This question has nothing to do with Bush’s policies, nor does it have anything to do with liberal/conservative issues. More importantly, I’m not saying “If you can’t like Bush, who the hell can you like?” I’m just curious to know if some of the current Bush detractors have ever been supportive of any incumbent’s policies (while they were still in office).
Yes.
Is anyone, or can anyone ever be, completely satisfied with every aspect of the performance of anyone else?
But yes, I was in general satisfied with:
Clinton
Eisenhower
Truman
Roosevelt
even (sob) Nixon until he give in to his crooked impulses.
You kind of put this as an all-or-nothing question, and that’s not how the process works. I’m sure even Reeder could find some policies of Bush’s that he agrees with. It’s a matter of whether you agree with the important ones or not. And which ones are important is highly subjective.
Certainly. I liked Clinton and really liked Carter. Bush I was almost tolerable.
Yea, unfortunately I did pose the question in an “all or nothing” tone. I meant overall. I suppose those who haven’t like any incumbents “overall” are also unlikely to reply to this thread.
I liked Clinton, at least for a couple of weeks after he was elected the first time. Until it became clear that he would be reneging on government reform promises (Mrs. J and I were referring to “the failed Clinton Presidency” even before he took office).
My reaction to Carter was closer to “happy” than “disgusted”, but everyone else has been evoking the other half of the spectrum. GWB has pulled ahead of Reagan in terms of disappointing incumbent performance.
I never had a strong opinion one way or the other until Bush. So I guess you could say the two* previous presidents didn’t do anything that I found strongly objectionable.
*I wasn’t in the US before 1990
Well, let’s see, I probably don’t fit in any specific category. I’ve voted Dem, GOP, and Green over the past 10 years for major offices because I study candidates’ positions on issues and vote my conscience, unlike most voters, who treat voting like choosing sides at a Superbowl game…
The last president I liked, really, was Jimmy Carter, and I was still frustrated that he was unable to get anything done domestically. Before that,
Regarding Bill:
- Couldn’t stand Clinton when he ran in the Dem Primaries in '92. Thought he was a snake oil salesman. The look in his eyes said it all.
- Got doubly unhappy with Clinton after NAFTA, his series of gun control laws, and the “health care reform” that basically gave insurance companies free reign to rewrite laws in their favor. (Yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling on HMO liability was a direct result of that “reform.”)
- Then the GOP witch hunt started, and I wound up more disgusted with them than with Bill, so I ended up as a Clinton Supporter.
- Watching Sixty Mintues last Sunday, after nearly 4 years of BushCo, I realized miss Bill Clinton.
Regarding George W:
- in 2000, I didn’t like Gore any more than I liked Bush. I thought both were in the hip pockets of corporate interests, and were prepared to sell out the Gov’t to the highest contributor. I almost voted for Bush, but I’m glad I voted my conscience and voted for Nader.
- In 2001, I immediately saw that Bush and Cheney were not only selling out, but doing it blatantly and unapologetically.
- After 9/11, I gave Bush the benefit of the doubt, and it only took him 2 weeks to scare the bejeezus out of me.
- By 2004, I regard this as the most corrupt, morally bankrupt administration in the history of the US, and the chickens are starting to come home to roost.
You know, it really takes a tremendously bad president to make me, a dyed-in-the-wool cynic, actually miss Bill Clinton.
And you know, John Kerry has yet to demonstrate to me that he deserves my vote. So far, I still consider myself a Nader voter, just because he’s the only one who talks about the issues I consider important.
Evidently your bejeezus isn’t that important to you.
While there has never been a president who I was 100% in agreement with (an unrealistic expectation, to be sure), overall I didn’t have any problems with Presidents Bush Sr. nor Clinton.
Reagan was a :wally , though, and – unbelievably enough – George W. Bush is an even bigger :wally
I’m there with Bughunter.
I liked Jimmy Carter just fine. I think he was exactly what the country needed after Nixon and the horrible Ford years. On the other hand, I knew he was screwed politically after the hostage rescue mission failed.
Reagan’s first term scared the hell out of me, and his second term was worse.
When Clinton was running against Bush, I didn’t much care for Bush; seemed like Reagan Redux to me, and the people responsible for the S&L crisis were the last people I wanted in charge of anything, so I voted Clinton then, too.
I mean, I thought Clinton was a weasel, but he was a weasel that had the entire GOP, most of Congress, and the media all blazing away at him like duck hunters on crack for most of his administration.
And he STILL managed to generate a scandal, re: Lewinsky. Considering how many people were out to get him, one is inclined to wonder what the hell he was thinking.
At the end of Clinton’s first term, I rather liked Dole, a longtime Congressman, a war hero, and a guy whose entire congressional career was built on good hardheaded common sense and political and financial responsibility. He looked WAY better than Clinton.
And then, Bob had to go and hook up with Jack Kemp.
Jack Kemp, the high priest of voodoo economics since Reagan retired.
The man who wanted to give all the wealth to the rich in order to give it to the poor.
Dole didn’t look thrilled about it. I suspect it was a political decision, to land support from the far right… but it pretty much destroyed my faith in the man. I believed in Dole until he chose to take on a power-crazed drooling plutocrat as his running mate… a man who, considering Dole’s age, might be President right now if things had not gone well.
…so I voted for Clinton.
As a Texan, I knew damn good and well what Bush was like, and what he would choose to do when he made it to the White House. I voted Gore, not because I liked him, but because I didn’t know him as well as I know Bush.
…and now I find myself voting not for someone I like, but against someone who needs to be stopped. I don’t much care for Kerry, but I do admire his gumption in speaking against the War when it was still going on.
Then again, I don’t much care for his “repealing” of his antiVietnam stance since then, either. Who wants a politician who waffles?
Carter: Fuck no. There was some civil liberties legislation in front of him, I think it was a womens’ rights issue, and he chose not to sign; when asked why a sitting democrat would nuke a bill that nearly everyone in the party agreed would address a fundamental unfairness, he replied “Well, sometimes life ain’t fair”. He annoyed many of the nations of the world by reprimanding them about their civil rights record without doing anything strategically that would improve the global civil rights situation. Did no more for the economy than Gerald Ford, for god’s sake. Couldn’t work with anybody. And flunked the “handle Iran” test, as everyone pretty much knows.
Reagan: Again, no. I voted for him thinking he’d balance the budget and figuring the “stop abortions” stuff was pap for the born-agains and that he wouldn’t actually do anything about it. Did an OK job with foreign relations, especially in retrospect, but some of it was scary as hell at the time. I’m not at all convinced some of his cowboy antics couldn’t have backfired badly. Still, credit where it’s due and all that. But happy with him by 1984? Nope.
Bush the Senior: This one’s less straightforward. I voted for Dukakis partly because I was annoyed with Bush for repudiating his original pro-choice stance on abortion and I was still mad at Reagan for doing hatchet-work on behalf of the right to lifers, and frankly I didn’t have high expectations for Bush going in. Given those low expectations, I thought he did a decent job. He was a good administrator and frankly by then the Republican Party was starting to smell like something that had crawled from the Graves of the Undead so his non-ideological businesslike approach was a relief. On the other hand, he botched the best opportunity to do creative foreign policy things when the Soviet Union collapsed, an opportunity that comes along only a few times in a millennium, and we could be 30% of the way towards a peaceful world government that closely resembled the US government in structure and policy if he hadn’t. I was happy to vote for Bill Clinton instead for ideological reasons, but really Bush the First wasn’t bad.
Clinton: Mostly happy. Annoyed with him for not having enough common fucking sense, excuse the expression, to keep his pants zipped, or enough taste and dignity and political acument to unzip his pants with, oh I dunno, Benazir Bhutto let’s say, instead of Vapid BigHaired Bimbos-R-Us, or to say “None of your business” or “Yeah I did, now get your nose out of my private affairs” instead of lying and prevaricating about it. But considered that minor league and was really more annoyed with him for making himself vulnerable to the Creepy Crawly Republican Party of the Graves of the Undead, which was determined to drive him out of Their Office.
Bush the Dubya: I voted Gore but without major enthusiasm and was hoping to get Mr. Compassionate Conservative / Healer Not a Divider, another non-ideological administrative type like his Dad had been. There aren’t words for how horrified I’ve been since around January of '02. The man’s a fucking menace. So far he’s only set us back a half-century or so in foreign relations and sunk our economy for a generation, but I fear he could do so much worse. I fear for our nation.
Evidently, Democrats still haven’t figured out that they’re not entitled to my vote.
I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Gore because he was barely distinguishable from Bush.
It amazes me how Dems still can’t figure that out… and ticks me off a little that they blame me for Bush because I voted for the man I liked the most.
When in reality, the reason Bush got away with his campaign in 2000, his SCOTUS-assisted ripoff, and all the crap since then, is because Dems are too goddamn wussy to stand up and call a liar a liar. Until they grow some cojones, I consider the Dems as bad as the GOP, if not worse.
Never had much of a problem with Bush Sr. or Clinton… except that Clinton should have gone all the way with Lewinsky or chosen a better looking intern.
We must surely sound like totally spoil sports for someone to ask this question… 
I can only hope that you have been disabused of that misconception.
Apparently you are confusing an election with a popularity contest. An election is not an event for expressing your feelings. An election is about using your vote in the way you think will be best for your cuntry.
Yes. In the way that I think will be best. Not the way you think will be best.
My opinion is that if everyone would vote for the candidate who best represents what they believe in, then they would be doing the best thing possible for their country.
The implication that somehow I did a disservice to anyone by voting my conscience is even more insulting than being lied to by our most senior elected official.
I would argue, that in a Democracy, an election is absolutly an “event” to express your feeling.
If you are forced to cast a vote for anyone other than your first choice (like so many people who are crying for the blood of Nader seem to advocate) than Democracy has failed, at least in my opinion.
And I don’t like how you spelled that last word! 
This isn’t true. Carter may well have made the most important economic decision of the last half-century when he appointed Paul Volcker to the Fed. That act, more than any other presidential policy, is responsible for the overall strength of the US economy from then 'til now. Credit where credit is due, dude.
There’s a lot to fault Carter for, both economically and elsewhere, but it’s a mistake to say he made no important, beneficial decisions in that arena.