Why is the Bush Administrations ineptitude forgiven so easily?

Great Debates
1

This is, of course, a companion to my “Why are Bush’s lies forgiven so easily” thread. Please note that this time I specified “Bush Administration” and am moving away from the semi-questionable (for those in denial) topic of lying, and focusing on ineptitude.

Despite its continued flubs and blundering, the Bush Adminsitration maintains a slight popularity with an increasibly polarized public (“I am a uniter”, huh?). Boggling everything from Afghanistan, Iraq and foreign relations in general to stabbing the concept of a balanced budget in the eye repeatedly to building space lasers and openly mocking the progress made in civil rights in the past 30 years.

Bush’s “good ol’ boy” charm with NASCAR fans and the cunning of people like Karl Rove behind him somehow keep the administration from collapsing under its own stupidity. Their every transgression is forgiven, their blunders ignored, their double talk totally unquestioned (Does he want to get Osama or not? Who knows? Are we still chasing terrorists? Why not, when we’re holding so many illegally without access to any rights at all? But I betcha he won’t get called for waffling by the Republicans!).

This is all coming, mind you, from an audience who objects to a man making a documentary pointing out nothing but true facts. Their prime complaint against him is, apparently, that he is fat. I knew Bush et al were against the gays, but apparently the overweight are to lose their freedom of speech!

And to think… this was a country that, not 6 years ago, was spending millions of dollars and wasting thousands of manhours because of a politician having an extramarital affair (completely unheard of! Even though one of the prime gang leaders had also had an extramarital affair). If you’ll recall, there was vehemence! How DARE the President lie!

Then there were Clinton’s ghastly foreign relations. He had sent young men to die in trying to overthrow a dictator filling up mass graves, even though he never fought himself! Of course, every detail of every surveilance photograph faced scrutiny by the Republicans, some even doubting that the mass graves existed.

I recall a time when Clinton fired a few cruise missiles at suspected Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan… why did he do that… oh, right, because Al Qaeda bombed two of our embassies. Again, Republicans across the nation were aghast! Another war? Firing into other countries?! Chastising the Taliban?! And worst of all, all that attacking the terrorists would do was raise anti-Americanism around the globe and cause more terrorism!

But surely, Bush has never done anything remotely approaching the horrors of the Clinton regime. I mean, despite the budget getting trimmed and actually getting some money back to pay off the national debt, approaching a real balanced budget, it was the worst of times!

This isn’t a world where the same things could be done - and botched completely - by a Republican without the Republicans taking a serious look around them. After all, they are fair and balanced, fighting an uphill battle against the liberal media. After so many years of fruitless crying into their pillows because the country ran so smoothly that the worst thing that happened in 8 years was a blowjob, surely the Republicans would be objective and selective of their leader, to assure that he could never do any of these horrible things.

Right?

2

Whoops, missed an apostrophy in the subject. Please don’t flame me for that. I know it never crossed your mind, right?

3

Jake, I’m with you most of the way, but I think you’re wasting your breath.

Bush is above reproach for most GOP’ers–as is his cabinet. They have not been conned by a good ole boy who has no conscience and the morals of Templeton the Rat (Charlotte’s Web–sorry, I have a 1st grader)—they voted for and support him BECAUSE he has no conscience, and the morals of a rat.
IMO, history will not be kind to Bush2–and rightly so. Unfortunately, we aren’t looking in the rearview window of his admin, yet.

For all the GOP’s handwringing and astonishment that Clinton was the “Teflon” president–Bush is pretty damn indestructible.

Now, as to his cabinet–I can only shake my head. Apparently he approves of and rewards imcompetence (Condi, Rummy) and holds loyalty as the most esteemed trait.

I do think that along with the Dems, the press has lost it’s spine and balls somewhere along the way.

4

Obviously, to Republicans, Bush is doing a good job, just like, to Democrats, Clinton did a good job.

5

Right. And in that case, all American politics is petty partisanship and self-interest.

But there’s one difference; Clinton’s regime was incredibly benign. He’ll be remembered as a do-little President. Bush’s reign of terror (literally) is pockmarked by foulups, misestimations, lack of oversight, and just plain foolishness that has, halfway through, toppled the governments of 2 countries and left them in near anarchy, as well as manage to kill a bucketload of people, firmly establishing future tensions and terrorism, which he will be more than happy to use the fear of to exploit and gain more popularity, all because people blindly stick to their partisan guns.

It is worth noting that I am no Democrat, and I hated Clinton. I’m merely reflecting on the amusing position that people have found themselves in. It is like a political cartoon come to life… only it affects the lives of a few hundred million people (directly).

6

The Bush team is very good at getting out their ‘message’.

If they want people to believe that Hussain is a threat to America and to be afraid of Saddam enough to support an invasion, they can do it. They go on all the talk shows and make public statements that stir people up. They never say somethings directly but they know that the public will connnect the dots that they have carefully placed.

Now why the public doesn’t hold ‘them’ accountable?

Again they put out a good message.

The economy is getting stronger. We’ve had positive job growth. America is safer.

Bush stands up in front of a banner that reads Corporate Responisiblity or Jobs & Growth or Mission Accomplished and they know the pictures of Bush wiil have his face and those words and then people don’t read the article that say how Bush has not accomplished those things.

He and the administration, is a great salesman. They can call a spade a diamond and people believe. If they don’t, they can turn the story to be about something else.

7

That is, in fact, what we have evolved to, and it’s been that way since at least Reagan. Beyond that I don’t know because while I was alive for the end of Ford and the entirety of Carter I was too young to remember.

But yeah, it’s “Us v. Them”, with the rest of us caught in the middle.

8

Public stupidity, gullibility, lack of interest in the issues, and blind partisan devotion. Very good answer.

9

I have an aunt-in-law who gives more-or-less blanket approval to any and all of Bush’s policies, because he is a “real Christian”. Apparently, several of her children and grandchildren, scattered over WI and MN, and all members of the MO Synod (a conservative branch of the Lutheran Church, if you’re unfamiliar) approach Bush in essentially the same way. I’ve seen the pro-Bush correspondance that winds up in my wife’s email in-box, and the consensus is Bush’s actions are intrinsically good because he is a true man of faith. They trust him completely, because he walks with Christ. They regard his leadership as divinely-guided (not really out-of-character for them, because they believe virtually everything that happens is part of God’s plan, and he, as a true Christian, would logically have some special role to play in that plan). This is not, so far as I can tell, an exaggeration of any kind.

I’m sure this is just a subset of those whose support for Bush appears to be ironclad, but it’s a clear explanation of the dubious reasoning that informs the thinking of this subset.

10

I’m just curious.

Why do you hate Clinton?

11

Thank you for saying all that I wanted to, but didn’t. He can literally do no wrong–IMO, he would have to personally kill someone–and it better be a Girl Scout–to get any degree of disapproval.

12

Maybe. On the other hand, maybe 150 years from now, some historian in Baghdad will, after he gets back from the national holiday that celebrates the overthrow of Sadaam and the formation of a liberal democratic Iraq will finish his paper proving that the beginning of America’s downfall was when President Clinton signed the Brady Bill.

I don’t think that the future will happen that way, but neither of us have any way of knowing for sure. It’s hard enough to make historical judgements on past figures. It’s next to impossible to make them on present figures, and things aren’t as black and white as you’re making it. Bush had his policy blunders, but so did Clinton, and what you view as the administration’s mistakes has a lot to do with your own biases. We don’t know how Afghanistan or Iraq are going to turn out right now, and we don’t know what blunders we make are repairable. Do you know that, as late as September of 1864, President Lincoln, was convinced he was going to lose the election, and that the Confederates would be victorious?

13

This isn’t just ridiculous, it’s offensive.

Leaving aside the liberal canard of confusing perjury and a blowjob, you appear to have forgotten about Somalia, the Branch Davidian compound, attacks on American embassies, the first World Trade Center bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine High School, TWA Flight 800, the massacres and wars in the Balkans (PBS describes the ensuing NATO action as “the largest military action in the alliance’s history”), Boris Yeltsin’s dissolution of the Russian Parliament and the subsequent revolt, Haitian anarchy, numerous missile attacks against Iraq, riots in the Middle East following Sharon’s tour of Muslim holy sites, the breakdown of Middle East peace talks, and the bombing of the USS Cole. (Note – I haven’t even gotten into the dozens of scandals that constantly plagued the Clinton White House.)

I’m not saying that the Clinton administration was personally responsible for all of these things, nor that all the scandals were well-founded, but it’s just mind-boggling to say that you’re not aware of anything worse than “a blowjob” happening during Clinton’s term. Surely you don’t mean that, do you?

14

Of course he does. And I think he just answered his own OP. He can forgive the Clinton Administrations ineptitude very easily. As a matter of fact he only has a problem with those that can’t follow his lead on the subject.

15

I definitely like this thread better than the other one you created.

Well, I’ll say this, as a true Conservative (meaning I’m not a neo conservative and in fact dislike neo cons) Bush’s ineptitude comes in two areas for me.

Economically I feel Bush has good ideas but is implementing them badly. So far I agree with his proposals on social security privatization. I agree on cutting taxes in principle, and I think lower taxes and lower services across the board is what we should shoot for.

But I’m also a realist, and in times of war (a war which I still support) we have to acept hardship. That means raising taxes.

I’d rather have higher taxes right now than a huge deficit. If we weren’t in a war situation I’d say “cut spending, lower taxes.” But since you really can’t cut spending and win a war at the same time, to my balanced budget mind it is much better to maintain the spending necessary to win and to raise taxes if need be.

Now aside from Bush mishandling the spending specifics I don’t feel he has been inept in a lot of ways, mostly minor matters.

For example the Iraq war doesn’t look like a quagmire to me, call me stupid or whatever, but I don’t see it as a new Vietnam. Iraq and Afghanistan were both essential in my mind, for different reason, but they both needed to be dealt with in the way we dealt with them.

However I feel that Bush could have done things differently that would have made the occupation smoother, and could possibly have allowed for a more integrated post-war Iraq. I feel that we’ve changed courses a few times in the occupation, and that in doing so we’ve extended the amount of time it’s going to take to establish a stable government. I think we are on the right path now, so while Bush made mistakes to me they aren’t large enough to bitch about in this regard or large enough to vote him out of office.

And, remember while I find Bush to be inept at managing the economy I find Kerry’s proposals and the Dems ideas in general to be nearly criminal when it comes to managing the economy. So yes I had to make the unfortunate choice of voting against what I felt was economically correct to avoid what I felt would be economic disaster.

16

I think that to relative moderates, Clinton’s term in office appears far more benign simply because 6/8 of the time, he had divided government. This sank lots of his big policy initiatives like HillaryCare and forced him to work towards popular centrist policies that he may have avoided, like Welfare Reform.

Bush has had a government for the most part neatly aligned behind him. His, and his party’s, biggest complaint has been about Democratic “obstructionism” and liberal “activist judges.” Which just represent the last vestiges of any kind of mechanisms of non-right wing policy left in this country.

I think the answer to the OP also lies in this. Because the Republicans have been more able to ignore extraneous threats to power and take their mind off of bridge-building in order to forward an agenda, a lot of that energy has been directed inwards towards party unity. This has led to, at least in my book, unparalleled party unity and message discipline. Helped by certain sympathetic voices in the media, laser-focused simple-to-digest talking points make the decision easy for the populace. Spin becomes popular belief, and the spin is that the president (and the Republicans) are always right. It is a much more proactive method of governance than the old will-of-the-people paradigm. Now, the politicians tell the people what their will is.

17

Maybe because it’s the only game in town. GW is President until 20 January 2009, barring impeachment or really serious ill-health.

In this situation ya gotta like 'im. :frowning:

18

ok…I’ll give you Afghanistan, but how exactly was Iraq “essential?”

Extra points if you can do it without the terms “Evil Dictator” or “Freedom”

19

Psst! I think this is what the OP was talking about. :smiley:

20

Because until there is at least one democratic Arab state, or even at least one failed democratic Arab state, radical Islam-driven terrorism will continue to be viewed as just another legitimate form of foreign policy for the arab world.

I know that sounds grandeous and starry-eyed and maybe it is. But the fact is this is literally the only long term solution for preventing another 9/11 (either this or totally sealing our borders). They are the ones who must change because 9/11 and all its consequences are entirely their fault.