I don’t like Bush for these reasons (no particular order):
He didn’t return Nelson Mandela’s call but he did contact Jerry Falwell.
He didn’t take advantage of the patriotic fervor in America after 9/11; there should have been a rally to get the people to cut back on oil consumption. There still should be.
He is too secretive.
He is not an entirely honest person.
He is inarticulate and simplicistic.
He hasn’t chosen good speech writers.
He supports coporate welfare.
His friends don’t seem to get indicted.
He is undermining Constitutional rights.
He seems to have no respect for the environment.
He is virtually ignoring the economic problems of regular citizens.
He is “on leave” too often. Or, as one reporter put it: “in seclusion on his Texas ranch.”
He doesn’t appear to think in terms of “long range” consequences.
It appears that his motives for fighting Iraq may be a little too personal.
He was AWOL from the National Guard for something like six months and didn’t pay any consequences that I am aware of.
He doesn’t seem to be above average in intelligence, despite his degrees.
I don’t want to rehash all of the complaints above, although I share many. I will talk more generally. Every morning I turn on the news and read about the latest developments and policy from the Bush team. Every morning I find myself having legitimate questions and beefs with the policy, and I look for administration sources to explain it. And every morning, they don’t say a word. A key example : his forestry plan. I just for the life of me can’t understand why he favors basically unfettered lumber industry access to public land as a viable option for forest management – there are so many things wrong here and none of them are even rebutted by the administration. Iraq policy, missile defense, “enemy combatants”, the Israel policy, faith-based charity, Enron-induced reforms, the list goes on and on.
It seems to me that the main role of a good president is to provide a vision to the country. This is done by having clear, cohesive policy. Individual parts interact well with each other, even if they may not follow a party line or parts may cause short term problems. A visionary president uses the popular parts to sell the unpopular stuff. Bush doesn’t seem to care a whit about it – the most popular stuff (to the Republican core which as often as not == the church faithful and the corporate elite) gets passed and who cares if none of it fits together. And he won’t address these concerns.
The war on terrorism IMHO explifies this. It has become a jumbled mess. Americans are kept in the dark which leads us to formulate crazy conspiracy theories about Bush’s motives (Is he controlled by the oil companies? Did he know about Sept. 11?) and he does nothing to address them – putting Henry Kissinger as the head of an intelligence committee on 9/11. We go into Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban, but are very wishy-washy in our dealings with the aftermath. We aim to preserve our freedoms by taking IMHO foolish short-sighted cuts in personal liberties. ([url="http://www.theonion.com/onion3847/bill_of_rights.html"obligatory Onion link) He somehow tries to sell missile defense as necessary. This whole Iraq mess (and now North Korea and Iran mess) is tacked on as a necessary part of the war on terrorism even though he has refused to explain how or why. The public has seen no “proof” or even supportive evidence of Saddam and weapons of mass destruction that he would use aggressively against the West. He has taken little action to support human rights in oppressive Arab countries, which probably directly leads to more support for terrorists. He has backed off of Israel-Palestine negotiations, which foments trouble more. Unlike his father, he has repeatedly shunned the help of most of the rest of the world in dealing with terrorism and Iraq, even though IMHO it would be pretty easy to rope them into line with a few simple changes in policy. He lacks an overall vision of Middle East security and peace revolving around American intervention. I fear that he ignores the pieces of the puzzle and muddling in such a fragile set of affairs will only make things much worse. What happens when the Kurds get a state in Northern Iraq – will this destabilize Turkey? What happens when the Shi’ites get a state in Southern Iraq – will this foment more discontent in Saudi Arabia? How can US troops get in there in the chaos surrounding the fall of Iraq to prevent weapons of mass destruction being lost to worse people than Saddam? The list goes on and on.
As I write this, the thread right below it is called “War with Iraq will cost $2 TRILLION, how will Bush pay for it?”
Were there many threads like that during Clinton’s administration?
Yes, the U.S. bombed the snot out of lots of places during the Clinton years (you forgot to mention Yugoslavia), but we never had a ‘Gulf War’ level commitment of ground troops and materiel which is what I think this administration is headed for.