I still contend that it was, or should have been, glaringly obvious to anyone beginning in 1999 (or earlier, I’m sure, if you lived in Texas) that he should not be president. Admittedly, I read Molly Ivins’ book Shrub (or even better, listened to her read it in audiobook form in that distinctive drawl of hers) when it came out. So I knew better than the average person what a spectacular failure he was at everything he had ever tried, at least in substantive terms (thanks to his connections, he kept on being rewarded for failure).
But even if they knew nothing else about him, anyone who watched him in the debates and then said “Al Gore sighed too loudly, I’m voting for Bush” gets no respect from me for finally figuring it out by 2008 (or 2006, even).
ETA:
I always kinda thought she herself came across as a “fringe nutjob/America-hater”. She struck me as the sort of ultra-leftist that these days castigates Obama for being too right wing or whatever, and wants to shut down the Pentagon and replace it with a “Department of Peace” (and in case it’s not clear, I have no patience for such people).
Not sure what you mean by this. The S+P has been almost completely flat once you take into account both dividends and inflation. I wouldn’t characterize it as a secular bull or bear market since 2000.
I forgot to mention W’s seeming intent to enshrine evangelical Christianity as the state religion. It wasn’t merely annoying, it was un-American and utterly, completely unacceptable. And also what came to be seen as characteristic, blind stupidity on Bush’s part.
Remember Bushisms? They were always funny, but it is still unbelievable how many of them there were. Y kant the persitent express hisself!?!
The connection between the Bush administration and things like Halliburton and the oil industry were undeniable.
Combine the above with the clearly scripted nature of the GOP from top to bottom and it was easy to believe McCain would continue down a bad path. The dems would have needed a GOP primary 2012-esque performance to be trailing McCain. Turns out they had strong candidates.
I was going to bring that up – things did not just collapse out of nowhere shortly after the 2008 conventions. The boom was long over though a lot of people were in denial (including even many opposition candidates); after Lehman there was no more denying, which hit McCain badly with his “fundamentals” soundbite.
By 2006 the electorate had grown weary of the Republicans for all the many things mentioned before, with the Democrats taking over Congress in that midterm, so the trend was away from the GOP and especially from the neocon faction that had dominated the W years (eventually to come to a head with the Tea Partiers targeting “establishment” Republicans). So the Democratic eventual nominee would start from a position of strength anyway. When with Obama you threw in the angle that here was someone different, someone who was not a part of the previous ruling machines, he was of course strengthened further.
I remember that time as the first time that I ever heard not just denial, not just sensationalism, but really, really obvious shilling by the media about the economy to make it seem better for the republican candidate. Fox News was reporting things like “99% of mortgages not in default” in response to stories about the unfolding of the mortgage crisis.
No one has brought up that Obama had voiced opposition to the Iraq war back when Senators McCain and Clinton were on record as voting for it. I think that was a huge factor as Americans had become weary of the ‘damn fool war’ by 2008. Granted, Obama was a state senator at the time, so he didn’t really have to actually vote like the others did. Still, I think it was major factor.
Heh, for a second there I thought you were going to prove that W didn’t use teleprompters, instead of linking to pictures of him using teleprompters. Almost an excuse; now the Bushism phenomenon is even more baffling
Anyway, does anyone believe the Iraq war was just another part of the Starve the Beast strategy? Lower taxes, drive up the debt, sit back and watch Social Security and Medicare go away… because while Bush is going to hell for that war, if it is just another exhibit in the GOP’s campaign against ordinary people it makes them all, including McCain, appear even more dastardly.
Another factor was not just the wars, but the casualty figures and the impact on home towns. We were at 5000+ dead, 30,000 with severely disabling injuries (multiple limb loss, vision lost, severe head trauma), and another 100,000+ with lost fingers/hands/single vision, bullet wounds, muscle and joint damage, and PTSD. This damage affected every town and city in middle America. Most reserve units had done multiple tours (year to 15 months). This was not two weekends a month and a two week exercise they had signed up for. Grandma and grandpa were going to war. Significant numbers of men and women from small towns were just gone. There was no more good will for the “strong on defense” party. McCain’s war hero status (he crashed a number of planes and survived prison camp [I do not belittle the prison part]) just didn’t play anymore.
It was because McCain was an old white man, with the old press behind him, and Obama was black and young, and had the more agile gen X and the social media with him.
He said it’s extremely unusual, so a couple of counterexamples don’t disprove his point. Ford was never elected in the first place, and Carter and Bush 41 both had some major economic factors going against them. Still, this is only the second time in U.S. history that three consecutive presidents have been re-elected, and that makes me wonder if the modern media environment gives incumbents a bigger advantage.
How do you not understand the difference between unusual and never?
Ford was never elected to the Presidency and any Democrat would have been him because of the cumulative effects of Watergate. I already mentioned Carter and Bush I.
It takes an exceptional set of circumstances for an incumbent president to lose. They did not occur in 1996 or 2004 or 2012. Before Ford, the last incumbent to lose was Hoover in 1932. Before that it was Harrison in 1892. How infrequent does it need to be to be called unusual? And if the Iraq War didn’t cause Bush II to lose, how could anyone have thought that an improving economy would do Obama in?
It might be more accurate to say that a sitting party is usually given a couple of terms to show what they can do. Ford really doesn’t count, he was finishing out a 2nd GOP term. And H.W. was the third term for the GOP. This was a big advantage for Bush (and Obama).
The election was lost for McCain long before the economy collapsed. The incumbent party was hated. Start with the Iraq war which was very unpopular by then. Throw in a bunch of incompetence like Katrina (and almost every move my the president and the GOP at the time). Then have a candidate that has to run to the far right to even have a chance to win (the candidate is really irrelevant, anyone has to win the right wing crazies to have a chance). On top of this, McCain chooses Palin as a running mate. The collapsing economy (and the laughable McCain response) was just icing on the cake (so to speak). The GOP was toast long before that happened. It would’ve taken a spectacular, extremely charismatic candidate to have any kind of chance. That wasn’t McCain.
