Do Most non-Americans Know How Despised Bush is in the U.S.?

Great Debates
41

But they can also be taken out much more easily when they lose popular support - see Thatcher, Maggie, Defenestration thereof.

Less dramatic, the removal of Canadian Minister Chrétien by a determined inner party putsch led by Paul Martin, who of course went on to a distinguished career as Prime Minister.

There’s also the worst case example of what Mulroney did to the Progressive Conservative party. In a parliamentary system, the Members of Parliament can’t distance themselves from the PM the way Congresscritters can in the American system. If a PM is deeply unpopular with the voters, the entire party suffers, and individual MPs lose their seats, because the only way to vote against the PM is to vote out your local MP. Mulroney was so unpopular that even though he had resigned as party leader, his successor, Kim Campbell, led the PCs from majority government to 2 seats - the greatest fall in parliamentary history, certainly in Canada and likely in the Commonwealth. This dynamic means that a deeply unpopular PM is likely to get pushed out by the party, and that possibility also means that the party has a greater internal check on the Prime Minister than do the parties in the congressional system.

The best example of the contrast is President Tyler, a Democrat who was chosen by the Whigs as Vice-President candidate to round out the Harrison ticket. When he became President, it turned out that Tyler didn’t really support the Whig agenda, vetoing much of their legislation, but he was also hated by Democrats for leaving them. Sop he was a President without a party and without any support in Congress. In a parliamentary system, such a person could never stay in office as Prime Minister, but Tyler held on for nearly four years until his term ended.

42

So those are the internal party checks on an unpopular Prime Minister. But it’s also easier for the Opposition to remove an unpopular Prime Minister: a straight majority vote in the House of Commons, for the simple reason that the House has lost confidence in the PM. That’s not a judgment on the legalities of the PM’s conduct - simply that the PM’s policies have lost the confidence of the House. That’s pure politics, without any moral or legal judgment involved. And, motions of non-confidence are brought routinely, in practically every session of the House, plus there are the confidence motions, such as the budget bill. It’s no big deal for the Opposition to be trying to bring down the government - that’s what Oppositions do.

In the US system of impeachment by the Reps and trial by the Senate, the only way you can remove your President is by convicting him of criminal misbehaviour - he’s been accused and found guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanours.” Now, I know that there’s the realpolitik assessment that an impeachable offence is whatever the Reps impeach for (cite: Gerry Ford), but you’re still using the language of criminal misconduct, trial and conviction.

That is a gut-wrenching process for a country to go through, both politically and psychologically: that the leader of the country, the successor to Washington and Lincoln, is a crook. It’s no wonder that the impeachment process has been invoked so infrequently, and never with success. Even those opposed to the policies of the President, who think his actions are bad for the nation, would hesitate to call him a crook except on unusually strong evidence - a standard that has never been met in the 200+ years of the Constitution.

A President is essentially guaranteed office for four years. The impeachment process is just too unrealistic a way to keep a President in check. By contrast, a Prime Minister has no term - he serves at the pleasure of the Commons, and has to defend his government’s conduct every day the House is sitting, staving off the confidence measure. If a Prime Minister falls on a confidence measure, it’s a major event, but it normally just means that the parties go to the people to resolve what is essentially a political impasse. It doesn’t mean that your country’s leader has been convicted of criminal misconduct.

Overall, I would say that from this perspective, the President is in a much stronger position than a Prime Minister.

Of course, if the Prime Minister has the support of his party and a majority in the House, he’s in a much stronger position than the President is, in terms of getting his program through. But even then, they still serve at the pleasure of the House and their party - as Maggie Thatcher and Jean Chétien found out.

43

There’s a lot of chest beating in this thread.

As a non-american living in the US I can tell you that I have run across more or less equal numbers of people in the US that approve and disapprove of president Bush. It seems most of those who approve of him do not post here, however they are out there.

I have to admit to knowing next to nothing about US politics, but it seems to me that everytime a new president comes around there are article after article in the newspaper about how awful he is, and how his policies have ruined the country. Then the next guy comes around and the whole thing repeats. Yet amazingly the US seems to keep going. For me that’s one of the great things about democracies, everyone bitches about the guy they did not vote for, but at least you get to vote and to bitch.

44

I can only speak for my country, which I guess doesn’t 100% qualify as a “western democracies with reasonably high standards of living and full access to news and net” (depending on who you speak to) as per the OP, but we get very little news about the US here. Unless you watch BBC, Sky or CNN on satellite (which less than 5% of the population has access to) you will only hear about Bush or the US when something dramatic happens. For everyday news most of it is local with much more emphasis on European and especially UK news. The most US related news you will get is financial. (Dollar and Dow type news)

As an example I listen to a local talk radio station which is the largest in the country. They have a US Report every morning which is about 3 minutes and then talk about the markets in the US in their financial buletins.

So in a nutshell most people don’t only NOT know that more than half the US think Bush is an idiot but most don’t even care.

45

Every president, without exception, is despised by a huge segment of the American population. Well do I remember hearing about how Reagan was the Antichrist, a senile, stupid, mean-spirited washed-up movie actor who was hell-bent on stealing bread crumbs from the poor and starting a nuclear war.

And well do I remember hearing about how Clinton was the Antichrist, an unreconstructed tax-raising health-care-nationalizing liberal who dodged the draft, stole files from the FBI, pardoned Puerto Rican terrorists, and probably had Vince Foster murdered–not to mention the whole sex addiction thing.

The only difference is that some presidents, like Reagan and Clinton, maintain at least grudging support from a majority of their own party until the end of their term. Others, like Truman and Carter and Bush, don’t. There are more of the latter than the former, so all of this is utterly predictable and routine. Presidents as unpopular as Bush have happened many times before, and they will happen many times again.

46

>Well do I remember hearing about how Reagan was the Antichrist…

Great example. I thought Reagan was a treacherous old hack who sold weapons to the Iranians to raise money to give to the Contras, who told undernourished inner city school children that ketchup was their vegetable, who used astrology to help make decisions, and whose administration had - what was it - about 240 members who were indicted for criminal activity during their service. I must have slept through a few years, somewhere, but now there is this President Reagan in the history books who defines heroism for almost every Republican and a surprising number of Democrats - where, oh where, in the world did he come from???

The more I think about it, the less I understand why we even get what little respect we usually do in the world at large. Wow.

47

Well, there’s a story on both elections… :dubious:

The first time was one of the most famous clusterfucks (I can say that in imho, right?) in U.S. political history: Bush received less of the popular vote than his opponent, Gore, but more of the electoral vote, an antiquated system that once made sense but now doesn’t. (Best analysis I’ve heard was on MAD TV when an old woman explains it as “Let’s say me and my sister Margaret who lives with me hold an election to be president of my house, and she votes for herself and I vote for me so she has 1 vote and I have 1 vote but I win because I’m standing in the kitchen.”)
And of course there was major scrutiny of voting irregularities in Florida, a populous state that happened to be governed by Bush’s brother Jeb. (And then there was frigging Nader…). Essentially the Supreme Court gave him that election.

2004 is harder to explain, but it’s mainly because the Democrats seem to have gone to an effort to drag out the least charismatic, least likable, least inspiring and least politically capable candidate they could find, John “Lurch” Kerry who didn’t know how to fight back against some of the worst mudslinging in history. The amazing thing is that Kerry still got, depending on the source, between 48% and 50% of the popular vote, and it was far more from people voting against Bush than voting for Kerry. (I couldn’t stand either one of them but held my nose and pushed the button for Kerry.)

For 2008 the wheels have turned round nicely. This year the Pubs have John McCain, who is as wildly unpopular with millions of Republicans as Kerry was with millions of Democrats, while the Democrats actually have two very formidable candidates. So long as Obama isn’t caught in bed with a dead sorority girl or Hillary doesn’t carve a swastika into her forehead on the same day that John McCain raises a girl from the dead in California we should take back the White House this year. And either way (sorority girl or swastika) whoever the Dem candidate is will still get at least 48% of the vote.

48

>I think that what amazes us is not how unpopular he is, but how he managed to get voted in twice.

This should be amazing. As interesting as the technical flaws were within the electoral process, and as important as it was or should have been to figure out as closely as possible how many people voted for which candidate, Bush still got about as many votes as his leading oponents. Anybody watching should be not only amazed, but also horrified.

I think the 2000 election, and perhaps the 2004 election, were technically in error, and it would have worked out much better for the USA and much of the rest of the world if we had done these things correctly. But, either way, it was still a pretty even split, nowhere near 60/40 in either direciton.

49

I’m not surprised that non-Americans don’t understand why, if Bush is allegedly so hated within the U.S., he’s still president. Most Americans don’t understand it either. We still don’t get that we didn’t really elect Bush, especially in 2004 – we just voted against John Kerry because we’re incredibly emotional and stupid about that kind of stuff. I guess it’s a case of “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t”.

Non-Americans don’t understand how hard it is to get rid of a U.S. president. And it’s hard to explain that, on the one hand we have one of the most theoretically accountable forms of government in the world, but on the other we’re pretty much stuck with our choice for four years, no matter how duplicitous the sonofabitch is after the election.

50

Yes, I know. Rather the point isn’t it?

<politically naive foreigner hat on>
Bush invaded a sovereign country on false premises, [long list of potentially high crimes and misdemeanors omitted], whereas Clinton got a blowjob… and lied about it.

One was impeached. Which?
<hat off>
The system doesn’t seem fully functional to me.

51

Northern Piper has covered this far better than I could, but I’d just add that the Prime Minister’s and President’s roles are somewhat different – I was responding to a comment that many foreigners see Bush as the face of the US.

In some ways the Prime Minister’s role is closer to your leader of the house, and the President’s role that of the monarch; it’s easier for me to think of the US system as a constitutional monarchy with an elected King.

52

When you figure it out, please come tell us. (Even a lot of die hard Republicans thought the Clinton impeachment was the silliest thing ever.)

53

I drive around with a “Republican Against Bush” bumper sticker. I voted for him.

I had no idea he was this bullheaded. I don’t think I could have known, probably. I also refuse to believe that smooth speakers are great leaders. They are not the same skills. So many attacks on him were of the insignificant and snipy type. Then there was Gore, who has only convinced me even more since then that he’s a fatuous git who has latched onto one issue so he can have something to preach at people about, a subject for which is no more qualified than aeronautical engineering. Everything out of his mouth on it is just the repetition of something someone told him. So since Gore is also a git and at the time represented so many political views I disagreed with, I voted for Bush.

54

Here’s an anecdote that happened when I and some colleagues went to a conference in Boston in 2005 (or was it 2003? we went there both years, and it would make a difference, but whatever). We were walking in the street, and I saw an anti-Bush bumper sticker on a car, which I read out loud, which lead to one of my colleagues warning me against saying such things in the US. Despite the fact that it was on a bumper sticker on a (non-vandalized) car for everyone to see, and that we were in Boston. I think he was at least half-serious. So there is at least a fair amount of Canadians who don’t realize (or didn’t at the time) how hated Bush is in his own country, and who don’t seem to realize that dissent is tolerated in the US.

55

Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.

56

I didn’t realize being liked, or being a nice guy was part of the job description.

57

It seems that some folks who’ve lived under different political systems don’t seem to realize just how hard it is to get rid of a President before an election - or perhaps, don’t understand why it IS so hard.

I don’t quite know how I’d explain it, though.

58

Lying under oath? Not really.

Impeachment takes crimes. Clinton committed one- over something stupid, which is why so many want to dismiss it, but in the eyes of the law . . .

And Bush lied about Iraq. Did he do so under oath? Not that I’m aware. Hence, no treason to the courts.

59

Further note-

Foreigners think that since it’s our President, we must support him.

However, just because you don’t agree with the current executive, does not absolve you of your citizenship or obligations thereof, and many against Bush from the get-go seem to think the Bush years “don’t count” in worldwide politics, since “he wasn’t my candidate.”

It’s a democracy. He is, in fact, your President, if you are an American citizen. You don’t have to like the fact.

Also, Bush isn’t the first to garner international flak. It’d take a century of good Presidents to live down our American imperialism on the national stage- if you consider that a good thing. The only one loved for it- at the time- was Wilson, I think. And he got a bad rep here at the end as a result, as I recall.

60

I knew that he was greatly disliked by many Americans, but was under the impression until early 2007 that just as many were, at minimum, content with him as president - if not happy.

Then I had a political science course at uni taken by a professor from New York who, in a discussion with us, gave us approval ratings, other polling figures and plenty of stories leading us to believe otherwise.