5 reasons George W. Bush is still one of the worst presidents ever

New poll data suggest a majority of Americans now hold a favorable opinion of W. Here’s what they’re forgetting

MATTHEW ROZSA, THE DAILY DOT
06.07.2015•7:00 AM

George W. Bush is trending on the Internet for a surprising reason. A CNN/ORC Poll that recently hit the Web yielded some good news for the embattled former president: For the first time since the months after his reelection in 2004, more Americans have a favorable opinion of him (52 percent) than an unfavorable one (43 percent).

Before Republican Twitter starts popping its proverbial champagne corks, however, it would be wise of Republicans to remember that most former presidents become more popular in the years after their administrations have ended. Both Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush were widely disliked when their presidencies ended but are held in much higher regard today.

More important, though, there is the simple fact that a president’s legacy is ultimately determined by whether Americans were better or worse off after he left office. How does Bush measure up?

1) He failed on September 11

Few would disagree that the September 11 terrorist attacks were a defining moment of Bush’s presidency. As president, his foremost responsibility was bringing the mastermind behind those attacks—al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden—to justice.

Bush failed in this mission. Instead of prioritizing hunting bin Laden down in Pakistan, where he was suspected of hiding (and where Obama promised to get him during the 2008 presidential election), Bush waged two costly and ineffective wars. The first was against Afghanistan, a nation that harbored bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorists but was not formally governed by them, and the second against Iraq, a nation that had absolutely nothing to do with September 11.

In the process, he significantly damaged America’s reputation overseas (which didn’t begin to improve until the beginning of Obama’s presidency) and destabilized the Middle East in ways that we’re still seeing today. Remember that time Jeb Bush was asked about his brother’s role in creating ISIS? That’s because his brother helped create ISIS.

2) His policies caused the Great Recession

When Bush took office, he inherited a strong economy built by President Bill Clinton: unemployment had fallen from 7.3% to 4.2%, creating more than 22 million jobs in the process, and the median family income had increased by more than $6,000.

By comparison, Bush’s presidency only managed to oversee the creation of fewer than 1.1 million jobs, by far the lowest of any president since Harry Truman, while income inequality expanded at staggering levels. The top 10 percent of American earners pulled in almost half of total wages, the most lopsided wealth distribution since 1917.

Although the economic stagnation became apparent very early in his first term, it didn’t turn into a full-fledged recession until the collapse of America’s financial industry in 2008, after which unemployment shot up from 6.2 percent in September (the month of the crash) to 7.7 percent in January (the end of Bush’s presidency). This was an average increase of 0.3% per month.
Considering that Bush’s policy of Wall Street deregulation was largely responsible for the reckless practices of the “too big to fail” banks that brought the economy to its knees, it’s fair to say that this was one of the two most significant fiscal failures of his administration.


Did You Know?
Presidents in America are elected by an Electoral College representing the states. George W. Bush lost the overall vote in 2000 but won the presidency.
Did You Know?
Despite there being no specific threats against him, the Secret Service started protecting Barack Obama 1.5 years before election day, the earliest in history.
Did You Know?
The 2008 Obama-McCain election was the only time in American history that two candidates were born outside of the Continental United States.
Did You Know?
Barack Obama has won two Grammys for Best Spoken Word Album (Audiobook): one for "Dreams from My Father" in 2006, and one for "The Audacity of Hope" in 2008.
Did You Know?
Shortly after being elected as President, Barack Obama was named Time Magazine's "Person of the Year” in 2008, and awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.


The other, of course, was his squandering of the Clinton budget surplus. When Clinton left office in January 2001, he bequeathed America with a projected $1.9 trillion surplus. By the time Bush handed the economy off to Obama in 2009, the Congressional Budget Office projected $1.2 trillion in debt, due largely to Bush’s$1.5 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy, as well as the additional trillions spent on the aforementioned wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

3) He eroded American civil liberties to an unprecedented degree

When Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) cast his vote against the USA PATRIOT Act—the only member of the Senate to do so—he explained his reasoning as follows:

In the play, A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More questions the bounder Roper whether he would level the forest of English laws to punish the Devil. “What would you do?” More asks, “Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?” Roper affirms, “I’d cut down every law in England to do that.”

To which More replies:
“And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast... and if you cut them down... d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.”

Feingold’s words proved quite prophetic. From torturing suspected terrorists in clear violation of the Geneva Convention to laying the groundwork for the NSA’s unprecedented domestic spying program, Bush’s post-9/11 legislative initiatives ultimately threatened American freedom more than Osama bin Laden’s schemes ever managed to do.

America's surveillance age hasn’t made the world any safer from terrorism, sacrificing your privacy for what’s proving to be nothing more an endless war on America’s own people.

4) He bungled his response to Hurricane Katrina

Believe it or not, it isn’t that difficult for a president to effectively manage disaster relief after a hurricane: Lyndon Johnson famously mastered the aftermath of Hurricane Betsy in 1965, while Barack Obama’s response to Hurricane Sandy was so effective that it was erroneously credited for his reelection in 2012.

By contrast, Bush utterly failed when Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast in 2005—a subsequent report by the House of Representatives found that his administration disregarded numerous warnings of the threat to New Orleans, did not execute emergency plans, and neglected to share information between different departments that could have saved lives.

5) When it came to one of the biggest civil rights issue of his time, he placed himself on the wrong side of history

When future historians look back at the early 21st century, there is little question that they will view the campaign for LGBT equality as one of the major civil rights movements of the era. Yet not only did Bush fail to advocate on behalf of the LGBT community (despite his vice president having a lesbian daughter and his party being chaired by a closeted gay man, Ken Mehlman, during his second term), but he actively exploited anti-gay bigotry during his reelection campaign in 2004. This was particularly the case in states like Ohio, where its pull among so-called “value voters” played a considerable role (alongside racially based voter suppression) in Bush’s winning that state—and with it, the general election.

None of this means that George W. Bush is a bad human being, or even that he set out to cause harm to the nation he professes to love. At the same time, no bounce in his approval rating can eclipse the damage that he did while in office. More Americans may like Bush than dislike him right now, but when his legacy is ultimately appraised, the final verdict will not be a kind one.


https://www.salon.com/2015/06/07/5_reasons_george_w_bush_is_still_one_of_the_worst_presidents_ever_partner/

*************

I don't need reminding that W was one of the worst. The only reason he looks better now is that Trump is in office.
As for George HW Bush, he was not that bad of a POTUS, but he wasn't exactly a champion of civil rights either. He made thieves out of the police by letting them confiscate private property, but his son was so much worse it made Papa Bush look good. Jimmy Carter's presidency was a failure but the man himself will always be a success in his life because he is a loving, caring human being who was just too good and too decent for the office he aspired to.I don't think good Christians make good presidents. I don't see how they could. Bill Clinton's presidency was a great success except for Monica in the same way Richard Nixon's was an even greater success except for Watergate. Looking back at America before and after their presidencies, the country was much better off at the end than at the beginning. The legislation they both got passed was good for America and good for the economy and the environment. I'm glad we had them both, in spite of their faults.

I honestly thought Dubya would be the worst president of my lifetime. I'm not usually naive like that. I thought the American people surely would not make that kind of mistake again. I had a little too much faith in 'em, sadly.

I knew the Republican base was getting stupider when they embraced Sarah Palin and her empty-headed superficial "you-betcha!" chatter. That was an embarrassing spectacle, seeing people clap for such an obvious grifter. But even though she excited a good many dullards, in the end they had the good sense to reject her... and I'm pretty sure it was mostly her they were rejecting, because McCain's not a horrible guy, for a Republican. So I thought, "At least there are still enough brain cells on the other side to keep a complete idiot away from the controls."

Then, Trump. Trump did the impossible and made Dubya look competent by comparison. I won't go as far as to say he made Sarah Palin look smart, but, Jesus, he may be even stupider than her. Given a choice between Trump and Dubya, I'd take Dubya again in a minute, because, even though he was stupid, at least he was an adult. At least he was sane. He did a bad job, but at least he understood it and was interested in trying to do it. He did have a moral core. I don't think he'd be flirting with fascism or undercutting people smarter than him when they tried to do their jobs, the way Trump does.

I'd take pretty much anybody else over Dubya, though. He was still an awful president. It's just that Trump is so jaw-droppingly terrible, both as a president and as a human being, that he makes Dubya seem... quaint.

It's still surreal, thinking this country's gotten dumb enough to have elevated... that. Trump's a temporary problem, but the mass idiocy that put him in office is something the country's going to be having to deal with until it dies off... because you can't wise-up from that level of stupid. Really, I'm not sure we can survive having a population that dumb and gullible. Trump may just be a sign of bigger symptoms of decline. Happens to every country, but I hoped it'd take longer to happen to us.

Just a reminder of how much you're able to overlook if your impression of George W Bush has softened over time:


ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT

3. Article I: Creating a Secret Propaganda
Campaign to Manufacture a
False Case for War Against Iraq

7. Article II: Falsely, Systematically,
and with Criminal Intent Conflating
the Attacks of September 11, 2001,
With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a
Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent
Justification for a War of Aggression

14. Article III: Misleading the American
People and Members of Congress to
Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of
Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a
False Case for War

20. Article IV: Misleading the
American People and Members of
Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an
Imminent Threat to the United States

25. Article V: Illegally Misspending
Funds to Secretly Begin a War of
Aggression

27. Article VI: Invading Iraq in Violation
of the Requirements of HJRes114

31. Article VII: Invading Iraq Absent a
Declaration of War

33. Article VIII: Invading Iraq,
A Sovereign Nation, in Violation
of the UN Charter

37. Article IX: Failing to Provide Troops
With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor

39. Article X: Falsifying Accounts of
US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political
Purposes

42. Article XI: Establishment of
Permanent US Military Bases in Iraq

44. Article XII: Initiating a War
Against Iraq for Control of That
Nation’s Natural Resources

47. Article XIIII: Creating a Secret Task
Force to Develop Energy and Military
Policies With Respect to Iraq and
Other Countries

50. Article XIV: Misprision of a Felony,
Misuse and Exposure of Classified
Information And Obstruction of
Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame
Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the
Central Intelligence Agency

52. Article XV: Providing Immunity
from Prosecution for Criminal
Contractors in Iraq

54. Article XVI: Reckless Misspending
and Waste of US Tax Dollars in Connection
With Iraq and US Contractors

59. Article XVII: Illegal Detention:
Detaining Indefinitely And Without
Charge Persons Both US Citizens and
Foreign Captives

62. Article XVIII: Torture: Secretly
Authorizing, and Encouraging the
Use of Torture Against Captives in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as
a Matter of Official Policy

65. Article XIX: Rendition: Kidnapping
People and Taking Them Against Their
Will to “Black Sites” Located in Other
Nations, Including Nations Known to
Practice Torture

69. Article XX: Imprisoning Children

72. Article XXI: Misleading Congress
and the American People About
Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist
Organizations Within Iran, With
the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian
Government

76. Article XXII: Creating Secret Laws

80. Article XXIII: Violation of the Posse
Comitatus Act

83. Article XXIV: Spying on American
Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered
Warrant, in Violation of the Law and
the Fourth Amendment

88. Article XXV: Directing Telecommunications
Companies to Create an
Illegal and Unconstitutional Database
of the Private Telephone Numbers and
Emails of American Citizens

90. Article XXVI: Announcing the
Intent to Violate Laws with Signing
Statements

92. Article XXVII: Failing to Comply
with Congressional Subpoenas and
Instructing Former Employees
Not to Comply

94. Article XXVIII: Tampering with Free
and Fair Elections, Corruption of the
Administration of Justice

98. Article XXIX: Conspiracy to Violate
the Voting Rights Act of 1965

105. Article XXX: Misleading Congress
and the American People in an
Attempt to Destroy Medicare

107 Article XXXI: Katrina: Failure
to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of
Hurricane Katrina, Failure to
Respond to a Civil Emergency

111. Article XXXII: Misleading Congress
and the American People, Systematically
Undermining Efforts to Address
Global Climate Change

116. Article XXXIII: Repeatedly Ignored
and Failed to Respond to High Level
Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist
Attacks in the US, Prior to 9/11

119. Article XXXIV: Obstruction of
the Investigation into the Attacks of
September 11, 2001

122. Article XXXV: Endangering the
Health of 9/11 First Responders

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/35articlesImpeachment.pdf

*********

All those things that W did are awful. Horrible. Terrible. Illegal. To the point that I really, really thought no one could be worse.

I believed, back then, that everyone has some little sliver of good in them. Something in their past that would make them give a damn about at least SOME of their fellow men. I don't believe that anymore. My innocence bit the dust on November 8, 2016.

Trump has no soul, not in the traditional sense of a soul. He's a monster out of the dark netherworld come to destroy the planet and ride the nuke down to earth personally like Slim Pickens in Dr Strangelove.
AND HE IS IN CHARGE.

bigdog wrote: My innocence bit the dust on November 8, 2016.

My innocence bit the dust November 22, 1963.

Deus X wrote:

bigdog wrote: My innocence bit the dust on November 8, 2016.

My innocence bit the dust November 22, 1963.

Bury me not on the grassy knoll.

Yes, Bush Was That Bad
By Corey Robin, Jacobin
22 October 17

Can we please stop rehabilitating Republican ghouls?

Back in March 2016, I made a prediction:

If, God forbid, Trump is elected, some day, assuming we’re all still alive, we’ll be having a conversation in which we look back fondly, as we survey the even more desultory state of political play, on the impish character of Donald Trump. As Andrew March said to me on Facebook, we’ll say something like: What a jokester he was. Didn’t mean it at all. But, boy, could he cut a deal.
When I wrote that, I was thinking of all the ways in which George W. Bush, a man vilified by liberals for years, was being rehabilitated, particularly in the wake of Trump’s rise.

Thursday’s speech, in which Bush obliquely took on Trump, was merely the latest in a years-long campaign to restore his reputation and welcome him back into the fold of respectability.

Remember when Michelle Obama gave him a hug?

That was step two or three. This week’s speech was step four.

For years prior to that, our image of Bush was emblazoned by the memory of not only the Iraq War, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, of not only the casual violence, the fratboyish, near-sociopathic, irresponsibility, of Bush’s rhetoric of war (remember when, after the Iraq War was over, in June 2003, Bush turned to his administrator general there, Jay Garner, and said, “Hey, Jay, you want to do Iran?”). It was also imprinted with the memory of the laziness and incuriosity, the buoyant indifference, that got us into war, not just the Iraq War but also the war on terror (the original sin of it all, if you ask me) in the first place.

All those now pining for the pre-9/11 George W. Bush, a man who took his responsibilities to the nation — and his duty to its people — seriously, an anti-Trump who, whatever his many flaws, at least had a sense of the gravitas of his office and its burdens, might want to have a read-through to what was going down in the Bush administration circa August 2001.

Roemer then asked Tenet if he mentioned Moussaoui to President Bush at one of their frequent morning briefings. Tenet replied, “I was not in briefings at this time.” Bush, he noted, “was on vacation.” He added that he didn’t see the president at all in August 2001. During the entire month, Bush was at his ranch in Texas. “You never talked with him?” Roemer asked. “No,” Tenet replied. . . .
And there you have it. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has made a big point of the fact that Tenet briefed the president nearly every day. Yet at the peak moment of threat, the two didn’t talk at all. At a time when action was needed, and orders for action had to come from the top, the man at the top was resting undisturbed.
Throughout that summer, we now well know, Tenet, Richard Clarke, and several other officials were running around with their “hair on fire,” warning that al-Qaida was about to unleash a monumental attack. On Aug. 6, Bush was given the now-famous President’s Daily Brief (by one of Tenet’s underlings), warning that this attack might take place “inside the United States.” For the previous few years — as Philip Zelikow, the commission’s staff director, revealed this morning — the CIA had issued several warnings that terrorists might fly commercial airplanes into buildings or cities.
And now, we learn today, at this peak moment, Tenet hears about Moussaoui. Someone might have added 2 + 2 + 2 and possibly busted up the conspiracy. But the president was down on the ranch, taking it easy. Tenet wasn’t with him. Tenet never talked with him. Rice — as she has testified — wasn’t with Bush, either. He was on his own and, willfully, out of touch.
But now that’s all forgotten. Or being forgotten.

It may be, however, when it comes to Trump’s rehabilitation, that things will move faster than I predicted, that Trump won’t have to wait as long as Bush to get out of the doghouse.

After all, Sean Spicer is now up at Harvard, tutoring the hopefuls of tomorrow’s ruling class.

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Visiting Fellow @Seanspicer talks to students over breakfast about the state of politics in America.
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And just after Roy Moore got the Senate nomination in Alabama, Paul Begala was quoted in Politico: “What do they say in recoveries? You have to hit bottom? I thought that, with Trump, they [the GOP] hit bottom. But, apparently not, because Moore is worse.”

And there you have it, the stage is already being set. Given the relentless march rightward of the Republican Party, there will always be something worse waiting in the wings, something worse that will inevitably furnish Trump with a retrospective glow — even though it was Trump who set the stage for that something worse, in the same way that it was Bush who set the stage for Trump.

So, here’s a message to everyone on Twitter or Facebook saying, gee, I never thought I’d be saying this, but next to Trump, George W. Bush really isn’t so bad: one day, I promise you, I guarantee you, you will be saying, gee, I never thought I’d be saying this, but next to TK [that’s editor-speak for “to come”], Trump really isn’t so bad.

Unless, that is, you get out of this terrible habit of burnishing the past — something you can only do because it’s no longer in front of you — and dehistoricizing the present.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/46438-focus-yes-bush-was-that-bad