How would a teddy bear do as president of the united states?
Answer: it would be rapidly shown that its birth certificate had been forged and it would be removed from office. The vice-president (an american-born orangutan) would take over. A measure would be passed unanimously in both houses to limit the powers of the write-in vote.
Would a human being who did nothing, literally nothing, be a better president than Bush?
Answer: assuming he didn’t die of starvation first, he would be declared incompetent in short order and removed. His VP, Hitler, would take his place. (Insert joke about things being better than under Bush, rimshot.)
Would a human being who did the absolute baseline minimum as president be a better president than bush?
Answer: Now we’re getting somewhere. Such a president would be presumed to refrain from signing any bills, and therefore be leaving lawmaking to congress. Such a president would refrain from giving orders to his generals, and thus by default “stay the course” - existing policies would continue but no new campaigns would begin. The response to 9-11 would, therefore, have been to ignore it, other than cleaning it up. And such a president would refrain from speaking to his people, leaving them to become nervous about the state of our country’s leadership.
My views:
Failing to sign bills would have little effect.
Failing to react to 9-11 would have had a better result - though the populace would be confused. (Seriously, it’s not like 9-11 would have happened again, and smacking the country into rubble seems to have had little lasting positive effect.)
Failing to talk to the press would make us think we had Bush in office. (Rimshot.) People would be nervous. Minor negative, doubtlessly outweighed by the war stuff.
As for deregulation, congress would have done it anyway. No effect. (Unless they’re all teddy bears too?)
So, in total, it looks like an improvement to me. Though the guy would never get re-elected.
Well, if they ARE that means that either the bear or the orangutan gets to stay in office. And the write in vote stays, since they all decline to vote on the matter. Teddy bear solidarity in action!
After 9/11 the majority of people, both Democrats and Republicans, supported taking action against al Qaeda and the Taliban, including the invasion of Afghanistan. It’s not that Bush deserves any huge credit for the decision - even Ron Paul would have gone to war following an attack on the United States.
If Bush had done nothing while in office, we can be sure thatl there would be at least one ranch in Crawford,TX that would be in serious need of some brush clearing.
America doesn’t just fall into wars, despite what some people seem to think. The President (as well as the Congress and the even the support of the people) are integral to taking the US to war…especially on the scale of Afghanistan or Iraq. Without someone doing more than sitting in the chair at the White House and looking cute (another thing beyond Bush :p) we wouldn’t have been able to get to Afghanistan. Bush certainly gets credit for the political maneuvering that culminated in our invasion of Afghanistan. Unfortunately he then used the same kinds of maneuvering to take us to Iraq, which was a Bad Thing™.
You’ve pretty much making the points I was attempting to make. Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I feel that the invasion of Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks was a just and necessary war. So it was an example of something Bush did that was better than a theoretical “nothing”. But even so I think it reflects very little credit to Bush personally because I believe any President above the level of a stuffed bear would have done the same thing.
And just war or not, it was a badly done, half hearted “just war”; which rather undercuts how just it was. Bush and friends just wanted it out of the way so they could conquer Iraq, and didn’t even seriously try to catch Osama bin Laden.