Will The Iraqi War DOOM GWB's Reelection?

The war is starting to generate US and British casualties, and the Iraqis are not giving up en masse, as they were supposed to do. We are now faced with a massive commitment to feed and shelter millions of Iraqi civilians, and still fight a war. Meanwhile, the US economy is headed into recession-unemployment is rising, and the airlines and travelindustries are dying. Is GWB unawareof this? Surely, he knows that his father lost because of the economy! What’s the plan to recover?
I’m scared…my wife’s company is doing poorly-and layoffs are imminent. I hoe Bush knows what he’s doing…but can the US economy take anither body blow?

This poiny is moot, until after –
A) The shooting stops
or
B) The next election.

Whichever comes first.

depends.
On how the war turns out.
No one knows right now.
Badly, hes’ gone.
Well, according to the American people-he’s a shoe in.

How is Bush responsible for the layoffs at your wife’s company?

Presidents aren’t at fault for every bad thing that happens while they are in office.

The fall out of the war will be ugly.

The question of GWB’s re-election will unfortunately be decided not by what happened in the four years of his administration but in the four months before the election.

The American electorate has the shortest memory of any organism.

He will be elected or not depending on how safe, both economically and physically, the majority of voting Americans feel on the first Tuesday in November one year hense.

Whether this constitutes a failure or a success of democracy I leave to you.

No.

Bush will be re-elected. The Democrats will again put up a “Republican-lite” candidate who will mumble a few words about “choice”, prescription drugs, fiscal responsibility, etc. which will totally fail to inspire anyone to dump Bush.

The only decent candidate they have will get no money and will be attacked as representing “special interests”, i.e., the vast majority of the American people.

I met the man.
But you really can’t be elected without big money behind you.

"Presidents aren’t at fault for every bad thing that happens while they are in office."

Of course not, they are only responsible for every good thing that happens while they are in office :wink:

I for one hope that Bush doesn’t get reelected. The hurting economy is his fault - it’s too much of a “coincidence” that whenever a Bush is at the helm, the economy is free falling.

Tell me now… when did the economy start to fall? When did the alarming signs first appear?

When it started to appear he’d get elected?

Oh, yeah, that was another “Everything is Clinton’s fault” post from someone with a warped understanding of responsibility, wasn’t it? It’s been over 2 years now - when does your guy have to take some of it himself?

No one here claimed it was Clinton’s fault. You may note they pointed out that the economy started to tumble before he left office.

sb, if there’s another way to read that, please oblige.

So, how did winning Gulf War 1.0 work out for the first Bush?

The war will be won, just like Gulf War 1.0 was won. And it will be a won a long time before the next election, just like Gulf War 1.0. And the populace will have many months to stew on GWB’s botching of his economic policy.

Nobody in 1991 gave the Democrats a snowball’s chance in hell of fielding a winner in 1992. Had you suggested that that Bill Clinton guy from Arkansas - no, he’s a governor, not a senator - would defeat Bush in the next election, people would have assumed you were insane. It was a running joke, in fact. Letterman had a “Top Ten Things Bush Would Have To Do To Lose The Election” made up of outlandish things like “Strangle a child with his bare hands on national TV.” After the Gulf War, to suggest he could lose the election was like suggesting the sun might rise in the West tomorrow.

Well, guess what?

Degrance is absolutely correct. Come back in about a year, and we’ll know. Right now it’s a total crap shoot.

Winning the war worked out well for Bush. Raising taxes didn’t. The brief stumble of the economy right before the election was a death knell, even though Bush had little to do with it.

If Bush wins this war (which is pretty likely), that’s a big point in his favor. If the economy is still struggling, then the next election will be a toss-up. If it rebounds, then he’s a sure thing.

ElvisL1ves, I’ll take a stab at enlightening you as to the meaning of JThunder’s post. The economy was going downhill before Bush entered office. Thus, to claim that he’s responsible for the end of the dot-com era boom is asinine. However, that doesn’t necessarily imply that it was Clinton’s fault. Believe it or not, sometimes things happen that have nothing to do with the president. The economy can go south, or pick up, all without the influence of the president (eg, Clinton had virtually nothing to do with the economy during the 90’s, either for good or for ill). It can be argued that the current state of the economy is as it is because of the war. In that sense, it is likely Bush’s doing that the economy is still sluggish (though I don’t see a recession coming). However, it has nothing to do with Bush’s economic policies, it has to do with his foreign policy.

Of course, all this is irrelevant to the American people. If the economy is good, it’s the president’s doing. If the economy is bad, it’s the president’s fault. If North Korea gets belligerent, it’s the president. Gas shortage? President. Traffic jam made you late to work? President. Wife left you? President. It’s unfortunate, but them’s the ways the world works.
Jeff

Nice try, El Jeffe, but if you’ll scroll up a bit, you’ll see the statement in question from JThunder, in its entirety:

Why, then, the significance of asking about the timing of our economic collapse, and not the fact of its existence?

You’re right about Presidents getting too much credit and too much blame for the economy come Election Day, but to absolve them of any influence over the economy is too shortsighted as well. That’s suggesting that no governmental fiscal policies really have any effects worth mentioning, and that’s simply nonsensical. You might as well say that no government policies affect anything else, either.

If “the war” goes poorly, “too many” casualties, (American, I mean), or too long w/o making signifigant progress, or SH remains as elusive as ObL, or a number of other possibilities that’d be seen as “poor performance”, then GWB is a one-termer no matter what the economy does.
If things go fair to middlin’ in the war and the economy doesn’t get much worse for the middle class Americans then I suspect that GWB will be a cinch.

Quite simply, to point out that the economy started to tumble well before Bush’s term.

Obviously, this is NOT the same as saying “It’s Clinton’s fault!”, despite your protestations.

Then why bring it up?

Because someone specifically claimed the failing economy was George Bush’s fault. Go back and see for yourself; it’s message #7 in the thread. Pointing out that it began to fail when he was not the President would suggest that claim is false. Doesn’t mean it’s necessarily Clinton’s fault, either.