If Iraq flourishes and the US Economy rebounds under the next President Bush will be remembered as one of the best presidents in history.
What’s that got to do with the price of sex?
If Iraq flourishes and the U.S. economy rebounds under the next president, the next president will get the credit, and deserve it.
Attacking a country on false pretenses will go down as a horrible move by thinking people. They were no threat to us. They had no weapons of mass destruction. They were not affiliated with AlQueda. That makes it impossible to justify regardless of the final results. The crippling cost will be borne by future generations. Yes. This is another response to a snotty xt post.
He’ll never be the worst in my book. That position belongs to James Buchanan, who saw the Civil War coming and did nothing (or at least nothing remotely effective) to prevent it.
How do you figure? He’s made lots of boneheaded decisions, and very few good ones. Even if Iraq somehow turns itself around, I doubt Bush is going to get much of the credit, because he’s done nothing to bring about that flourishment except not withdraw.
As for the US economy rebounding, what exactly has Bush done to lay the foundation for that rebound? I agree that it’s ludicrious to blame Bush for the dotcom bust, or even for the housing bust. But even so, at best Bush’s economic record is at best a “muddling along” record. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, except Bush also has a few high profile disasters added in, plus one might hope a muddle-through president could at least avoid piling up another mountain of debt.
And on the political front, Bush and Karl Rove have marginalized the Republican party. I suppose if you’re a liberal that should count in his favor, but as a conservative, don’t you think a conservative president should work to make conservative policies more popular, instead of the other way around?
I don’t think Bush has done irreparable harm to the country, aside from the Iraq debacle (And aside from that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?). The Iraq debacle can at least stand as a bad example for future presidents to avoid. But he hasn’t done much good of any note, and he’s diminished the soft power of the United States to influence world events dramatically.
What could he have done?
Let’s face it – if people are seriously talking about whether you’re one of the worst presidents in history, well, then, you’re probably one of the worst presidents in history. No smoke without fire in this instance. If we who lived through the Bush administration can find practically nothing good to say about it, how are future generations of historians going to suddenly find something good to say? Whatever happens with Iraq subsequently, Bush will get zero credit, since six years in, when Bush leaves office, we’ll be at a worse place there than when we started. Iraq will someday, somehow get better – and Bush won’t have had anything to do with it.
Exactly, just like Jefferson Davis doesn’t get credit for ending slavery.
It could happen that Bush could be known as one of the best presidents. Not bloody likely, IMO, but what if 60-100 years from now:
Iraq is known for for being a stable democracy and influences other ME countries to do the same. This is thought have having triggered in Islam the removal of religion from politics and so Islam truely becomes a religion of peace. Prosperity floods the region.
Hey, it could happen…
That is the Bush presidency in a nutshell; he knows things like this which reinforce or demonstrate the expected presidential persona are a way to score easy points in the media machine (for a converse example, witness the hand-wringing over Barack Obama’s bowling score).
I get the feeling that on the plus side he’ll be credited with creating a hugely successful public face, a carefully managed charisma and grasp on interpersonal politics that, quite frankly, is the only thing that has kept him from being run out of town on a rail for his utterly failed policies at home an abroad. He has proven that the same popularity tactics found in high-school elections for student council can be successfully employed when it matters at the federal level–at least enough to let a C-student like him to slip by. Future presidents will take to heart this lesson, and be well-advised to spend less time in economic policy discussions and more working on their fastball.
In 60 years, oil will have been supplanted as a primary energy source, leaving Iraq and much of the Middle East with…nothing. I don’t envision any scenario that produces a bright future for the Middle East.
Well, contemporary observers called Lincoln a tyrant, and the aforementioned Truman was worked into a pun (To err is Truman…)
I’m certainly not saying Bush will be numbered among the greats - just that your opinions on him right now ultimately mean less to the history books than what he does.
Even if that were the case, oil would still be valuable for making chemicals and lubricants.
And fertilizers.
Yes, but we all know what happens when demand drops by 50% or more.
I can’t think of one redeeming quality of GW Bush or his administration. Well, I think the compassion in compassionate conservative was kind of nice, but Bushy obviously defines compassion differently than most. He will be, should be, considered the worst president in U.S history. He doesn’t even have a drinking problem anymore to blame for his lack of judgment or incompetence. I actually think he might be mentally ill, which is my non professional opinion. 
Well, we’ll have to wait a few decades to see how good his court appointees are.
Plus as down as some people are on the economy right now, people in a few decades aren’t going to look back and compare this to the late '70s or the great depression.
I don’t know why we continue with this idiocy of being world policeman.
I’d like to see China take over the rle for a while-we need a breather!
I thought it was obvious, but if you need me to draw you a map I will…
The economy was not ‘strong’ when Bush et al took over…the dot com bust had already happened and if we weren’t in recession we were skating the edge (like now). Unless you want to hammer the next president for Bush’s economic failures (which were numerous), you to blame Clinton for the dot com bust and recession that happened at the start of Bush’s term the same as Bush is going to be blamed for the housing melt down and recession.
The rest of gonzo’s post…
…is his standard content free ranting.
If you still don’t get it then I don’t know what the price of sex is either…
You obviously didn’t READ my post so I’m unsure how you figured out it was snotty. Oh…well, on review you read the first line and then your head exploded I suppose.
While all of the stuff you say in this post bears some resemblance to the truth none of it makes Bush the worst president…it simply ranks him near the bottom. Unless of course Iraq actually works out…in which case my GUESS is that his reputation among HISTORIANS will rise somewhat. Placing him, maybe, in the bottom half instead of the bottom quarter.
My only question is…what about what I’m saying do you not understand? Obviously there is a comprehension disconnect here.
-XT