I also liked Bush in 2000, not just liked, but I was crazy about him. Signs in the yard and bumper stickers on the car. He seemed like the guy who had his head on straight, was down with the regular people, and was a small-government conservative.
He was a strong Christian, and I was embarassed by the personal behavior of Bill Clinton. It really, IMHO, brought disrespect on the office (I don’t want to reargue that, though) and I felt Bush would be a breath of fresh air. And I thought then, and still do, that Al Gore is a wormy little bastard who is so full of himself and hypocritical that he doesn’t know what position he is taking today because it has to be in line with the ones yesterday and he has to fact check.
And I felt my choice was 100% confirmed in the aftermath of 9/11. The Secret Service was wanting him to go to NORAD, but there he was in the Oval Office speaking to Americans that night. I got chills when he stood on top of the rubble at ground zero and said that the people who knocked down these buildings “…will hear from all of us soon!”
Since then he has had the reverse Midas touch. The guy would fuck up a wet dream if he touched it. The final straw for me when I cashed in my chips was in 2005 when he nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Harriet FUCKING Miers?!? I kept saying until my wife made me shut up.
And his constant bungling in Iraq. Look, I’ve never believed in any of the conspiracy theories about Iraq. Bush thought he had WMDs; so did Clinton, so did the rest of the world. But we were wrong and very seriously wrong. I wanted to hear that we were wrong and why we were wrong; not the Clinton-esque spin that we are now delivering “freedom” to the Iraqis.
That’s great, George, who’s next? Cuba? Don’t insult my intelligence.
Heh. It’s so cute watching them all try to pretend that “nobody could have known” that Bush would turn out so bad…I seem to remember me and a whole lot of other people SCREAMING that repeatedly in 2000. And in 2003, about Iraq. And in 2004, when he was re-elected. But, ya know, nobody could have known…
When we vote, we’re all attempting foresee the unknowable: how will this person govern? We also are applying different visions of what we think ought to be done and how. I voted for Bush having reached two honest and thought-out conclusions: that he would be an effective chief executive, and that he would pursue policies that were closer to my preferences than his opponent would. The conclusion about his effectiveness was clearly wrong, and I know now that the policies he has pursued were often at odds with what I would have preferred. We don’t actually know what Gore would have done.
When we make decisions based on the unknowable, and subsequent events play out as we had anticipated, that doesn’t magically convert our previous conclusions from opinion to knowledge.
When I hear (or read) someone SCREAMING about politics, I tend to dismiss the content.
Aye, that is one of the things about the way the system works – we have to presume that the candidate is seriously ready, willing and able to deliver performance as promised and that what he means by that is what WE mean by it, i.e. that when he says “compassionate conservatism” he’s using my same definition of compassion, when he says “dignity of the office” he’s using my same definition of dignity, etc. And what else do we have to work on, indeed? We should not be too propmpt to take the “guy I’d like to have a beer with” explanation at face value – sure, personality and charisma are elements of the decision-making, but it can be a little tautological: the candidate who comes across to me as “one of my kind” probably does so in large measure because I get the feeling from him that he sincerely shares my view of the world, and he’ll make policy accordingly. (And honestly, to me both W and Gore suffered from severe charisma deficiencies… still I supported Gore, in turn, I sincerely and honestly concluded his platform was closer to my interests and the common good than W’s)
Absolutely right. Reset to 2001 and there is enough uncertainty thrown into the equation that it’s hard to predict outcomes. For all we know Al Gore becomes to Clinton as Papa Bush was to Reagan, folks get tired of continuity, and in 2004 a different Republican is elected who performs just the same as George W and is right now about to be unexplainably reelected.
I posted several times in 2000 that I would not vote for Bush if someone came into the voting booth with me and put a gun to my head. I still could not have pulled that lever.
I fancied myself as a “fiscal conservative, social liberal” at the time, generally I spent most of my time congratulating myself on having such a nuanced political position for my age. I was no huge Clinton fan based mostly on the interventionist stuff, but if I’m being honest, probably about the blowjob as well.
Mostly I bought into the “story” about Gore being wooden and hectory, while buying into Bush’s non-interventionist, coalition-building, “compassionate conservative” rhetoric. And it seems to me that Bush was much more capable a politician and speaker back then (I know that isn’t saying much).
Even so, I was conflicted. I started regretting it about two weeks after 9/11. When I started to wake up and apply the evidence that I had been able to gather about Bush in early 2001 to the changed environment. Uh-oh, I remember thinking- I wish I had voted for the wonk. In any event, I voted for Bush in Illinois, so it didn’t mean much. That’s what I tell myself.
To be fair, I thought Gore was a significantly better choice than Bush, but I thought Bush would do for the Republican hardline the same thing that Clinton did for progressives–that is, not much. I thought he would end up as a right-leaning middle-of-the-roader whose one term would pass without consequence.
And I maintain that if 9/11 hadn’t happened, I would have been right. It wasn’t long before 9/11 that he made his “compromise” on stem cell research that made exactly nobody happy. 4-5 years later, when the Republicans made immigration the new wedge issue, he managed to piss off his party hardliners over that. It was only 9/11 and the incredible free pass Bush got over it that made him the disaster he’s been.
What is funny is I remember the ranting of the left wing crowd to. Only thing is…they were ranting about how Bush would outlaw abortion (mostly), cut all the social programs and deregulate everything, that he would bulldoze over all the national parks and give them to his buddies in business, how he would immediately start drilling for oil in Alaska in the worst possible way and ruin the environment…
Etc etc. Blah blah blah. And none of those ranting predictions came to pass. Instead OTHER fuck-ups occurred. And now you are trying to take credit for knowing what? That 9/11 would happen? That Bush would take us into a series of disastrous foreign adventures? That we would have a boom economy followed by a housing bust reminiscent of the dot com bust?
I didn’t vote for Bush in '00…or in '04 for that matter. I didn’t vote for Gore either, nor Kerry. I thought Bush was a boob…and I thought Gore and Kerry were boobs to. I still do…though I have to admit my opinion of Gore has gone up a touch since '00 and perhaps if I had it to do over I would have voted for Gore instead of Bush…simply because Gore COULD have won and the guy I voted for had zero chance. Well, that and the fact that I think Gore would have fucked up to…but not as badly as Bush has.
I was never crazy about either candidate, but I voted for Bush in 2000. I tend to vote for divided government and/or against incumbents when I’m undecided. Like many, I was duped by the “compassionate conservative” schtick, and I liked his tolerant attitude toward immigrants.
Given that I can’t think of a single thing Bush has done well, I’m tempted to say Gore would have been better. But I’m not so sure.
This is just my opinion, but had Gore been president on 9/11, I seriously doubt conservatives would have rallied behind him to the extent that most liberals (briefly) forgot their differences with Bush. Although (if true) this says less about Gore than it does about his ideological opponents, the result would have been that Gore would have been behind the eightball in dealing with the response.
On the other hand, a president who was actually engaged before 9/11 may have been able to prevent it instead of consistently low-prioritizing the anti-terrorism programs within the executive branch and ignoring a national security bulletin that bin Laden was determined to attack within the US.
I was conflicted in the election. While I’m generally socially liberal (except for gun control, which I oppose), I’m also in favor of smaller, fiscally responsible government. In the primaries, I was for McCain.
I thought Bush was not the brightest bulb in the box, but he appeared to be surrounding himself with good people. I voted for him in 2000, but held my nose.
Except for taking action in Afghanistan, IMHO, Bush has been a total disaster. I think he has been the worst president in the modern era. I did not vote for him in 2004.
Dennis Miller had the best line about that, he said Bush surrounded himself with intelligent people like a doughnut hole surrounds itself with doughnut.
reelected.