Closing Days - the Legacy of the Bush Administration

Forget the "far left of the spectrum." He's the least popular president in the history of modern public polling. And unlike Truman, I don't see future scholars will have much cause to revise this current view.

It's a sad reflection on his administration that the supposed high point was his reaction to the abject failure of his own intelligence/security apparatus.

Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US

What would be his second-best point? No funded child left behind?

 

He is one of, if not the worst in history.

DD

 

It's not just this bush administration, but poppa bush's adminstration also. One that said "we don't support death squads", yet worked alongside with them. These men should be held accountable for their actions. If not, what's the purpose of "a government by the people, for the people."

I say the left should come together and relocate them all to canada. And call me paranoid, but the right has the most powerful weapon at their disposal, George P.
He looks like us, speaks like us, and has the same taste in women as us.......





save the future!

 

i wish someone had the balls to impeach him....

 

What is often overlooked in the travesty of the Bush administration is the behind-the-scenes damage done to the rules-making, enforcement, and oversight of the various governmental agencies that are tasked with protecting us.

As a 20-year government employee, I see firsthand the damage that can be done by the re-interpretation of seemingly insignificant rules and policies.

Undoing the Bush damage to the DOJ, EPA, FDA, FCC, FEMA, ad infinitum will be a difficult task.

From an interesting article by Pete Davis of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism:

"President George W. Bush and his appointees have attacked the heart and soul of agency after agency and have soured relations with both parties in Congress, almost like Lou Gehrig’s disease, an autoimmune response gone awry.

It’s one thing for a presidential appointee to order a policy change. But it’s quite another to ignore the law. It’s quite another thing to rid the government of the people needed to make it function. It’s quite another thing to flout Congress’s oversight, so public opinion only focuses on governmental failure and wrongdoing well after the fact."

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=00350

 

Heck of a job Brownie.

 

Mission Accomplished

 

Barack Obama is President.

A Democratic majority in the house.

A Democratic majority and fillibuster proof senate.

Americans giving the Democratic Party a blank check to fix our economy and foreign policy and fiscal irresponsibility

Thanks GWB.

 

As far as postwar goes he'll be the worst.

People will come in and rant about Jimmy Carter but I am hard pressed to think of massive mistakes that Carter made. Had the Iran Hostage rescue worked out and the helos not crashed he probably would be celebrated rather than hated.

 

No he would not have. I don't know how old you are but our economy was in the tank. Home mortgages were coming with 15% interest back then so then. Entire neighborhoods were being forclosed on.

I think JC may have been one of the most honorable presidents of all time....maybe the most honorable but he was clearly one of the most least effective and worst.

Since we were fortunate enough to only have to deal with 4 years of Jimmy I give George W the nod as far as being the worst president of my life.

During my life time I rank the presidents is as follows:

Ronald Reagan - Far and away the best president in my life. Quality of life was high, incomes were high and patriotism was high. Had a great affect on the demise of the Soviet Union.

Bill Cinton - Quality of life was good. Rebuilt the econamy after George H screwed it up. Monica Lewinski fiasco was blown way out of perportion by Ken Star. Ken Star should be in prison for stealing our money for that fiasco.

Gerald Ford - Did not do anything really great or bad. Was not in office long enough to screw anything up but he did one very important thing...he pardoned Nixon which allowed the country to move on and prevented years of congress trying to put him in jail which would have been disasterous to our country.

George H Bush - Not a good president. The country's econamy sank, and confidence in the government dropped.

Richard Nixon
Lyndon B Johnson
Jimmy Carter
George W Bush

 

LOL,- and how does the President control interest rates?

That was a systemic issue which had very little - in fact zero - to do with Carter's Administration. Interest rates were high (and economic pain was felt) because Paul Volcker was basically busy saving the economy.

You can't blame the credit crunch on GWB except indirectly insofar as deregulation mania laid the conditions for it to happen.

 

Regardless of what you say our econamy for what ever reason sucked during the Carter administration. Carter was completely ineffective as a president. Carters failures as a president stuck out like a sore thumb.

Further more if you want to claim systematic failure instead of presidential failure for one administration are you going to do it for all administrations? You can pick and choose how ever you want but I will call a spade a spade.

George W sucked
Jimmy C sucked

Those are the worst presidents in my life time and it is not even close in my oppinion. Just like Reagon and Clinton are by far the best presidents in my life.

 

The peace settlement between Israel and Egypt, by itself, excludes Carter as worst president ever.

 

It didn't suck because of anything in particular that Carter did.

I didn't. All I said was that GWB didn't help matters by hiring a bunch of anti-regulating regulators.

 

I often wonder what the public would think of Dubya had we not gone into Iraq. As it is, I can't and don't blame him for the lack of intel....Clinton is the one who changed everything from military funding to intelligence, and Bush had to work with what Clinton left him. But I do blame Bush for acting on insufficient and faulty intel.

And I also lay the blame of the perception of Americans worldwide squarely at the feet of George W. Bush. Also conservatives in general for the 'blow-job follies' that was the Kenneth Starr investigation. Whoever said he ought to be in jail for wasting so much taxpayer money was right on the money. The whole world laughed at us for that one.

Anyway. Iraq was obviously NOT a good idea on a million different levels, and I've got to wonder what would have happened had we not gone in there.

For the record re: the first paragraph, Clinton is easily one of my favorite presidents.

The next four years will be interesting, if nothing else.

 

lack of intel? anyone with half a brain new that sadaam hussein and osama bin laden were not connected. he wanted to go into Iraq as soon as he stepped into office

 

Worst president ever. Massive debt, markets down 20%, a war with no end end in sight, inflation, torture, political cronyism. At least Carter was a honorable man.

 

(Comments not directed completely at thecabbage.)

Harshly.

Please. It's not even close. Neither Buchanan nor Harding managed to weaken all of the pillars of America. Bush has submarined our foreign policy and pissed away a century of diplomatic effort by both parties, decimated our military in a war of choice picked at least in part ofr the domestic advantage it was thought to give the Republican Party, wrecked the capitalist system that produced the first and greatest middle-class majority superpower in history, shredded the Constitution and the good faith mechanisms that had kept it in place through things like signing statements and secret justifications of all manner of reprehensible things from the unitary executive theory, which has no basis in the Constitution or Constitutional decisions and the approval of torture, which effectively crapped all over the Greatest Generation and the rule of law that was put into the international arena after WWII, and lied to the American people about things that really matter, including the reasons for war. Bush is by any objective measure, the worst President in our history and I am confident that such a title will not be challenged by any but the Ann Coulters of the future.

I am sick of conservatives pretending their ill-fated Iraq adventure is somehow in league with Wilsonian principles. It's almost as bad as citing Truman for either their conservative way of governing or the prospect tha W will be heralded at some point in the future. If Iraq and Wilson are at all related, Iraq is a deformed and hideous creature intentionally corrupted and for the most part hidden from the American people by the lies of the administration. Wilson gave more thought to his ideas in one dinner conversation than the entire administration gave to theirs over the course of years. They are not the same and I reject the comparison. And furthermore, it seems to me that when Conservatives reach for the Wilsonian soundbite, it means they are talking out their ass.

Sadly, I agree. The cowardice and indecision exhibited Bush, topped with the cherry of the bullhorn speech, was indeed the high point of a presidency executed by campaign flaks who's only concern was the TV visual. In the immediate aftermath, the American people were only lied to about what happened that day and then about the dangers facing the people working on the pile. I can never fogive this administration for hiding the hazards associated with that work... as if by being honest with people it would have prevented them from volunteering time and effort... but to purposefully not inform people of the risks they face just so the stock market can open within a few days tells you everything you need to know about this abysmal administration.

Agree that the Katrina disaster is the low point of a very low administration. Not just the speech, but the whole pre and post response. No other president in our history would have allowed it to happen the way it did.