What would a Bush presidency have looked like without 9/11 or another major terrorist attack occurring? Would he be as widely reviled as he is today? Would the United States have invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, or some other country? Would he go down in the history books as simply a mediocre president, or maybe an even brilliant one? Would he have even run for re-election? Would the Democrats have taken the office in 2008?
Personally, I believe he would have gone on in quite mediocrity, and possibly been in the league of the Carter administration in terms of influence and relevance thirty-odd years down the line. Thoughts?
The 2002 midterms would’ve gone a lot worse for the Republicans, and he would’ve lost in 2004. 2006 probably would’ve been a quiet midterm and Kerry or whoever probably would’ve won re-election in 2008. Then a Republican wave in 2010.
Sounds like a wash, but two Supreme Court nominees go to a Democrat instead of Bush. As for his actual presidency, he’d be a big zilch. No major accomplishments, but ironically, that would probably make him rate higher than he does now.
We might not be in the financial mess we are in today without 9/11, but that is pure conjecture on my part.
I hate to give GW Bush credit for anything but he did do a lot in the fight against AIDs. Even so, I think he will be regarded as mediocre at bast and a total disaster at worst.
September 11th weakened the economy for a while, but it didn’t cause the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 that led to the recession. It’s possible the economy would have been on stronger footing going into those events, but when Bush came in it wasn’t doing great. I suppose there would have been at least one less war, so there would have been less debt - although the Bush administration kind of kept the wars off the books anyway.
Well, if there was no 9-11, the Recession of 2001 would have been less drastic, which means Bush would have had a pretty decent economy in 2004. Whether or not he’d have found some other pretext to go to war with Saddam is another matter.
I think the real problem Democrats had in 2004 was the same problem the Republicans have in 2012, that after 8 years of holding the presidency, that sucks all the air out of the room, and your bench isn’t very deep. I mean, seriously, John Kerry was really the best the Democrats could find? Really?
As for the 2008 “Great” Recession, I think that would have happened regardless of who was in. I honestly don’t see any Democrat actually trying to put the crimp on the insane housing market in 2005 or 2006, when so many people were getting rich.
I think he’d have had a fairly quiet and unremarkable presidency that focused mainly on domestic issues. Probably the economy would have been in better shape after the recession and dot com bubble bust, but it would have done nothing for the eventual fall due to the housing bubble…in fact, it might have made the fall worse, as companies might have focused even more on that, if the economy was doing well in the early 2000’s.
I can’t see any plausible way we would have invaded either Afghanistan or Iraq without 9/11. We might have bombed targets in either or both countries (we had an ongoing fight with the Iraqis over the no-fly zones), but invasion? Not a chance, not unless something else major happened.
Would Bush have won a re-election? Probably would have been entirely based on what the economy was doing. If it was doing well, then he probably would have gotten a second term. If it was still rocky then probably not. I doubt Bush’s domestic agenda would have been all that popular, and my guess is that the left would have focused on that. The entire focus of the country would have been different, IMHO.
Bush had serious questions about his legitimacy until 9-11. I remember the press asking Al Gore who said, “George Bush is MY president.” Thus kind of endorsing him and ending the controversy of Florida.
I do believe the Great Recession would’ve happened. I don’t see any reason for the Democrats to win in 2004 as long as GW Bush could hold the economy the same.
Economic conditions tend to drive election.
It may have made a huge difference in 2008 as Mr Obama’s speech in 2004 really got him noticed. And this probably wouldn’t have been such a big thing. Had Oprah not encouraged him, he would’ve been satisfied with being senator and you would have Hillary Clinton as president today.
As for Iraq, I am leaning slightly to more than 50% chance it’d happen. GW Bush was out to avenge Saddam Hussein for the attempt on his family’s lives.
How? How would Bush have gotten us into a war in Iraq? The president isn’t a king…he can’t just order a major military operation like an invasion. How would he have justified it? How would he have gotten the support needed for such a huge operation? The funding? The popular support of the American people? Foreign support from regional countries and our allies? Countries like Saudi and Kuwait so we could stage troops out of them?
Even WITH 9/11 it took time to build enough support to get us into there. And there was resistance, even though with 9/11 popular opinion was for the US to Do Something™. Without that I’d like to know how you guys think Bush et al would have the political capital or political support to even attempt something like an invasion (with boots on the ground) of another country halfway around the world. Which foreign governments to you suppose would have supported us in a full scale invasion?? Where would enough support in Congress have come from? How would the American people have taken such a venture and the associated costs??
Pretty much this, though I don’t know about the 2010 Republican wave. I think a lot of people, Democrats and liberals, had their minds permanently changed when we were attacked. Without 9/11, it would have allowed people like Zell Miller to continue being a Democrat without worrying about looking weak on foreign policy
I’d imagine that he would have tried to justify it in exactly the same way that he did. That Saddam was a menace to world peace, and had WMD, and supported terrorists, etc. It wouldn’t have had quite the same cachet in a world where 9/11 never happened, but it’s not as though this has never been done before. Hell, his father invaded Panama on flimsier grounds.
Sure, the US would have been diplomatically isolated, and would never have been able to get security council backing. So what? There’s a good chance that the UK would have gone along. Had Bush waited until 2006, perhaps Canada too. As for public opinion, that’s a funny thing: it’s never been that hard to convince the public to largely get behind whatever the current military action is. At least for a while, anyway. Even Vietnam was widely viewed as a good idea in '65.
President Bush might without losing political capital due to the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina (which gets butterflied away) might make a determined effort to reform the financial structure (preventing the Great Recession) and institute immigration reform. George W Bush as a result is remembered as a moderate Republican who ruled in a time of prosperity like his father or perhaps Eisenhower or Coolidge.
He justified it as part of a greater threat to US security post-911. At that time the American people were shocked, afraid, angry and wanted blood. He had a lot of support in Congress because they were hearing the same anger and fear, and Bush was riding that anger and fear, and responding to that anger and fear. Without that I can’t see him getting anything like that level of support for some foreign adventure. How would he get the support and how would he get the US to PAY for it? He couldn’t just send the troops over there on his own authority. He couldn’t just order the invasion of another country without both internal and external support. So…how does he get it? The Republicans didn’t have the votes to just ride over the Democrats, and I seriously doubt he’d be able to get any other foreign countries on board for a full blown invasion of Iraq.
Those are nice buzzwords, but you haven’t explained how that would get anyone other than a few neo-cons on board with a full blown invasion. How would he get authorization from the Congress? How would he be able to get other countries on board? Invading Panama was a small scale affair, and we didn’t need lots of foreign support. Invading Iraq was a huge undertaking, costing potentially hundreds of billions of dollars and having the potential for many thousands of US soldiers to be killed or injured. It required by in from at least Saudi or Kuwait, since we had to stage up troops and supplies in one of those countries in order to have a successful invasion. It also, realistically, would have had to have at least some buy in from our European allies, since that’s where we moved troops from, and also we had to overfly their territory to launch air strikes from Air Force assets.
How does he do all that? How does he justify the expense and risk? How does he get the American people on board? How does he get his own party fully on board? How does he get the Democrats on board? If he doesn’t do all those things, how does he invade Iraq? Again, he’s not a king or God Emperor…he can’t simply order an invasion of another country with the expectation that it would happen. He could order air strikes, or missile strikes…but not a full up invasion.
What is your evidence that the UK would have just gone along with a full blown invasion of Iraq with no pretext? Iraq had been the same threat as it had been for over a decade…the threat hadn’t changed. Why would things have changed if Bush waited until 2006?
As for Vietnam, that’s totally apples to oranges. We were already involved in Vietnam since the early 60’s, and we didn’t invade Vietnam…we sent in troops into a sovereign nation that was at least nominally an ally. The French had been involved in Vietnam before us, and sending in advisers and slowly ramping things up is completely different than a full up invasion of a sovereign nation that’s halfway around the world…and one likely to cost billions and for no publicly perceived reason at that time. Without 9/11 the American people just wouldn’t have been into it, and I can’t see why the Democrats would have gone along. The anti-war movement would have been huge if Bush simply tried to invade Iraq under those circumstances, and I can’t see any of our allies going along…certainly I can’t see them committing troops to the cause. At best I can see them staying neutral.
I don’t see it. This is something that has been said on this board for years, and I’ve never gotten into this discussion and just let it go, but I think it’s time for someone who believes in this to walk us all through how it could possibly happen. Give me some details here. Politically, how does Bush get the votes. How does he get the support of enough Americans given no 9/11 to anger the public and suppress the anti-war movement? How does he get countries like Saudi and Kuwait to go along and let us stage troops out of their countries for an invasion? How does he get our other allies to either support us or stay neutral? Why would Europe just go along and not protest vehemently?
I am sure this is not supposed to say “if there had been no September 11th, The Butterfly Effect would have prevented Katrina.” That wouldn’t make any sense at all. But I can’t figure out what it’s supposed to mean.
I realize you want to make the man look as good as possible, but there is no reason to think this suddenly would have become a priority for him. You’re looking at this in hindsight and assuming they knew the financial crisis would be a problem but they didn’t. To the contrary, Bush pro-home ownership policies were one factor that contributed to the housing crisis. Neither Republicans nor Democrats showed any interest in reforming the financial system during Bush’s term (or before it), and when the housing market started to fail in 2007, neither they nor Bush made any moves to address that nor the financial market. I don’t see how those reforms would have fit with his politics. It’s more likely he would have made a bigger push for Social Security and Medicare reform, and immigration reform is another possibility. I don’t know if any of them could have been successful.
9/11 was a net plus for Bush. He used it to excuse a lot of his failures and to justify otherwise unpopular policies. His administation’s reputation would be worse than it is now.