After reading this, I do believe that my brain is about to explode.
Wow.
Even for the Wall Street Journal Op/Ed page, that is a startling level of denial and wrongheadedness.
Right on. I mean, he SAID he would work to earn our support and SAID he will do what he can to earn our trust. Geesh, what more could anyone ask for?
Surely they must be speaking about a different Mr. Bush.
He didn’t work to earn it.
He did nothing to deserve anyone’s trust.
What else ya got?
“He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.”
Here’s what they missed: Bush remains despised by the left and the right, while also continuously disappointing the left and the right.
checks conscience thoroughly Hmmm… over here, take a look in there, how about here…
Nope. No shame whatsoever. Next!
Personally, I think Bush got dealt a bad hand.
- 9/11 was most certainly planned during the Clinton Administration.
- The mortgage collapse was also due to Clinton-inspired idealism.
Iraq was definitely wrong. But, I still believe that Bush was in the wrong office at the wrong time.
I, too, feel that we Americans should be ashamed of not giving Mr. Bush the treatment he deserves.
That sounds like a whole other story right there.
If there are no trees in Washington D.C., surely there are lampposts?
Absolutely; he should have been in the office of the second or third rate used car lot he was selling for at the time, begging his 15th boss in six months not to fire him.
This is one of the most astonishing posts I’ve read in a long, long time. To me, it is simply incomprehensible; YMMV
What part of it is incomprehensible?
Well, then, perhaps you should read (and quote) that part of the article in its entirety rather than the editorially biased version you posted above.
The quoted part, with relevent stuff not omitted, is as follows:
*This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, “Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.”
Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties.
The president’s original Supreme Court choice of Harriet Miers alarmed Republicans, while his final nomination of Samuel Alito angered Democrats. His solutions to reform the immigration system alienated traditional conservatives, while his refusal to retreat in Iraq has enraged liberals who have unrealistic expectations about the challenges we face there.
It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.
Yet it should seem obvious that many of our country’s current problems either existed long before Mr. Bush ever came to office, or are beyond his control. Perhaps if Americans stopped being so divisive, and congressional leaders came together to work with the president on some of these problems, he would actually have had a fighting chance of solving them.
Like the president said in his 2004 victory speech, “We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America.”*
That article makes several good points which you have not unsurprisingly chosen to omit in order to make the article sound more outrageous to your audience.
Don’t forget Katrina and how bad FEMA sucked!
The Clinton administration was all about blowing and sucking.
No, it’s about right. I do not believe an Al Gore administration would have “caught on” to the 9/11 terrorist attack either. And the mortgage crisis can be said (in a non-partisan analysis) to be rooted in the repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagal Act during the Clinton administration. That Act separated the financial institutions of investment banks from depository banks.
So, the two biggest disasters to befall the nation during Bush’s 8 years were not entirely of “his making”.
That said, It’s Bush’s actions in the wake of 9/11 that are so very disappointing. Iraq has been an expensive disaster, was predicated on fabricated charges, and arguably destabilized the region. Yes, “the surge” may be working now – after five years, and more years before we’re done, and for what? It’s been a complete sideshow to the strongholds of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where no doubt Osama Bin Laden is still living. And there has not been any evidence turned up, before, during or after the entire war, that Saddam’s regime was fomenting anti-US terrorism, harboring Al-Quaeda or possessed WMDs.
In addition, the treatment of detainees from the Middle East and elsewhere at Guantanamo Bay has gotten little if any useful information in combating terrorism, but has done a great deal to create new terrorists and engender sympathy for those accused.
And I also feel that Bush and Alan Greenspan are accountable for the long run of cheap credit and proliferation of the mortgage-backed derivatives that ultimately fed into the real estate bubble and crash. Both were raised, multiple times, as Bad Things by prominent voices, especially when the real estate market looked very much like a bubble in the wake of the Dot-Com crash that preceded it by just a few years.
But this is getting needlessly GD.
I’ll just wrap by saying that while I am excited to see Obama win, I do not envy the task before him. George Bush entered the White House in 2000 with the country riding a high we may not see again in our lifetimes, while Obama is taking over the country from him in about as bad a state as we’ve seen it economically since the Great Depression.
Bush’s definition of “work[ing] with both Democrats and Republicans” was telling them what he was going to do, and then calling it “bipartisanship” if they agreed with him, and “partisan bickering” if they didn’t.
Because most of his ideas have sucked.
So, he nominates a judge that Republicans don’t like, then replaces her with one that angers only Democrats, and this is a stunning example of his “bipartisan efforts”?
Well, when just about everyone thinks you’re an idiot, it might be time to start accepting that they may be right.
And yet, over the past 8 years, the President has singlemindedly pushed his own narrow-minded agenda, ignoring advice from Democrats, from Republicans, and even sometimes from his own advisers.
While there are plenty of problems that he might not have caused, he certainly exacerbated a lot of them with his awful policies and his own partisan way of doing things. I understand that some people still support Bush; that’s their right. But the idea that he has attempted any real bipartisan leadership is a fairy tale from cloud cuckoo land.
Well, if he said it in his victory speech, then it MUST be true. Look, it’s right there; he told us he was going to be bipartisan. I guess it doesn’t matter that nearly all the evidence from his Presidency contradicts that claim.
Bush always welcomed Democrats. All they had to do was agree with him completely and not bother to give him input.
On point 1, above:
The Clinton administration specifically warned the incoming Bush people about the likelyhood of an attack from Bin Laden and were completely ignored.
Point 2:
I am sick to death of Republicans doing this. Every bad thing that happens when a Dem is in office is that administration’s fault. Everything bad that happens when a Rep is in office is the previous administration’s fault. Bullshit! If it happened on your watch it’s your responsibility. Shirker!
Get it through your head–Bush sucks and always has! Don’t just take my word for it, look at his approval rating. There is a reason for the backlash and the swing towards the other party: People hate the fucker and for good reason.
It’s reassuring to know that someone will be around to give Bush blow jobs in his retirement years.