Trump makes W look better by comparison, but I honestly don’t think you could get a human being that is so much dumber, so much more hateful, so much more of a liar, so much more narcissistic, that he would be significantly worse than Trump in all those categories. I guess if we got a leader that killed 40%+ of our population he’d make Trump seem better in comparison, but you’d have to get into Stalin/Hitler/Mao territory to even have a chance of making people think Trump was harmless. Trump is one of the most vile human beings ever to live.He exhibits the top of the range of so many bad human traits. In comparison, W was just pretty shitty.
Yeah this is a better comparison than to GW. We could get someone that is a Hitler to Trump’s Mussolini, and makes us miss Trump. But, even compared to Hitler, Mussolini was not a harmless cuddly bunny
I didn’t interpret that as PhillyGuy denying that he is a mass murderer. Just said that the truth of the central claim of the sentence is true regardless of whether or not he is one.
I personally don’t know what a mass murderer sounds like. I’ve heard clips of some very soft-spoken brutal dictators.
When Bush left office we were facing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. And he initiated a war on a tactic, terrorism, just to feed war profiteers. While I think that Trump is on his way to a worse record, I in no way feel nostalgic for George W Bush or his administration.
Nope, I won’t look back with nostalgia for Trump. There could certainly be worse … leaders, rulers, dictators, presidents … but if there are, Trump will always be the guy who opened the door for them. Openly corrupt, openly against fair elections, openly scoffing at facts, science, honest history, the rule of law.
You say that like these things have held him back from being popular. His support base doesn’t care that he can’t speak coherently. They don’t care that he was found civilly liable of sexual assault. They don’t care that he’s on tape saying, “grab them by the pussy”.
Other than that, yeah, I’d have laughed right alongside you if 10 years ago someone told me I’d be looking back at the Dubya administration as not being the worst Republican administration in my lifetime.
Yes, things could get much much worse in the US.
Trump thankfully mostly just talks. He passes bad bills that empower the rich and harm everyone else, but Republicans have been doing that for a century.
The real risk is if we get economic collapse and meaningful advances in authoritarianism. Right now luckily, the advances in authoritarianism are mostly just for show.
When human and political rights get rolled back to the 19th century, then we will look back at today and reminisce how it wasn’t that bad yet.
Yeah, it’s not nostalgia that many on the left feel so much as a mix of bemusement and horror that the Republicans were able to sink so much lower.
Still, my wife and I visited the 9/11 Museum at Ground Zero not that long ago, and they had a screen showing clips of GWB’s address from the Oval Office after the attacks. I turned to my wife afterwards and said, “To think there would come a come day when we would be pining for the eloquence and statesmanship of George W. Bush.”
It really kind of blows my mind now to think that a man who said “Islam is peace” after 9/11, pushed for sensible immigration of reform that included a path to citizenship for the undocumented, and offered billions to fight AIDS in Africa was once the Republican standard-bearer.
Which would you rather have running the country, Donald Trump, or Richard Nixon?
I’m not American, but I feel Idi Amin could do a better job than Trump.
At least he was evil in a focused manner. Trump is all over the place, unpredictable evil.
Nixon was small change…tthe dumpf is a destructive asshole and Bush just a light weight out of his depth.
Dumpf is a consequence of repugly attempts over time to hold on to a “white” Amerika at any cost plus the unrelenting bigotry that fucks the US always. I’m curious if revenge by the Dems will be vicious….I shall clap.
So to answer the OP …no I don’t think that. Dumpf has etched himself into the basement of worst ever.
I think Michelle Obama has given the impression that we all love GWB. We don’t.
I personally do not believe we have even seen the worst of trump yet. He’s got a lot of bad stuff planned for us yet.
Let’s compare the two:
G. W. Bush: Was America’s dad regarding the Columbia disaster. That speech he delivered was remarkable.
Put together a coalition for the Iraq War. Say what you want about that, but I’m sure many Americans from that time believe we had good reason to believe Hussein had WMDs at the time despite what we know now.
Dealt with 9/11. Say what you will about the overreach of Patriot Act & Homeland Security now, at least Bush’s motive was to keep the US safe.
Trump: While G. W. Bush was not a good speaker, he never came close to saying the bat-shit crazy vitriol that Trump spews.
Not only could not get any coalition together for any purpose, Trump actively alienates all of the other countries except perhaps Israel. Rather than the Gulf War, Trump is using ICE to conduct a war against American residents including citizens.
Trump led an insurrection against the United States. Before 1/6, one thing that made American democracy great was that no matter the situation there was always a peaceful handover of the Presidency.
Bad things are better than worse things. And things can always get worse. I wouldn’t try to argue against that.
However, to my mind, the only thing better about Bush than Trump is that Bush didn’t try to subvert the constitutional order. Other than that, as President, they were both incredibly destructive morons.
The only way I can think we might look back favorably on Trump is in a time where Constitutional rule has collapsed and there’s no chance of voting ourselves out of it. Even then it’s dicey, because Trump is the one who’s been chewing holes in the foundation for years.
Looking back nostalgically on Trump would be like having stage 4 colon cancer and reminiscing about “man, the golden years of this cancer were really stage 3.” (In that metaphor Bush would be stage 2, Reagan stage 1).
Right. A lesser evil doesn’t make it something to be nostalgic about.
No. It’s entirely possible life will be much worse ten years from now when Trump’s successors have finished destroying everything that was ever good about this country. That will only make me hate more the guy who started it all.
Same. Also there is nothing Trump has done (yet) that is comparable to the Iraq Invasion. It is a uniquely heinous action by an American president that has massive and terrible repercussions that continue to this day.
No because Bush was smart enough when his presidency ended to fully retire from being in a figure in politics. He doesn’t speak at conventions or public events unless it is a 9/11 memorial or special event. And when he does it isn’t about him. He was a terrible president but not a narcissist. Also the transfer of power to Obama is something the Obamas spoke fondly of even back then which because of Trump now looks quite important.
Lastly his dad has been revisited as a quite effective president so that angle makes GWB look like a tragic case of a son who messed up. You can say that is kind to him. But there is an irony that his political strength (the guy you’d have a beer with) was his dad’s weakness whereas his dad’s strength (being on top of foreign policy) was his failure.
Before waxing too nostalgic about Dubya, consider just how widely opposed the country was to the invasion of Iraq, and the fact that many Americans believed in WMDs because Dubya’s administration openly lied to the American public as well as the world at large about them.
And as for the ‘coalition of the willing’, consider that the list had to include countries such as Micronesia, Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Solomon Islands in the list in order to make it look impressive. And the Solomon Islands was unaware of its inclusion and denied being part of it. More importantly, of those ‘members’, only 4 countries provided any troops in support of the invasion, and only one, the UK, provided a remotely meaningful amount. On top of which there was no UN approval for the invasion.
Now compare that coalition to the one his father put together in 1991 consisting of 42 countries that all provided troops to eject Iraq from Kuwait to carry out a UN Security Council Resolution authorizing the use of all means necessary for the removal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait and the restoration of its rightful government.
I didn’t approve of Bush’s domestic policies, but his handling of Desert Shield/Desert Storm was a masterpiece of international diplomacy. And didn’t rely upon a foundation of lies.
We should look back on these years in shame and embarrassment. Shame that we let it get that far, and embarrassment that we actually believed that rules and laws enforce themselves and that we could sit back and just watch as things fixed themselves magically.