# The elephant in the room: George W. Bush **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [December 9, 2011, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578 "2011-12-09T02:09:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/1 "2011-12-09T02:09:30Z")
How will the President’s predecessor effect the 2012 Republican nominee? Newt Gingrich’s campaign or Mitt Romney’s campaign cannot ignore the eight years of the Bush administration. Or can they? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/2 "2011-12-09T02:20:23Z")
Why can’t they? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/3 "2011-12-09T02:52:20Z")
I agree with BrainGlutton. The Republican candidate is going to pretend that the years 2001-2009 never happened. The theme will be every problem we have began when Barack Obama took office and every problem will be solved by removing him from office (and cutting taxes). ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/4 "2011-12-09T03:24:20Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The Republican candidate is going to pretend that the years 2001-2009 never happened. Barack Obama and the Obama campaign should “pretend” that history ended in 1999 and that the years 2000 - 2011 never happened, and respond that we need to find our Sputnik moment. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/5 "2011-12-09T04:10:53Z")
Maybe it wasn’t that actually bad. Remember that Bush faced a recession when he entered the Oval Office exacerbated by 9-11 and had one when he got out due to the Democratic policy of encouraging home ownership even for those who could not afford it. But his middle years were of great prosperity. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/6 "2011-12-09T04:20:59Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > due to the Democratic policy of encouraging home ownership even for those who could not afford it. My, what a simplistic and entirely unsurprisingly partisan analysis of the financial meltdown you have there. Whew! I’m overwhelmed by your sophisticated take on things! ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/7 "2011-12-09T04:55:34Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > My, what a simplistic and entirely unsurprisingly partisan analysis of the financial meltdown you have there. Whew! I’m overwhelmed by your sophisticated take on things! It’s one I’ve seen before. Financial deregulation was so overwhelmingly a Republican-led program that Conservative pundits had to really stretch to find something they could use to put the blame on Democrats. Sure, you can say it was all Clinton’s fault for signing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. But then you were stuck with the fact that Gramm, Leach, and Bliley are Republicans, as were the majority of Congressmen who voted for it. But there was the Community Reinvestment Act. This was enacted in 1977 (under Carter!) and it said that financial institutions could not refuse to give mortgages in predominantly black neighbourhoods. It didn’t make any requirement for anyone to make risky mortgages, it just said you couldn’t use race as a risk factor. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act wanted to eliminate this restriction. Clinton drew the line however and said he would veto the bill if the Community Reinvestment Act was overturned. So it survived. Now according to Conservative pundits, this was the sole cause of the 2007 mortgage crisis. The fact that a law enacted in 1977 was not abolished in 1999. “The Democratic policy of encouraging home ownership even for those who could not afford it” pulled the trigger and thirty years later the economy exploded. No other possible explanation. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/8 "2011-12-09T05:01:26Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Maybe it wasn’t that actually bad. Remember that Bush faced a recession when he entered the Oval Office… I believe this is incorrect. Cite? ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/9 "2011-12-09T07:25:27Z")
> [@Kozmik](#): > > Newt Gingrich’s campaign or Mitt Romney’s campaign cannot ignore the eight years of the Bush administration. Or can they? My take is that Republicans have grudgingly accepted that the George W. Bush presidency was a failure, but they don’t know exactly why. Consequently, the Republican nominee next year should just dust off the Bush campaign playbook. I think he could raise the exact same issues and read the same speeches verbatim, and drum up the same support they did the first time around, as long as he doesn’t mention Bush by name. ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/10 "2011-12-09T08:49:45Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > My take is that Republicans have grudgingly accepted that the George W. Bush presidency was a failure, but they don’t know exactly why. Because they logically cannot or will not make the argument that the eight years of the George W. Bush presidency was a failure compared to the eight years of the Obama presidency. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The Republican candidate is going to pretend that the years 2001-2009 never happened. Not only that: the Republican candidate is going to pretend that the years 2013 - 2017 never happen, that Barack Obama will not be re-elected. The Obama campaign response: 2012 never happened. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![joebuck20](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/74df32/32.png) [@joebuck20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joebuck20)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/11 "2011-12-09T14:11:34Z")
Well, for one I don’t see any of them clamoring for Bush’s endorsement, the same democrats did for Clinton’s in 2004 (and likely would have in 2008, had Hillary not run that year). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/12 "2011-12-09T14:24:59Z")
> [@joebuck20](#): > > Well, for one I don’t see any of them clamoring for Bush’s endorsement . . . It would be fun to watch the reactions if he were to offer it. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/13 "2011-12-09T14:42:51Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Maybe it wasn’t that actually bad. Remember that Bush faced a recession when he entered the Oval Office exacerbated by 9-11 and had one when he got out due to the Democratic policy of encouraging home ownership even for those who could not afford it. But his middle years were of great prosperity. That is patently absurd. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > It’s one I’ve seen before. Financial deregulation was so overwhelmingly a Republican-led program that Conservative pundits had to really stretch to find something they could use to put the blame on Democrats. Sure, you can say it was all Clinton’s fault for signing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. But then you were stuck with the fact that Gramm, Leach, and Bliley are Republicans, as were the majority of Congressmen who voted for it. > > But there was the Community Reinvestment Act. This was enacted in 1977 (under Carter!) and it said that financial institutions could not refuse to give mortgages in predominantly black neighbourhoods. It didn’t make any requirement for anyone to make risky mortgages, it just said you couldn’t use race as a risk factor. > > The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act wanted to eliminate this restriction. Clinton drew the line however and said he would veto the bill if the Community Reinvestment Act was overturned. So it survived. > > Now according to Conservative pundits, this was the sole cause of the 2007 mortgage crisis. The fact that a law enacted in 1977 was not abolished in 1999. “The Democratic policy of encouraging home ownership even for those who could not afford it” pulled the trigger and thirty years later the economy exploded. No other possible explanation. Well to be fair, the implementation of the CRA involved quotas. Of course by 2005 the CRA requirements had been watered down and were no longer a constraining factor on bank lending. In fact most of the subprime mortgages were originated by lenders that were not subject to CRA (like Countrywide and Ameriquest) in fact Fannie and Freddie weren’t pressured to take on more subprime mortgages by the fed, they were pressured into taking on more subprime by countrywide (and to be fair they should have told Angelo Mozillo to fuck off but they were too concerned about losing market share 9and their bonuses) that they played ball with Mozillo). > [@Kozmik](#): > > Because they logically cannot or will not make the argument that the eight years of the George W. Bush presidency was a failure compared to the eight years of the Obama presidency. > Not only that: the Republican candidate is going to pretend that the years 2013 - 2017 never happen, that Barack Obama will not be re-elected. > The Obama campaign response: 2012 never happened. 😃 To be fair, other than the war in Iraq, the unfunded tax cuts, the unfunded medicare part D, the politicization of historically non partisan government agencies, and his handling of Katrina, he really wasn’t that bad. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/14 "2011-12-09T17:59:10Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Maybe it wasn’t that actually bad. Remember that Bush faced a recession when he entered the Oval Office exacerbated by 9-11 and had one when he got out … But his middle years were of great prosperity. This is factually false. According to Table A-2 of (big-ass PDF) [Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance in the United States: 2010](http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-239.pdf) (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011), neither median income nor mean income ever regained their pre-Bush maximums during those “middle years…of great prosperity,” even before the crash. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/15 "2011-12-09T18:02:23Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > To be fair, other than the war in Iraq, the unfunded tax cuts, the unfunded medicare part D, the politicization of historically non partisan government agencies, and his handling of Katrina, he really wasn’t that bad. Might add a little incident that happened ten Septembers ago to your list. ---
**Author:** ![Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b38774/32.png) [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swords_to_Plowshares)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/16 "2011-12-09T18:21:35Z")
I don’t think Bush (or Clinton for that matter) are directly responsible for the recessions of the past decade. However, people often seem to forget that the massive deficits started under Bush and that he took Clinton’s surplus and turned it in to a deficit through his tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/17 "2011-12-09T18:43:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Might add a little incident that happened ten Septembers ago to your list. That’s not really fair. I mean, he can’t take credit for staving off all terrorist attacks, like some have claimed for him, but it’s difficult to say that any other president could have prevented 9-11, either. Now, his _response_ to 9-11, that we most certainly can criticize, but **Damuri** already called out the Iraq War, which was the biggest problem with his response. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/18 "2011-12-09T18:58:54Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Remember that Bush faced a recession when he entered the Oval Office cite? ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/19 "2011-12-09T19:06:13Z")
> [@Mosier](#): > > cite? I think he’s confusing recessions with market drops. The Dow dropped dramatically in early 2001 (the dot com bubble burst) and on 9/11, but the economy was not in recession during the Bush years. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578/20 "2011-12-09T19:10:20Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > To be fair, other than the war in Iraq, the unfunded tax cuts, the unfunded medicare part D, the politicization of historically non partisan government agencies, and his handling of Katrina, he really wasn’t that bad. “Besides _that_, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” 😃 [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-elephant-in-the-room-george-w-bush/605578.md?page=2)