If Bush had stayed out of Iraq and kept doing the two things he was good at coming in; cut taxes and hold the party line on social issues, political opinion as interpreted from the public at large would have stayed put.
Yeah, couldn't disagree more. The Patriot Act, Katrina, Homeland Security, pushing anti gay marriage amendments, blowing the surplus, stem cell research obstruction, pushing abstinence only strategy, Valerie Plame, presiding over the biggest economic downturn since the great depression, presiding over the deadliest most destructive terrorist attack in US history, not catching Bin Laden, Supreme Court choices that have led to radical court decisions, and that's all without anything that happened with Iraq. What's funny is people comparing Obama to THAT. If anything, the worst parts of the Obama administration have simply been a continuation of policies that Bush enacted, the drones, the wiretapping, deficit spending. There's no question Obama has not improved the economy as much as we would have liked but the there's really no comparison in the two, including the fake scandals with the IRS and Benghazi.
Supreme Court choices that led to radical decisions? You mean like when Justice Roberts cast the deciding vote on the health care law?
My comment was referring to public opinion of Bush; a lot of the stuff here are individual issues or events on which you disagree with Bush, but a couple of them (like Plame) wouldn't have happened with my hypothetical premise of his not invading Iraq. The others (like abstinence only education for high school health classes or stem cell research) either wouldn't have registered with most voters or didn't turn public opinion against him. Prior to literally last November, for example, it was still bad electoral politics for a Presidential candidate to support nationwide legalization of gay marriage.
I'll amend and concede that the economic crisis obviously was Bush's immediate fault and turned sentiment against him; but he was kind of already a lame duck once it took hold.
Citizen's United destroys our political process. Health care law forces people to buy health insurance. Hardly equivalent.
I don't understand how you can say that Obama is worse than Bush. (For all of the reasons cometswin stated on page 3) I get bombarded daily with articles and pictures about how awful Obama is from my republican friends on Facebook. But one thing I do not get when I log on there is that Obama is worse than the Bush administration. But hey I guess you have your reasons.
Bush had the support of Congress, the majority support of the American people and the support of a wide coalition of foreign leaders who all looked at the same evidence he did and came to the same wrong conclusion. He deposed a ruthless dictator who had stifled an entire nation for years, killed thousands with chemical weapons and refused to let international inspectors validate that he didn't have WMDs he was hiding despite UN mandates. He gets bashed for taking military action under those circumstances. Obama wants to take military action with almost zero international support, little support in Congress and little support from the American people. He wants to do this NOT to actually topple the dictator, bust just to wrist slap him for using chemical weapons because he crossed the line in the sand that Obama drew. One of these men is a nobel peace prize winner and the other is considered a warmonger and a cowboy.
One of them also wants to shoot a few missiles while the other wanted to invade and occupy a country with ground troops, with only a very limited and questionable plan of how to actually secure the country once that was accomplished. And as far as I can tell, Syria and Iraq have about equal amounts of international support - that is, the international community is split generally down the middle in each case.
I specifically remember the general public believing there was no difference between the two. gore was trying to avoid the Clinton legacy, bush was running against it. the stock market was running up there was no issue to run on.
Just my opinion my good friend. Btw, I have played on both sides of the fence. And I have the patience (sometimes decades) to wait and study before making a decision. It served me well in picking the Rockets to be a fan of, in accepting a god in my life, and in picking a political party that best represents my evolving thinking. So yes, I have my reasons, and ways.
Bush exploited his popularity after 9/11 to pressure Congress into voting with him on any diplomatic or national security issues. Bush is the one responsible for gathering and examining accurate and up-to-date intelligence, not Congress or the American people. He and his subordinates didn't "take action" on faulty intelligence; they invaded and occupied a sovereign country: the largest, deadliest most costly undertaking possible, on the basis of evidence that they alone collected and dubiously crafted to deceitfully present to Congress and the American people. He wasted 4,000 American and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian lives; and at a trillion dollar cost that he refused to account for with fiscal revenues, on the basis of intelligence fraud and failures he refuses to concede.
I think the stem cell and abstinence issues certainly build into the idea that he pushed faith over progress. Also, Bush actively worked for those marriage amendments to bring out his base. It was a slimeball Karl Rove move and people remember.
Did you not pay attention during the elections? It was a big enough deal. Many on the left felt disenchanted and started supporting green party and Nader, much like the tea party folks today but only a lot less successful. SNL even made fun of it, see the second debate clip. http://www.jpetrie.net/2009/05/22/bush-gore-2000-debates/
I don't remember it that way at all. Because of the scandal, Gore kept Wild Bill at arms length on the campaign trail (which probably cost him the election). But on issues of substance, he didn't separate himself from Clinton. The notion George W. Bush's presidency was so pathetic it made people start paying attention is interesting. I believe the nation desperately wanted to voted him out in 2004. But the Dems selected such a terrible candidate in John Kerry, Bush was able to stay within striking distance. This allowed the GOP's over-the-top, negative character assassination of Kerry to get the job done. But Bush's 2nd term (that the public didn't really want) was like watching a house on fire that just wouldn't quite burn to the ground.
Okay...so name the Bush appointee that wrote the majority opinion. Hint: Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion. Roberts and Alito didn't even sign onto the majority opinion. They had a separate, concurring opinion.