Republicans for sure.
the President needs to revere and respect the Constitution as much they do the country.
On that count Bush failed.
Bush and his dad turned away for the limited government path that Reagan moved the Republic towards.
Their failure to view government as a necessary evildirectly lead to the increase in the scope and power over government over our lives.
Balanced budget was actually due more to the House, and the Speaker at the time, then either Bush 41 or Clinton......
See post 20 in this thread....speaking your language...
That anyone on this thread is giving Clinton credit for anything is ridiculous.
Because the GOP was A: in control of the establishment at the time and B: The Senate did not have functional control. The DeMint wing of the Party did not have control sadly. Having said that, it was not nearly as bad as 2009-2011 when the Dems had all three branches. Generalization can make one seem smart....but only "seem."
Well as you know, people tend to blame/credit Presidents for everything that happens during their term - the “happened on so and so’s watch” is the most mis-used, mis-understod and mis-applied term in all of American politics I think. Sometimes it applies, sometimes it does not, but people use it universally the same.
“Whomever the Libertarian candidate was. Was it Russel Means?”
No, it wasn’t Russell Means. What a kook! LOL!
.....
Since the late 1970s, Means often supported libertarian political causes, in contrast with several of the other leaders of AIM. In 1983 he agreed to become running mate to Larry Flynt in his unsuccessful run for U.S. President.[12] In 1987, Means ran for nomination of President of the United States under the Libertarian Party, and attracted considerable support within the party, finishing 2nd (31.41%) at the 1987 Libertarian National Convention.[18] He lost the nomination to Congressman Ron Paul.[19]
In 2001, Means began an independent candidacy for Governor of New Mexico. His campaign failed to satisfy procedural requirements and he was not selected for the ballot. In the 2004 and 2008 Presidential Elections, Means supported independent Ralph Nader.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Means
Funny how they never mention that the economy was doing great until Demoncrats took power in Congress.
Seriously?
So Bush named Obama to office? Or was it the idiotic voters (or those that refused to vote because they didn't get the nominee they wanted) that put Obama in office?
Obviously, the latter.
Congress should always get the lions share of credit and blame.
Actually, I disagree about his possible failures in foreign policy.
To start with, Saddam was just going nuts. Iraq was descending into chaos, with Iraqi oil money flowing to corrupt politicians everywhere to violate the embargo. Even Saddam himself thought that he was still developing WMDs, which Iraq was still capable to do, but nobody else in Iraq wanted to do.
And Iran was poised to exploit the situation terribly, to get a monopoly over much of the world’s oil, possibly to invade and conquer Iraq, and then Saudi Arabia.
Worse and worse, the Khan nuclear proliferation ring in Pakistan was providing technology for decentralized development of “Muslim bombs”, a deal involving both Libya and Egypt, and probably Saudi. Pakistan wanted to attack India with them, and India was more than willing to respond.
And, of course, all the gang wanted to annihilate Israel, possibly with nukes, despite Israel having over 200 of them, which would cause a medium sized nuclear war that would most certainly affect the US, because of the isotopic jet stream dump over middle America (we discovered during atmospheric testing, that dropped copious amounts of strontium-90 contamination over the Midwest region.)
The big failure was that W. Bush failed to conduct nation building in Afghanistan, like he did in Iraq. Had he done so, we could have exited them long ago, and they would be far more stable. This is because we would have cut off the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, keeping the Pakis bottled up to savage each other.
Bush worked very hard to support Perv in Pak, because he wanted to unite his fractured country under a central government. An essential thing to stop them from being terrorist training central. However, at the start his power was just a tad greater than all the other factions, so it was a very long row to hoe.
All told, his plate was full with foreign policy, so he needed somebody with common sense and conservative values to run his domestic policy. And he didn’t.
I think Bush gave up when the Republicans in Congress didn’t back him on Social Security reform, he probably figured, “What’s the point?”
I voted Constitution Party, myself.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.