President George W. Bush Retrospective

Lee Atwater=Willie Horton

continuing the GOP descent into racism started by Nixon and Reagan

[quote] Bush is the first US president I can fully remember, but not adult enough to process.

Well, fuck you, young person!

Bush Jr., R1.

Domestically? Perfection.

Bush is the first US president I can fully remember,

If that were true you wouldn't have to ask if President "I shit my pants when I was told about 9/11" Bush was good "domestically."

Not that young. And I'd actually forgotten about Katrina.

He was a complete disaster!

Citizens United Student debt non-forgivable Iraq war - still bankrupting us The biggest Wall Street crash ever - still bankrupting us Justice Alito Justice Roberts People floating up after Katrina.....

R4 = wrong president. Nice try.

Terrible President but I think a good guy in private life, Cheney was his downfall

R8–huh? Are you going to blame Katrina on Obama?

r10 there were two Bushes, dear.

Yes, dear. And Katrina was W.

whoops wrong R tag

regardless, the only Bush I support is my own.

OP, GWB was a buffoon, but compared to Trump he was a Godsend.

It scares me that there doesn't seem to be a bottom to Trump. But, as bad as he was, Bush did get re-elected.

Exactly R14

At the time he was regarded as a not-too-bright dilettante who was controlled by the evil Cheney.

In 2019, he looks like a distinguished statesman.

Yes, he really was that bad.

The unnecessary invasion of Iraq is worse than anything Trump’s done so far.

He was a complete and utter disaster. I do think most of it was Cheney. No rewrite of history. He was terrible in every way except he had some decency.

He would be the worst Prez ever except for the next GOP prez took that title away from him.

GWB has shown far more class and dignity in his post presidency years than he did when he was in office. He's kept out of politics, kept his mouth shut for the most part, and given no one any trouble.

He tried to nominate a complete nincompoop for the Supreme Court, among his many other boneheaded acts. Patriot Act. He created the recession that struck right before Obama. He rode to victory by gay bashing. Katrina?!?! He was a FOOL.

GWB was an imbecile who started wars based on documented lies about there being WMD's. A lot of people died in his wars. He's a disgrace.

[quote]OP, GWB was a buffoon, but compared to Trump he was a Godsend.

Bullshit—Dumbya wasted trillions of our dollars on an invasion of Iraq (money went to a cabal of rich corps, some of them his cronies) which killed thousands of Americans and left many thousand more with wounds or PTSD, and killed 100k+ Iraqis. It completely destabilized the Middle East and led to ISIS and the refugee crisis.

At home Bush cut back on oversight of corporations and enforcing rules meant for consumer and citizen protection. He let Wall Street run wild which made the Great Recession worse. He cut taxes on the rich, putting the nation in debt (which the middle class had to pay for). He established a police state that happily spied on Americans at home and tortured people — sometimes to death — overseas. He established secret and not so secret prisons outside the US where people were held without trial.

Trump is strictly junior league by comparison, hampered by his own crushing incompetence from achieving much. He’s the bigger asshole of the two by far, but Bush was far more devastating.

He was very bad but not as bad as Trump...Cheney and Rumsfeld are the real scumballs.

I'm a Canadian and George W. Bush was the worst President in modern American history. If you can think of something stupid he did it including having 2 wars going on at once. Everyone knew there was going to be trouble when one day when he was in the White House eating a pretzel he choked on it, collapsed to the floor, and woke up with a rug burn on his face. He was beyond stupid, got in the White House through 2 crooked elections, and pretty much screwed up everything he touched. At least Trump has charisma and presence while Dubya had nothing - could scarcely even put a sentence together. He was a big dumb dope.

[quote] At least Trump has charisma and presence

Are you clinically insane?

A typical day with Dubya in the White House.

Exactly r26 — I was with her until that utterly spastic statement.

The Great Recession, ever heard of it?

R26 R28 Trump can put sentences together and talk while Dubya stumbled over his words constantly and sounded like an idiot and an airhead which he was.

Under Dubya, we had torture. It’s a great shame for the US. Trump’s treatment of asylum seekers rivals that.

R30, Trump has difficulty putting sentences together. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him explain a policy, because complex thinking is too difficult for him!

To those who think Trump isn’t too bad - that is why we need to be vigilant. You should know that he’d be a fascist dictator if he could be.

In a second, he could order military action against Iran. And then, we’d have to live with the consequences of his stupidity.

Webster definition of Fascism:

a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, [italic] severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition [/italic]

Section in italics underway.

I remember Bono lavishing praise on GWB, because of his war on AIDS in Africa. He really did a lot of good in that area.

And he was kinda hot.

I wouldn’t call what Trump has “charisma.” He has the quality that makes drivers slow down to check out the car wreck on the side of the road, or that makes adults laugh watching a little boy be disobedient. I don’t know what you call that.

Whether W or Trump was a worse President will be a debate for a long time. A men with a genial personality who did grossly terrible things in office vs. a man with a grossly terrible personality who didn’t do much himself (although don’t forget the children who died in immigration camps) but inspired a wave of racial hatred in the country.

Leading the world into an unprovoked global war tends to give you a bad reputation.

Use really was a disaster.

I don’t usually blame him for the not preventing the 9-11 attacks, but sometimes, when people blame Pres. Clinton, I have to put my foot down.

The Iraq war was a gross mistake.

His Iraq war caused him to take his eye off the Afghanistan war, also a disaster.

He allowed bin Laden to get away.

Torture, a great shame.

His tax cuts turned a yearly surplus into a deficit, and now we’re heading towards a trillion dollar deficit.

He had time to see that the housing market was out of control, and fix it, but he did not. The Great Recession was his.

He failed with Katrina.

His people arranged for Gay Marriage votes to be on the ballot in some states, to drive-up conservative voters who would vote for Bush at the same time.

Domestic, economic, and foreign - all failures. It’s hard to imagine a worse President. Until Turnip, I mean.

Bush was horrible, but I’d take him instead of Trump. Makes me wonder if one day a future President will suck so bad that we long for Trump.

Remember “no drama, Obama”? With Trump , he manufactures drama on a regular basis. Completely unnecessarily.

Typical Trump move is to break something, but not have something else to replace it with. Look at all the treaties or major agreements he’s broken. The Paris Accord. The TPP. NAFTA. The Iranian Agreement. Anyone can break something. It’s building something that he should be doing.

The Iranian agreement was actually an agreement with Russia, the UK, France, Germany, China, and Iran. We had peace, and the opportunity to build trust over ten years. After that, maybe we could make another agreement, or maybe Iran would have a more friendly government. Instead, we have hostility, and are close to violence. All completely unnecessarily.

Trump has not wrecked everything yet, but he’s setting himself up to do so. Bush was really bad, but I think Trump will be worse, when the music stops.

...and his 'art' is hideous!

To Bush’s credit, he made a point of underscoring that Muslims were not our enemy. Despite that, there was the hysteria about that mosque near ground zero. But he made the effort.

Trump has gone out of his way to turn Americans against each other. Religious groups, and based on national origin. He is not bringing the country together. (There are MAGA people who think he has! I don’t understand that.) He has divisive things to say that are completely unnecessary.

He did a better job than I would have at his father's funeral. Imagine trying to smooth the tension between Trump and Jeb, and Trump and Hillary?

R41 No one deserves credit for not being a bigot.

I actually think his art is fabulous. He has an eye for color. And the weird bathroom focus of his earlier stuff was intriguing. Too bad he didn’t skip the POTUS part of his life (or the Governor part).

R43, you know, so many people are jackasses, like Trump , or neutral, because it’s bad politics. So I give Bush credit for doing the right thing.

I still want to know what that note was that was passed at Bush seniors funeral.

^^^ Senior's

Bush must be thanking the universe for sending Trump, who has many have noted, makes him look like a refined, thoughtful statesman by comparison.

He reminds me of the Junker aristocracy who thought they could control Hitler, found out they couldn't, and spend the next 12 years coming up with unsuccessful plots to assassinate him

R45. My guess is he wrote “What an asshole”

Lest we forget: George W. Bush wiped his glasses on some woman's dress when he went on tv.

It read “Your fly is down.”

A demon to Cheney's devil. Seriously!

R41 A sad reminder that Dubya did not show the same respect toward gays. He went on TV bellowing against gay marriage and did not help the LGBT Community in America. He was a homophobic cunt till the end. An asshole.

I had to Google some of these things. Its just such a strange thing to rhapsodise these men after they die or are out of office. And we can't expect another Obama to rehabilitate the searing distrust that has infected American society and its relations with the rest of the world.

R52 Dubya is still alive, you idiot.

W: Idiot but not asshole.

Cheney: Asshole but not idiot

Trump: yes and yes

R55 Cheney: Satan sucks his cock Trump: So Far past evil, he has his own solar system orbiting him

Dubya? He does charity work in Africa. Feh.

R54 Unfortunately so are you, you cynical, nasty creep!

W is absolutely an asshole and you're crazy if you say otherwise.

In addition to what's been chronicled, Bush/Cheney/Rove openly, blatantly lied -- a lot -- about all sorts of matters of consequence and never paid a price for doing so.

They made it all too clear that you can take that approach, go way beyond standard rhetoric, and get away with it.

I think they set the table for all the duplicitous, lying shit from Ryan, McConnell, trump, etc.

And Bush was the top guy; while others may have done no small bit of it, it's on him.

GWB: Classic psychopath and criminal. He was in charge, not Cheney. He had a record of white collar crime and destroying evidence. His "presidency" was one long campaign in which the public were sold lies about the deteriorating economy while it spiraled out of control with unprecedented bribery and corruption to an extent worse than the late 19th century and Credit Mobilier. His economic policy was fudge the numbers, let anyone immigrate who wanted to, and let corporations steal with impunity. He preached conservative values while expanding the welfare state with prescription drugs for seniors, quickly rendered ineffective by the drug companies which in three years had raised drug prices enough to take as much from seniors as they had before the program. He sold American jobs to China; American foreign policy to Saudi Arabia; and participated in the gargantuan fraud of 9.11. He tried to end democracy by privatizing voting into a small number of companies controlled by conservatives. He committed treason to steal office twice, and quite a few murders were committed to cover it up. He destroyed the credibility of the Supreme Court, and he made the Republican party into a narrowly focused adjunct to Pentagon stealing and an attempt to create a feudal oligarchy of wealth while effectively disenfranchising the people. Trump is a nothing compared to him.

I have tremendous issues with what W did as president. I embrace his post-presidential work.

Of all 41's kids, he's the only one who never showed up to work on the campaign. I don't remember him being there on election night. It's no secret there was strain between him and his parents.

There is no such thing as a bad president now. Compared to Trump W and Nixon, were angels and I say this believing that W and Cheney were responsible, deliberately responsible, for 9/11.

The only one who comes almost as close to destroying this country is Reagan and that's because he made it okay to be racist again and okay to hate the poor and without the doors that Reagan threw wide open Trump could not have happened.

R62 It's ironic who much Trump trolls everyone over immigrants, considering his father was essentially an "anchor baby" and his mother an illegal.

He was not very intelligent, and he delegated almost everything.

And Cheney was mostly running the country behind the scenes. And Cheney was an evil piece of shit.

R64 you're wrong. He was plenty intelligent. His buffoonery was an act to cover up his crimes.

[quote]I embrace his post-presidential work.

He's an old person trying to get into heaven now, after a lifetime of committing literal atrocities. Not a lot to embrace there.

His buffoonery was alcoholism.

So, it just hit me. Since almost everyone on DL has the same political views, who are the people posting trying to convince?

Real psychopaths are charming and personable. Until they knife you in the back.

At age 73 he has become an artist's artist - if you like paint by numbers shit art.

I think his paintings are lovely.

Did not know he tried to privatize voting. He wanted to privatize social security as well.

r25, What? Trump has NO charisma. His presence makes me want to barf.

W, had 8 years, so far 2.5 of Trumps are awful, we don't want to compare them 8 years to 8 years because I'm sure Trump will be worse.

He said “nukular’ instead of “nuclear” and seemed dumb, in general.

I also forgot to mention how Dubya gutted the FTC(federal trade commission) which allowed Wall Sreet to go wild. He stopped any funding to the department under his annual budget deal.. Wall Street investment banks became like casinos, gambling away people's hard earned money. I also believe W. gutted all congressional funding for the EPA. He thought he was being slick. Asshole!

What I remember very clearly is that during Bush's presidency, almost the entire world suddenly started to hate the US. Lots of people no longer considered the US as "friends" or looked up to us. Most people thought Bush was a joke, incompetent and an embarassment. Many friends and family even refused to visit while he was president. When Obama was elected, people were dancing in the streets and it felt like a huge weight was finally lifted. I was in college in the late 90s and in retrospect that time was so innocent. I never felt unsafe or unsure about the future. Terrorism, war, environmental issues, financial crises, natural disasters or refugee crises were only side notes. I also never felt doomed. Who knew that 8 years later we have an incompetent fake clown occupying the White House.

I’ll always remember how dumb, confused and pathetic he looked, when he was informed about the world trade centre attacks while trying to read to a classroom of elementary school children.

Bush was awful at the time and it was hard to imagine any administration that would come after could be worse. Trump & co have proven otherwise.....but that still makes Bush & co appalling. History will not judge any of them well (except Obama).

R77 To be fair to Bush there was an awful lot of confusion when that occurred. I'm currently reading a book Fall & Rise which outlines the events of 9/11 on the day and its completely understandable that Bush (along with lots of others) didn't comprehend what was unfolding.

R75 It's a fair point. In fairness (and, again, in accuracy) the monumental economic trainwreck that was launched by the repeal of Glass-Steagall was signed by Clinton, not Bush. This was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999.

This passed the Senate 90-8; the House 241-132. Republicans held the Senate 55:45 Republicans held the House 228:2206

So, enough Democrats supported this in the House to pass, and it overwhelming passed in the Senate with the support of both Parties.

It was a case of sitting on needles and pins having this idiot in office for 8 awful years.

Domestically, he enjoyed watching thousands die in Hurricane Katrina and kept advocating "small government." He was determined to leave the federal government unprepared for any of the flood and storm disasters his party is creating with pollution.

You’re awfully young, OP

Watch the film, “Vice”

He was a dreadful President...but apparently not the worst...

"Nuk-you-lar" was an affectation to make him seem more folksy to Texans and not the rich New England preppy raised in Texas that he was, R74

His friends and teachers at Phillips and Yale would not have let him get away with it, would have mocked him mercilessly. Not to mention his mother.

He knew damn well how to pronounce the word correctly.

He went from the worst to one of the very worst (which is actually debatable, considering that Trump hasn't actually successfully dragged the USA into another hugely wasteful and terrible conflict, so incompetence can be a saver).

But I frequently despise the (paid) attempts at GWB apologism and reforming his image. You all doing that suck so much.

R80, such laws should be adjusted for the times. Bush had plenty of opportunity to see that things had changed and advocated for things to remedy the thread. Clinton signed the law to make a change, and Bush should have signed another law to make another change.

I put the blame squarely on the Bush Administration, the Fed, and others whose job it is to look for these things. Blaming Clinton is like blaming Jefferson, as far as I can see.

R87, I was getting interest and fee free credit card loans before 2008. I was juggling up to $100,000 in debt on my cards. I put the cash back in the stock market. I did ok, as I am hyper cautious. But regulators never should have allowed this, nor that business in Florida housing that got so bad; nor all that flipping we all heard about.