There’s a difference (to me) between the question and the poll answers. Of the available choices, I went with the first “I believe that as President, George Bush did what he thought was best” and would also follow up that he just wasn’t a very good thinker.
But to the question of whether he had the country’s best interests at heart? It doesn’t seem like he ever got as far as the question of “what are the Country’s best interests?” I’ve thought for a long time that he wanted to be President and to lead as President, but it didn’t cross his mind to serve as President. And to have the country’s best interests at heart you have to want to serve the country.
I believe that former President George W. Bush did what he felt was in our country’s best interest. However, I also believe that he exhibited traits of a “dry drunk” and a whole lot of “stinkin’ thinkin’” in relation to the war on terror and the invasion or Iraq.
If you were to ask me about former Vice President Dick Cheney, I would have to go with Option #3.
After voting but before reading the thread – it’s not clear to me that there’s a substantive difference between options 1 and 2. Yes, I think Bush acted with the best interests of the country at heart. I also think those interests were, to some (large) degree, influenced by things that I disagree with on a fundamental level.
So, I answered with option 2. Now off to read the rest…
I believe GWB was nothing else than what he appeared to be: a callow frat boy with a well-connected Daddy. I couldn’t answer the poll question: it presupposes a Bush intellect incompatible with my model of his cognition. If American voters chose Bonzo the Chimp as their President, would you blame Bonzo or someone else? That’s how I feel about GWB.
If you’d posed the question about Cheney or Rove, I’d have no problem answering: These are the most evil men ever to run America.
I felt the same way. I went with option 2. Hopefully you went with option 1, so we can each say we gave half a vote to each option we thought was right.
I chose option 2, because it’s the closest thing to what I believe, which is that he was simply so limited in his his intellectual and empathetic abilities that it never occurred to him that what was obviously best for him and his wasn’t necessarily best for the country as a whole.
I always associate Bush with this poem - he wanted to be The Decider, but didn’t really have the chops for the job. The fact that he had a bomber jacket made with his name and “President” underneath is a perfect example of this. It’s like he wanted to be President so that he could put it on his CV (or maybe so that Daddy would finally love him - that’s going a little deeper into his head than I really want to venture).
He may have done what he thought was best for the US but given that what he “thought” was bounded by the fact that he was a man of limited imagination or intellect, a deeply selfish man with daddy issues, and someone who was being used as a figurehead by people much smarter and more ruthless than himself, it’s not saying much.
But I voted for #2. I don’t think he was actively trying to screw the country, although those behind him very much were.
Option #2. I think ol’ W has an evangelical streak which caused him to try to force his morality on others. Being raised in an insulated, conservative world means that he tried to force the 19th century white patriarchy on his country and export it abroad. W seemed to think that the Gilded Age was America at its finest and tried to bring it back.
I don’t think he gave a crap about the country. He was put up to run by the country club set for the sole purpose of lowering their taxes. He played Charlie McCarthy to Cheney’s Edgar Bergen.
I said “I don’t know” because my exact answer wasn’t really on the list.
I think George W. Bush is the physical embodiment of the Peter Principle. The thing is, while he was not smart enough to run the country, he was smart enough to know it, so he surrounded himself with people who were smarter than he was. THOSE people are the ones who did not have the country’s best interests at heart. I don’t think Dubya fully realized this until he was in too deep to back out, and there was no good way to extricate himself.
Well, I agree he wasn’t very bright, but it’s hard to argue that’s because he didn’t have a very good education. He did, after all, go to an elite boarding school and then on to Yale and Harvard. He just didn’t appear to take that education to heart.
Anyway I vote 1 and 2. I think he did what he thought was best most of the time, but there were also many instances where he appeared to have other motivations, in particular offering a form of patronage to his business cronies and social class, and to the religious right. But, I think he believed that the country would ultimately benefit from those groups advancing their agendas, so he wasn’t out to harm the country by giving them power.
And then there times where he just didn’t know any better, case in point New Orleans. To say that he fucked up the Katrina response because he hates black people or just wanted to screw the poor folks of New Orleans is as ludicrous as saying that Obama wants to kill your grandma. He simply didn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation until it was too late. As the saying goes never blame malice for what can be blamed on stupidity.
I hope I live long enough for History to decide on GWB. He is a very complex man psychologically. (Or as my sister-in-law would say, he has “issues.”)
He certainly was driven to seek the presidency to prove something to his Dad. Like a dog who finally catches the car, he was not real sure what to do once he reached his goal. (Imagine GWB with no 9-11. Does anyone want to guess what he would have done? Besides find an excuse to invade Iraq?)
Perhaps we ought to take him at his word. He saw himself as a man of Destiny. God himself wanted GWB to be president. (It is the only explanation that makes sense.) God wanted him to be president, but then the revelation faded and he became lost.
By the end, even he knew he had porked the puppy. Never have I seem a man so eager to get out of the White House. Even he knew he had failed. This seems to have embarrassed, saddened and confused him. Being president was the one thing in life that did not come to him easily.