“I guess what I don’t understand is the sheer VENOM some people have for the man. “
—Hmmmm . . . I still don’t understand the avalanche of anti-Clinton venom, still ongoing after he’s out of office . . .
And there’s the rub, Eve. I was thinking just that prior to your post but can’t we agree that venom from either side doesn’t help anything?
I didn’t vote for GWB and I disagree with about half of his positions, but I have to respect someone who’s willing to do what he says he’ll do. It’s kind of a rarity in politics. Call me a cynic if you will!
The difficult point of the OP is that, while GWB has gotten some things through congress it’s still WAY too early to determine whether his accomplishments are worthy of the office.
What we need is a good global crisis. Like Aliens invading or something. Then we’ll find out whether he’s any good or not!
In my not-so-humble opinion Bush is an incompetent, dim-witted, corrupt, despotical, coke head who isn’t fit to run a McDonalds. But maybe my opinion would be different if I was getting a check for $500 like the rest of the population (which I’m not.) That would make all his atrocities A-O.K.
Well, I’m a republican who didn’t vote for him; I didn’t vote for the president in this last election. Long story. I’m in california, my vote would not have made the difference.
I think he’s doing a pretty good job - call it a B+/A-. I’m a little unhappy with the complexities of the tax cut; I think it works out that there is a two year window where you can actually take advantage of some of them. I’m happy he’s been held over the fire on environmental issues - I think environmentalists were too inclined to give Clinton a pass, and I think they would have done the same thing to Gore.
This is one of the best things about Bush being in office. For eight years I spent a lot of time being embarrassed by the more extreme members of my party, as they spewed venom around. Its fun to watch democrats do EXACTLY the same thing. More liberal members of the democratic party lose a little more of the moral highground everytime they use the word “shrub” or “dubya”.
Does anyone else think that if the author of an unflattering, unauthorized biography of Clinton had committed suicide, the folks on talk radio and at the Free Republic would be having a field day?
Dr. J
I’m definitely on the “throw the bum out!” side. Of all the messages posted so far, only Qwertyasdfg has come close to echoing my disdain for this utterly incompetent poser who’s sitting in the Oval Office right now.
To leave policy issues out of it, I will note that my previous employer went from hiring 20-25 people a month back in July 2000, to laying off 75% of their work force by April 2001 (not coincidentally, the boom times stopped after Dubya was selected by the Supreme Court). Not only did I lose a well-paying job and had to go through two months without pay, but I’ve also had the displeasure of watching my energy bills skyrocket because the bastard gave his energy cabal buddies free rein to gouge the public. Toss in all of his domestic- and foreign-policy missteps along the way, and you can see why I’m royally pissed off at the dweeb.
Ah, but the difference is that Bill Clinton was duly elected into office. Like him or not, but he deserved the respect because he reflected the will of the voting populace. George W. Bush, on the other hand, was not duly elected, insisted on blocking all efforts to count voters’ ballots, and got into office only because five conservatives on the Supreme Court abrogated their pledges of impartiality and ran down the clock to help their preferred candidate get into office. Bush is not deserving of the title of “President”, and “Dubya” is the only PG-13 term that’s appropriate for him.
…hmm…amazing how EVERYTHING wrong in the country, has to be the current president’s fault. Your state has a faulty energy infrastructure that has been gasping under near-fascist controls and limits? Bush’s fault. E-business with faulty business model tanking? Bush’s fault. Your dog is sick? Bush’s fault. :rolleyes: Strawmen are easier to build than actual research…
Horrible. Aside from the required Republican checklist - pro-life, anti-gun control, school voucher, gaybashing - he doesn’t do or say anything. He just smiles like an idiot and talks in platitudes. If he had any kind of plan for the economy, the recovery might have started by now. Maybe he’ll die or go to jail or something. At least he’d be doing something, instead of sitting like a bump on a log.
I don’t understand what you mean. Here are the popular vote totals from the '92 and '96 elections:
1992 popular vote
Clinton - 44,909,806
Bush - 39,104,550
Perot - 19,742,240
Marrau – 291,631
Other – 378,532
1996 popular vote
Clinton - 47,402,357
Dole - 39,198,755
Perot - 8,085,402
Nader - 685,128
Browne - 485,798
Other - 420,194
How would a straight popular vote have prevented a Clinton presidency?
I think the President is doing a GREAT job. In fact, he has far exceeded my expectations. To wit:
He has ensured that international support for his administration, particularly from the First World, will be minimal at best and uncooperative in general. This actually helps the rest of the world toward an autonomy they never needed to have when the United States was a beneficient player on the world stage. So Bush is arguably doing more to help the world than his predecessors. Furthermore, every day the Bush administration stays in office is a day where the world economy matures and insulates itself from American manipulation.
He has completely failed to dispel the worldwide perception (except, of course, to the minority of Americans who support him) that he is not qualified for the job. In fact, his callous posturing has ensured that the world press will greedily feed on every gaffe he makes for the foreseeable future. Why, just the other day the British headlines were chuckling about how Bush called a classrom of English students “great Americans,” or something similar. That will be of no concern to loyal Joe Sixpack, but any American with a toe in the ocean will start to feel the water get colder.
On the domestic front, he very unwisely eschewed the traditional minority President’s role of compromiser and instead has continued to pursue a “divide and divide” path. He is therefore ensuring that those who might support him in the future are falling away from his position and his party like leaves from a diseased tree. Those moderates who are fiscally conservative, environmentally friendly, non-sectarian, pro- gay, choice, civil rights, space, historical preservation, Indian, and even military will all have to consider very carefully whether they are willing to allow this narrow-minded President to continue his agenda. Those who support free information exchange, better education, and a tax-free Internet will be getting on the bus soon. The one-issue hicks will of course remain with the President, which should effectively isolate their influence in the next election, assuming the President continues to fuck up as royally as he has to date.
He’s also managed to alienate moderates in the House and the Senate. Both assemblies have openly defied his budget proposal and have continued to keep power concentrated on the Hill instead of in the White House. There are an unusual number of bills out there which attempt to take power away from the Executive Branch.
And not without good reason. The cynical attempt to force a conservative agenda through the President’s executive offices by appointing place-holder sub-Department heads not subject to Senate approval has run aground on the various departmental regulatory safety nets set up for just such an occasion. The President now appears to have less authority over his own offices than any President in the last twenty-five years. An angry and now divided Senate is not likely to help him, either. The few Departmental nominees he has managed to get approved are overwhelmed and it will be months, perhaps years, before the President’s agenda will be back on track.
In short, these past six months were used exactly as many of us feared. They were used to prosecute a minority, elitist, mandate-less agenda contrary to the wishes of most Americans and people worldwide. And despite having everything in his favor, the President failed, miserably in some respects.
Keep up the good work, Mr. President. You, more than anyone else in the world today, are working to make America and the world a better place. Not by actually doing anything constructive, compassionate, or beneficial, but by ensuring that your positions will be rendered untenable by anyone who follows behind you, for the foreseeable future.
rjung:
What a crock.
The “boom times” ended well before then: in March or so of 2000. That’s when the dot-com bubble burst, and sent the stocks of such internet companies as PriceLine.com, Pets.com, DoubleClick.com, DrKoop.com and countless others toward the cellar. You have a personal-experience anecdote to support your timing? Here’s mine to counter it: I was working for Kozmo.com at the time. In January of 2000, we had gotten a $150M infusion of capital from Amazon, and there were plans to expand the service to some thirty cities (including London) by the end of the year and, of course, to go public by April. By the time March had come in and gone out like a lion, the IPO was pushed back indefinitely, and the expansion was cut back to a dozen cities. By June, Kozmo.com had its first round of layoffs, which included yours truly. The company hung on into the Bush Administration…barely, before closing its doors.
The job of mine that immediately followed that was with an internet consulting firm, which also eventually shut its doors…on December 1, a good week or so before the U. S. Supreme Court declared that the law as written had to be obeyed, leading to the determination that G. W. Bush was the lawful president-elect. (You push your opinion on the matter, I’ll push mine.)
In addition, the Microsoft judgment caused further problems in the high-tech market. That timing doesn’t align with your assertion either.
The boom times did not end at the time the Supreme Court handed down the decision in the Gore vs. Bush case. It takes an incredible amount of pre-existing anti-Bush prejudice to even begin to imagine so.
Chaim Mattis Keller
I think that people like rjung embarass their party no matter who is president. He seems a rather average president in that he has little to no actual power.
To those individuals who apparently believed I was attempting to spark a ‘great debate’, I cordially invite you to read my post again. I in no way invited debate on the reasons I hold the opinion I do. Had I intended to do so, be assured, I would have done so in the appropriate forum, but I do thank those who meant well in advising me of GD.
The topic was to give an opinion as to how we thought the current president was performing in office, and the initial poster asked us specifically not to make it a great debate or pit forum. Instead of simply stating ‘yes’ or ‘no’, I chose to state my view of certain events that had formed my opinion. I did not take issue with anyone’s reasons for their opinion, and will not do so now. I chose to share my reasons because I actually like to read how people form their opinions, even if I radically disagree with them.
I hope that those who took issue with my reasoning accept that out of courtesy to the initial poster, I do not intend to respond to them. I do hope they and other Dopers will exercise the same courtesy to the initial poster and simply state their opinion (and hopefully, their basis for it) without flaming those who believe differently.
With that being said, I will simply say that for the reasons stated in my first post, my opinion of Bush’s performance in office remains an unchanged thumbs-down.
P.S. cornflakes…no, not Pasadena, but the state is a very big armpit to someone addicted to rain and highs in the 70’s. 
Ah, what one will do for love and money…
I for one, don’t like the guy or his presidency.
But then again, I am a sex-positive feminist agnostic green pinko.
That said, he is using his political agenda to straitjacket charitable organizations (by not allowing them to even mention that abortion exists). He tried to cut birth control benefits in federal health plans, a move which worries me. He has shown his apparent disregard for our well being with his CO2 position, indifference to arsenic laced drinking water and his rejection of the Kyoto treaty. He has made stupid comments to North Korea and his millile defence ideas are a little scary.
All I can hope for is to get through his term without being bombed or poisoned.
I have a new hero, and his name is pkbites.
Funny how the fact that the “Not in my backyard” cabal that’s been blocking energy supply increases for the last several years has nothing to do with it, but this guy who had it unexpectedly thrown in his lap immediately upon his accession to the office is totally responsible.
I’d have snipped, but there didn’t seem to be an appropriate place.
My view of the election is quite different. On the one hand, you have George W. saying “all right - enough already.” George didn’t throw it to the Supreme Court, and they ruled as they were obligated to do by the Supreme Law of the Land. On the other is Algore saying “But wait! I’ll bet I’ll win if we count them THIS way!” He made himself look like a petulant little boy who couldn’t figure out that he wasn’t going to win.
So it wasn’t a mandate. Who cares? In fact, the last President to have won in anything resembling overwhelming popular support was Reagan in '84.
It’s the people who won’t give him a chance that bug me. Those who decided well before the election was even over that he was going to do a bad job, and who have grasped at the teeniest little things to prove it. (I still enjoy Barbra Streisand, in '92, threatening to move to England if Bush Sr were elected again. Yeah - that made me think twice about where my vote was going. :rolleyes: )
Alright, my first draft of this was pure Pit material. Here’s the toned down version:
He’s been stunningly awful. His every action and policy has been an excercise in nincompoopery. When was the last time a President was stupid enough to drive a Senator out of his own party? What a moron. He’s not emulating Reagan, he’s emulating Coolige (Why couldn’t he emulate Harrison?). The Democrats should be able to run John Hinkley against this buffoon and beat him.
I never thought we American could elect someone so jaw-droppingly terrible. And I was right.
And that’s the toned down version . . .
It worked for the GOP when Clinton was elected President. Heck, it’s working for the California GOP when Grey Davis got into the governor’s office. I personally heap much of the blame for California’s power “shortage” on Pete Wilson, but that’s a different matter all together. As it is, Bush’s repeated insistence for renewed drilling and mining as a “cure”, coupled with his refusal to impose any sort of price controls in the West, merely reaffirm my belief that he’s just dancing to the energy companies’ tunes. Is it really any surprise that many of his top advisors also have stakes in those selfsame companies?
As I’ve mentioned several times in assorted threads, read Vincent Bugliosi’s The Betrayal of America to have all this nonsense refuted. I remain in awe at this slim book, which uses simple, common English (backed with a truckload of citations) to show how the US Supreme Court grossly overstepped its authority in halting the recounts and running down the clock.
Well, if he had been duly elected, I’d gladly give him a fair shake, just like the one I gave his father. As it is, the Bush campaign’s assorted election-derailing hijacks back in November and December were enough to convince me that the guy is nothing but a shameless thief and liar – sentiments which have been borne out by his first seven months in office.
See, I feel even better. There are rabid wolves in the democratic party, too. It wasn’t just us. Cool.
The more I read this, the more I like it. Forget about all those complicated economic reasons involving difficult ideas like easy lending leading to over investment, faulty business plans, the historic business cycle, the whole bit about corporate profits not being able to expand faster than gdp, historically low oil prices fueling a boom, historically high consumer debt loads, rapidly changing world economy, ongoing recession in one of our biggest trading partners, historically strong dollar, etc, etc. The answer is “Its dubya’s fault!”. Saves a lot of thinking.
Well, you’ve got me there. Bush’s answer to the shortage is to increase supply while holding down demand. Clearly, he’s an idiot. If only he’d implemented price controls, perhaps Californians would have conserved electricity.
Labdad, without the elctoral college no one would ever back a hillbilly from Arkansas, or any other small (population wise) state. Every presidential election would be a showdown between the west coast and the northeast. Most if not all states with little population, like Arkansas, would be ignored - as would any candidate from said states. Clinton would never had been on the ticket if we elected presidents by popular vote.
Back to the OP, I think its entirely to early to label Bush. Six months into his presidency he’s still getting a feel for things.