He’s supposedly anti-abortion but I doubt it’s any harder to get one, anywhere in the U.S., now than it was in 2000.
Except Wasilla 
But on a serious note, I agree with the previous posters about women and minorities in position sof power. If Powell hadn’t had to lie to the UN we might have two African Americans running against each other for president.
Bush has improved relations with China and India: which may well be the two most important relationships for the US in the 21st century. In particular he personally took the intiative in pushing the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Arguably his economics team headed by Paulson is doing a decent job in a terrible situation with the current crisis. Certainly Bush has done the right thing by staying out of the way and he could have done a lot worse than Paulson and Bernake to take the lead in handling a crisis. I believe a true-blue ideologue of the Phil Gramm variety could have well tiggered another depression. Of course we could still get Phil Gramm as Treasury Sec if McCain wins but thankfully that prospect is looking less likely by the day.
Overall Bush will be most remembered for the Iraq fiasco but he does have a few genuine achievements to his credit as well.
Of course, according to current conservative doctrine on affirmative action and discrimination, we’re not supposed to care about whether women and minorities are proportionately represented in positions of power. We’re only supposed to care about picking the best person for the job, regardless of race or gender.
So by that standard, the presence of women or minorities in high-level positions in the Bush administration is either a meaningless coincidence, or deplorable pandering to discriminatory affirmative-action liberalthink. In either case, by that standard, it’s not something Bush deserves any credit for.
(Mind you, I personally think it’s a worthwhile goal to increase the representation of underrepresented groups in positions of power, so I personally am willing to give Bush credit for that. I just don’t want to see any anti-affirmative-action conservatives coming along and hypocritically agreeing with this position.)
My picks: I think it was a good thing for the Bush admin to pursue closer ties with India, although I’m still doubtful about that nuclear-deal thingy. Speaking of nukes, I think it was wise for the Bush admin to reverse its original belligerent policy towards North Korea and get into serious talks, although I don’t know if they’ll actually accomplish anything significant by the time Bush cleans out his desk. Oh, and count me in for a thumbs-up on the new Marine Protected Area, too.
Actually I’d like to add that his efforts to keep Cthulhu at bay have also been effective
Our relationship with Israel still seems to be pretty solid. Great Britain, too.
I have to take issue with the idea that “No Child Left Behind” is a positive achievement. This thread isn’t about its shortcomings, however, so I won’t debate those issues. However, I will say that it is a deeply flawed piece of legislation and never should have been supported by the president or passed by congress.
I do think that Bush has a sensible approach to immigration, in particular the problem with illegal aliens from Mexico. Many people seem to want to ignore the realities of the situation, but the president embraces them and says that we ought to find a way to manage immigration better. He’s right.
Yeah, but he has another Cosmic Horror living at the Naval Observatory, so it’s kind of a wash.
Don’t sell him short. He still has three months to go.
On a positive note, he did sign the National Do Not Call Register Bill. Of course, he would’ve been impeached had he not.
His initial economic stimulus package when he first got into office was fairly effective despite the mocking it got at the time. It kept things moving after the slowdown that occurred at the end of the Clinton administration (which wasn’t Clinton’s problem, either, just a natural end of a business cycle). If 9/11 hadn’t slammed the economy hard the stimulus package would have had a lot more visible impact.
Of course this year congress jumped on using the same concept again to try to deal with our current problems since when you have a shiny new hammer every problem looks like a nail. That doesn’t really work when the problem is a leaky bottle of nitroglycerin.
I don’t see how Bush can be credited with doing a good job on terrorism when more Americans have been killed by terrorists during his administration than during every other administration combined.
Bush personally is not racist or sexist and he has women and minorities in his immediate entourage. But the Bush administration can’t say the same. There were more women and minorities appointed to government office during the Clinton administration.
You’re wrong on the second one - anti-American feeling in the UK is far higher now than it was in 2000, largely because of the war.
Cite? For pretty much all that, from SUV sales going way up from Bush too the housing market being from Bush to Mexicans doing all the cheap labor, to Bush being responsible for all the cheap shit from China.
I seem to recall a lot of SUVs on the road starting sometime in the 80’s (Bronco’s had to be the rage back then) so yes this caught my attention. And I just looked and sure enough all the toys I looked at that have dates prior to 2000 have Made In China just like the news ones do.
I approve of the National Book Festival, although it was Laura Bush who co-founded it (with the Library of Congress). But President Bush has apparently managed not to screw it up.
The Clinton administration was particularly proactive about including women and minorities in positions of power. An administration that operates without regard to race or gender would naturally end up with proportionally more white men because at this point in time there are simply more qualified white male candidates. Automatically chalking it up to racism and sexism cheapens the words.
He was right about the Dubai port deal, and Chuck Schumer was indulging in xenophobic pandering.
He hasn’t screwed up the sun. That still works.
:rolleyes:
I’m not going to search for data that describes the obvious increase in SUV sales. You’re not John McCain and I’m not Barack Obama. You can’t just challenge me to some useless task and if I refuse, say I failed.
I’ll point out that I did not automatically chalk it up to racism or sexism. In fact, I specifically stated those were not present.
Personally, I feel it was a partisan issue. The Bush administration placed a higher value on ideological loyalty so it hired more conservatives. Women and minorities are less likely to be conservatives so they were underrepresented in the Bush administration.
On a broader issue, I question your view that there are more qualified white male candidates. I assume you mean on a percentage basis. This would lead to two possible conclusions. Either white men are inherently more talented than minorities or women, so they rise to the top given equal opportunities. Or white men are not inherently more talented than minorities or women, which would imply that if they end up more qualified they must have had better opportunities than minorities or women. Which conclusion would you agree with?