As a student of history, I have often wondered how other students of history could rank George W. Bush merely among the five or 10 worst U.S. presidents. In infamy, James Buchanan usually outdoes W. in these ranking polls, as do other antebellum incompetents such as Franklin Pierce, Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore. Yet each of them faced a truly irrepressible conflict; Lincoln could do no better in averting it. Andrew Johnson? A racist drunk, little more, whom Congress crushed in rather short order. Warren Harding? Hell, the best looking president we’ve ever had, which was about all we wanted in 1920. And Rutherford B. Hayes, our other appointed president, was a veritable Pericles compared to George W. Bush.
Only W. single-handedly grasped a reasonably well-ordered nation by the throat and expended thousands of its lives needlessly, drained its public treasury, and choked all honor from it.
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When I think of George W. Bush’s ridiculous moment aboard an aircraft carrier in fully military regalia to announce “mission accomplished” in Iraq, I really have to wonder how stupid Republicans think the American people are. So, that wasn’t “policitizing” killing people? And let us not forget, it was politicizing killing people based on a lie, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and the suggestion that they were somehow involved in 9/11.
I think what really pisses Republicans off is the effectiveness of the Democrat’s slogan: “Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.” It’s a keeper.
Politics aside, who is better on the full range of executive power issues? The short answer is that anyone for whom Madisonian limits on presidential power is the biggest issue should think about voting for a third party candidate. Obama’s actions and Romney’s rhetoric are both atrocious — for example, both believe the president can order the extrajudicial assassination of an American citizen so long as he or she is first declared an enemy combatant by the executive branch — and what they’d do in office between 2012 and 2016 is largely unpredictable because neither is willing to bind himself in fact to any meaningful constraints. There is nevertheless value in limiting the range of actions they can order without betraying their previous statements. That means that, between the two of them, the 2012 campaign may itself help shape the respective constraints they’d face if elected — if the press cares enough to raise these issues. More likely than not, neither Obama nor Romney will themselves make it an issue, nor will their surrogates, nor the Democratic or Republican parties. It’s all on the media. Conor Friedersdorf: Taking After Cheney ☀
It’s true that Romney and Santorum are more radically right-wing than George W. Bush in some ways. For example, they support assassinating American citizens without due process on the president’s say so. Unfortunately, few Democrats are going to attack them on those grounds this election season, because doing so would implicate their own standard bearer. Such criticism is therefore left to right-wing ideologue Ron Paul and his immoderate supporters. It makes for an interesting spectacle: Democrats earnestly retain the idea that Bush was an ideological extremist and are alarmed at the notion of a GOP that is less moderate than it was during his term, but forget many of the particulars that made Bush a radical are now supported across partisan lines. Conor Friedersdorf ☀
Many decisions by President George W. Bush deserve criticism (take your pick: a questionable rationale for war in Iraq, tax cuts for the rich that turned federal surpluses into deficits, or policies promoting de-regulation that allowed reckless speculation). But George W. Bush’s stance on bailouts is not one of those major shortcomings. By endorsing strong federal intervention in an emergency, President Bush helped to prevent the U.S. economy from going over a cliff.
I think they were booing George W. Bush. He is the man who isn’t there. Until NCLB came up last night, the years 2000-2008 had been successfully written out of the narrative of the 2012 election. For these jamokes, time effectively began in January of 2009. It was Year Zero on the Kenyan Muslim Socialist Calendar. I do not believe that Bush’s political non-personhood is an accident. It is now an article of faith among the Republican base that Bush’s failures stem not from the fact that he was a manifest incompetent, but that he was too liberal a president. Putting through Medicare Part B without paying for it is a greater sin to these people than running two wars off the books was. No Child Left Behind had the endorsement of Teddy Kennedy! (Aieeeeeeee!) If only Bush had tried conservatism, the fairytale goes, then conservatism would have succeeded, as it always does. It never fails. It is only failed. C-Plus Augustus failed conservatism. Charles P. Pierce ☀
Without the election of George W. Bush, I don’t think we would have danced quite so hard to Bin Laden’s tune, leading the country into two wars (one of which was entirely gratuitous). Nor would we have had the runaway deficit spending (including the cost of those two wars) that bankrupted our economy. Even more importantly, we had no action on climate change, and an administration that pretended that what might be the greatest challenge to modern civilization was nothing to worry about. I suspect our descendants, if they care about these things, will indeed regard the election of 2000 as a decisive point in the history not just of our country, but of the world. Tim O’Reilly ☀
…under George W. Bush, the price of gasoline increased from $1.60 per gallon when he took office in January 2001 to $4.40 per gallon in July 2008, a jump of 275 percent. GOP Deceptions About Gas Prices ☀
Santorum’s votes for expanding the role and size of government in the Bush years mostly show his lack of respect for local control and a federal government limited to the powers defined in the Constitution, but that unfortunately made him a typical Republican of the time. His support for Medicare Part D shows that there is no blunder so big that some Republicans won’t make it so long as they can claim it is a “market-based solution.” Santorum dislikes political diversity and wants to impose uniformity when he can, which is why he regards the Tenth Amendment as more of an obstacle than as part of the Bill of Rights. Santorum is certainly hostile to libertarianism when it comes to matters of moral behavior and social policy, but most of the bad votes he cast in the last decade were the product of his contempt for limited and constitutional government. Eunomia ☀
There is simply no parallel on the Democratic side to the obvious strategy pursued by the Republicans to de-legitmize the election of the last two Democratic presidents. Republicans meant to impeach Bill Clinton as soon as they got the votes. There has never been a Democratic equivalent of the Arkansas Project. Later, Democratic votes helped George W. Bush get his massive tax-cuts passed in 2000. (Hell, the Democrats didn’t even scream too loudly about having the election shoplifted in Florida.) Moreover, W’s “post-9/11” glow didn’t fade until all of the actual damage he was going to do to the country already pretty much had been done. And, let’s not forget that the stated policy of this Democratic administration was not to investigate and punish crimes that might have been committed by the last one. In terms of actual policy, Democrats have done far less to turn their “dislike” into action than have the Republicans, who have made a science of it. Charles P. Pierce ☀
In 1982, Reagan raised taxes and the right assured Americans this would be a disaster. The right was wrong, and the economy boomed.
In 1993, Clinton raised taxes and the right was even more certain this would be a disaster. The right was wrong again, and we instead saw the longest and strongest sustained recovery in recent memory.
In 2001, Bush slashed taxes and the right swore up and down this would work wonders. The right was wrong again, and the Bush policy failed spectacularly in every possible way.
In 2009, Obama spent heavily to turn the economy around and the right predicted a disaster. The right was wrong, and conditions improved almost immediately. The economy that had been in a tailspin, hemorrhaging jobs, began growing and creating jobs.
- The Bush tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthy.
- The Bush tax cuts did little for low-income families.
- The Bush tax cuts never trickled down.
- The Bush tax cuts were a poorly designed economic stimulus.
- The Bush tax cuts failed to create strong long-run growth.
- The Bush tax cuts were so expensive that they added greatly to the debt.
- The Bush tax cuts were much more expensive than advertised.
- The Bush tax cuts continue to be expensive.
- The Bush tax cuts eliminated the most progressive federal tax: taxes on large estates.
- A decade of Bush tax cuts are increasing interest spending today.
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