Good Riddance
Today being the day America chooses a successor, it’s worth reflecting for a moment on the abysmal leader we have right now. I think an issue like asking whether or not George W. Bush is the worst president we’ve ever had gets a little too imponderable considering the historical issues. I mean, say what you will about Bush, but unlike many American presidents he didn’t believe in slavery. That said, by any kind of absolute standard the man is an appalling moral leper. He’s not a good man outmatched by circumstances. And he’s not a bad man getting through by cunning and pragmatism.
He’s inept, a buffoon. But also perverse — reveling in the idea of inflicting death and destruction on others, avoiding military service in a war he supported when he was of the appropriate age, while claiming to envy the experience of the soldiers he’s sent to be maimed or killed in a war there was no need to fight. He’s presided over an incredibly rapid decline in the government’s fiscal position in order to funnel more money to the wealthiest Americans at a time of growing inequality. On his watch, the country suffered the most catastrophic terrorist attack in its history, and he’s been relentless ever since that day in trying to turn his own inability to keep the country safe into a political bludgeon to wield against his opponents.
A major American city was nearly destroyed, in part because of the predictable incompetence of his clearly unqualified appointees. Bush has taken eight years’ worth of time when we could have been getting a jump on our energy/climate problems not content to do nothing, but fanatically determined to do everything he can to make the situation worse. Even if we act as rapidly as possible following his departure from office, tens of thousands of people will likely die as a result of his actions on this front. The costs of his 2002 farm bill in terms of American public health and global poverty are beyond my ability to calculate. One could find a redeeming feature amidst the wasteland of Bush-era policymaking, but it would be difficult. It’s tempting to see the horrors of the Bush administration as mostly reflecting a largely, more impersonal rot — some fundamental decay of the conservative movement. But the truth is that Bush could very plausibly have been a much better president. He could have taken foreign policy advice from his Secretary of State, Colin Powell. He could have taken environmental policy advice from Christie Todd Whitman. He could have taken economic policy advice from Paul O’Neil. The results of an administration animated by figures like that probably wouldn’t have thrilled me, but they would have been much, much better than what we got. But instead, we got what we got. Not because the political coalition of which Bush was a part was so rotten that nothing else could happen, but in large part because he was so rotten that he drove or suppressed the best elements of his coalition and spread the rot around.
156 Responses to “Good Riddance”
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November 4th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
He IS the worst, though.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Here here.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
That’s it. Let it all out. Heeeeeallll, in the name of Jeeeezuz!
By the way, have you noticed how well things have been going in Iraq lately?
November 4th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Things are going so well in Iraq that as they’re cutting down the payments to the Sunni militiamen to not fight and not kill us, I bet it not only gets more peacefuller, but that U.S. libertarians will finally want to move over there to experience the awesomeness that is the positivitude of Iraq.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Matt, I’m having difficulty telling how you really feel about W.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
One could find a redeeming feature amidst the wasteland of Bush-era policymaking, but it would be difficult.
Au contraire, mon frere! I definitely remember reading something somewhere in the last few years about the Bush administration reducing the number of new AIDS cases in Africa, or giving more funding to it, or something like that. I forget the details. It was definitely in Africa, though.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Thanks for this post. This stuff shouldn’t get lost in the day-to-day noise of politics, but too often it does.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Buchanan (James not Edgar) is widely considered Bush’s chief competition for the bottom slot, but Buchanan’s chief sins were largely sins of omission. Bush swept the table with sins of omission (failure to respond to AGW) and positive ills: endorsing torture, disemboweling the 4th amendment, waging a war under false pretenses, encouraging war profiteering, etc.
And with the news that Ohio’s votes in 2004 were counted by the firm that oversaw the White House’s illegal parallel email system, I think it’s a reasonable assumption that Bush only occupied the office by historically massive fraud.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Thank you!
Great summary of this asshole.
And we still don’t know the full extent of his villainy.
Who knows how long it will take to exorcise the rot of this administration. He’s injected his ideological cohorts throughout all levels of government, heavily recruiting from places like “Liberty” university and Bob Jones College.
Grr.
How many Americans have lost their lives due to George Bush? 10,000? Soldiers, mercenaries, civilians in New York and New Orleans and Mississippi.
How many Iraqi’s? How many Afghans?
How many soldiers have died from Great Britain and the other allies?
Then there’s the economic damage.
He has ravaged the finances of this country.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Wormed his way into office after an election he did not truly win. Said he was opposed to the entire culture of the Clinton years and spent his time in office dismantling the most conspicuous features of that time: economic prosperity, fiscal responsibility, shrinking poverty, and a grudging respect for America in the rest of the world.
Surrounded by Yes-Men, including his personal conception of God, who has a remarkable propensity for endorsing Bush’s own policies and decisions.
But things will have to get a lot worse for him to seriously compete with Buchanan for Worst President Ever–let’s hope Bush’s legacy won’t be able to compare with the Civil War.
I think we can turn things around and un-do much of the damage man has done. Today, I am proud of this country, and as optimistic as I have ever been. In spite of it all, we are still capable of taking a step back and trying to learn from our mistakes. We are still capable of changing course.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Don’t forget torture and trying to make “if the President does it it’s not illegal” official policy!
November 4th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
The farm bill? Poverty? Really, Matt?
Read this.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Hear, Hear!
November 4th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Ibid to everything you said. But keep in mind people in Texas knew about his dangerous incompetence for a while. See for example his disastrous decision to cancel Tejas Testing to comply with Clean Air Act . Not only did Tejas Testing sue the state of Texas for violating a contract, but they received compensatory damage. Bush turned around and paid for the $160 million judgment by pulling the funds from a state environmental fund. It is in my mind the single most incompetent action ever done by a Texas politician.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Goodbye Dubya,
Goodbye Dubya,
Goodbye Dubya,
We’re glad to see you go!
November 4th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
You make the argument that there were some Republicans on particular issues who could have done better than Bush. And maybe that’s a fair point in relation to the Republican party of 2000. But take a look at the post-Bush Republican party of 2008. Who’s left ? McCain, with his scary-foreigner-socialist nonsense ? Palin ??? The somnolent Fred Thompson ? Huckabee’s flat-tax nonsense ? Mitt “I want to double GTMO” Romney ? Tom “color-coded terror threat” Ridge ?
And then ask yourself, how the heck did the malevolent incompetent GW Bush get to be the leader of the “conservative movement” ? By family connections and money. And what does that say about the state of conservative movement in 1999-2000 ? It was already fundamentally corrupt and intellectually bankrupt.
The Burkean conservative philosophy is respectable. But the modern “conservative movement” has nothing to do with that. It’s a cesspool of corruption and xenophobia. Good riddance.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Here’s the other bad news: I think if Obama wins, Bush Jr’s gonna go on a melee of deregulating, funds transfers, funds cut offs (including preparing for the funds for Iraqi militias to be not just cut but cut off), and all the rest of it, even before the pardons hit.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
The introduction of the methods of the Argentinian junta would be bad enough. Revelling in these methods as part of the appeal to the white nationalist identity politics on which he relied makes it worse.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Matt staying classy as always.
His support for the fight against poverty and AIDS in Africa has been praised throughout the world. But for the disaster in Iraq this president would have been graded as a C by historians.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
By the way, I agree with everything else you said about W. But the indictment that I think is missing is on the entire Republican party. Not just guilt by association, but actual aiding and abetting.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
How do you manage to get your “good riddance to Bush” post in and not manage to mention torture?
November 4th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Hey, he did sign the Do-Not-Call List law, so give a buffoon his due.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
That Bush was elected in 2004 is one of the most baffling things of all time. I blame the 50%+ of the electorate who deemed it necessary to put this bafoon back in office. Yea, Kerry wasn’t a good candidate, Rove was ruthless, blah blah. Whatever. Rove’s campaign tactics didn’t by default have to work, and by any objective measure Bush was a disaster by 2004. The American electorate voted for this horrible president, and those who did bare the blame. I really will never understand that election.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Yes, it is good to keep all this in mind. We’ve spent the last year or so figuring out the best Democratic nominee and focusing on the negative prospects of a McCain administration. At the same time, the last few years of Bush’s run haven’t been as bad as the previous six. Thus, we haven’t properly dwelled on just how bad the really bad times were.
My god this was a frustrating time. Feels like it’s been f*cking forever, too.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
But for the disaster in Iraq this president would have been graded as a C by historians.
But for missing $990,000, I’d be a millionaire!
November 4th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Could we get veto-proof passage of a bill that would allow people to throw rotten fruit and vegetables at the outgoing president on Jan 20, 2009? How great would it feel to throw a fetid head of lettuce at the back of GWB’s cranium?
November 4th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
The Medicaid Prescription Benefit is the largest social program instituted in the past 16 years (what equivalent did Clinton do?)
You Democrats make me sick.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Bush’s long term vision and far-reaching accomplishments are clearly beyond the ability of your myopic mind to understand, Matt. Bush will go down in history as the next Truman.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Hear hear, Matt.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
He still can do some damage, BUT
See Ya!
I think the first bipartisan move should be to have a Bye Bye W party. We could invite the world.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Matt, this is the inverse of the Great Man theory of history, and suffers from all the same fallacies and weaknesses. Where’s Cheney here, and DeLay, and all the rest of the corrupt jingoists and chauvinists and torture-defenders and civil-liberties-destroyers?
Again–can’t we just wrap up the GOP and fire it into the sun? And declare the party a historic tragedy that began with Lincoln and ended at Gitmo? And have a new conservative party aborning? Please?
November 4th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Come on, Nara…AIDS in Africa? Good job, to be sure, but is that really even one of the top 20 things that come to mind about the last eight years? Really?
As for the Mulligan on Iraq you want to give him, Bush was perfectly aware that he was gambling his place in history on the Iraq adventure. He made it the centerpiece of his Presidency. And so it remains.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
“Not because the political coalition of which Bush was a part was so rotten that nothing else could happen, but in large part because he was so rotten that he drove or suppressed the best elements of his coalition and spread the rot around.”
With this I disagree: first, Bush himself doesn’t seem to be much of a driver of anything. He simply doesn’t seem to have the political infighting capabilities (or much taste for personal political infighting like, for example, LBJ, Nixon or FDR had) to do this himself. Rather, Bush initially had some very vague policy “goals” (insofar as we really can call them goals or policies, as opposed to irritable mental gestures). Then, he was controlled by courtiers (at the head of the list being Cheney) who flattered him and praised his “policies” - and then used those “policies” as platforms for THEIR own personal successful political infighting. Further, that the elements who were purged were weak or ineffective political infighters, and were not supported (indeed, were generally ridiculed or exiled) by the conservatives in the Outer Party as well.
That is: the situation required three necessary elements:
1. Bush’s own complete misfunction as a leader (lazy, needy for the praise of courtiers, lack of common sense, cowardliness, lack of knowledge, etc) who simultaneously garnered massive, even cultic, support in the conservative bewegung.
2. The Republicans building up a cadre of very effective political infighters (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, etc) who were also simultaneously themselves completely ineffective at their actual functions (that is, they were very good at purging their enemies, but simply unable to do their overt jobs). The rise of this cadre isn’t some random event, but a function of the Republicans’/conservatives’ nihilistic political philosophy and the practical effects of that over a forty year period. Bad ideas create bad men.
3. These bad ideas created a bad political party, which was unable to provide from within it’s own ranks antidotes to the viruses (a bad political philosophy)which had infected it. And the reality is that the conservatives’ own immune system (resistance to bad ideas) was very weak because they’d been playing around with really nasty political ideas since the 1920s (if not before). Thus, the conservatives were particularly susceptible to potential political diseases.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
I especially like the part where Matt rips Dubya a new one.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
So long Chimpy, you are toast.
No longer will we hear you boast
Of how you’re strong and resolute
For you are going down the chute,
Along with all your thieving cronies,
The lying, chickenhawkish phonies.
And when at last they burst your bubble
And your legacy is rubble
You will stand revealed in whole –
A hollow man, without a soul.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Shorter Nara:
But for the incident, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
November 4th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
“I mean, say what you will about Bush, but unlike many American presidents he didn’t believe in slavery.”
What on earth makes you think that?
November 4th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
The final point is that Bush appears to be losing his job before Bin Laden loses his.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
let’s face it, george bush is the pancreatic cancer of presidencies.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Amen!
People are not harsh enough in describing how criminal, incompetent, evil, intellectually-lazy, bad for history this person had been.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Wow. There are people here actually defending this cretin? I’ve never understood how people didn’t see through this creep from the beginning. Even his official photo above shows the face of an evil, little man. Would you drop off your kid to be watched over by a man with that face?
Only Bush could make Nixon look good.
N’ah, n’ah, n’ah
N’ah, n’ah, n’ah
Hey, hey
Good-bye.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
The current issue of the New York Review of Books has an analysis of Dick Cheney that points to an evil eclipsing anything W even thought about. (Or even if he thought about it, he probably wouldn’t know how to get it done. But Cheney did.)
November 4th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
matt, it’s not too early for you and every other progressive voice to start the pressure for
NO PARDONS!!!!
you and others have to start making it clear that bush may not pardon any member of his administration, current or former, or any other member of the criminal regime.
i don’t know if the pressure will affect his actions, but the pressure must be brought to bear.
starting wednesday, after bush declares his pro forma congratulations to president elect obama, the white house press corps’ first question should be:
do you pledge not to pardon any of your associates? and if not, why not?
your post is a great bill of particulars for the past. but there is still more evil he can do, and so more evil that we should try to stop.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Forgive me for my ignorance of law, but why aren’t Bush, Cheney, et al in prison? In my pea sized brain, it seems invading a country under false pretenses would constitute a crime of gargantuan proportions…but then what do I know?
November 4th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
That was a long eight years.
Nice summary, Matt.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
I would concede that New Orleans could have experienced the levee breach and flooding on almost any president’s watch. The city’s precarioius situation was well known for a long time. But more than 1,000 people lost their lives in the flood, and thousands more were left to fend for themselves under terrible conditions for … what? more than a week? Even now there are people living with the aftermath of FEMA’s disastrous mismanagement. It’s a slow-motion tragedy as well, and for that I hold Bush accountable.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
The costs of his 2002 farm bill in terms of American public health and global poverty are beyond my ability to calculate
Senator Biden (as well as Senators Kerry and Kennedy) voted for the initial passage and final conference report of the 2002 farm bill.
Senator McCain voted against both times.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Hey, he put people on mars, right?
November 4th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
JH - Throwing rotten fruit and veg is somehow European. It may even have something to do with opera.
We need to speak to him in a language that he and America will understand.
Moon him.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
I guess history’s verdict on Bush will be, to debate exactly how awful he was as president.
I don’t necessarily buy the argument that supporting or opposing slavery should be a great determining factor in deciding who was the worst president ever. Yes, slavery was awful, but by that standard Jefferson must have been an awful president because he owned slaves.
WPE is not a judgment on moral failings (hello Bill Clinton) but on competence and performance… how much better or worse off the president left the nation, compared to when he entered office.
I’ll agree that Buchanan is a pretty low standard to live down to; it’s true that Bush’s rule didn’t lead to a civil war which devastated a good part of the nation (though it does remain to be seen if the Right gracefully accepts Obama’s election to the White House).
However on his watch, there was 9/11, Katrina, Iraq, the failure to find bin Laden, the failing war in Afghanistan, the economic and housing meltdown, the doubling of the national debt in 8 years without much to show for it (think what we could have done with all that money if we were going to spend it anyway), the numerous violations of the Constitution and our civil rights… on and on the list goes.
There may not have been a war amongst the states, but the damage Bush did to this country is not as obvious as the smoking ruins of Sherman’s march to the sea.
I say Bush is an awfully close runner-up to James Buchanan and certainly stands alone as the absolute worst president in the 150 years since then, worse even than Hoover.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Well said, Matt, but I think Bill Maher put it well, and far more succinctly, way back in 2005. From memory: “On your watch, we’ve lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two Trade Centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the city of New Orleans…Maybe you’re just not lucky!”
It’s a bit hyperbolic, sure, but I think it works overall.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Wow Matt,
just let it out, will you.
Now go back to your civics books and find the chapter labeled “Congress”.
Do you see that? What’ve they done the past 8 years? the past 2 in particular?
Well, it appears to me there’s enough blame to go around. You sizing up President Bush is a bit like a Yankee fan sizing up how the Red Sox have made baseball a better game and how their fans are so civil.
Nuff said. haven’t been attacked in 8 yrs., tax rates promote growth. Demo pressure on Fannie is main cause of credit crisis. Iraq is won. Afghanistan still very much in our favor.
Bring on Obama!
November 4th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Nuff said. haven’t been attacked in 8 yrs., tax rates promote growth. Demo pressure on Fannie is main cause of credit crisis. Iraq is won. Afghanistan still very much in our favor.
You’re delusional.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
If ever there was a time to slip into an eight year long coma, January 20, 2001 to January 20, 2009 was it.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
I guess history’s verdict on Bush will be, to debate exactly how awful he was as president.
“Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough” — Noah Cross, Chinatown
Liberal outrage is contrived to meet the needs of the moment. Nixon was the Great Satan to liberals in the 70s, and Reagan in the 80s. Now it’s Bush’s turn. This too shall pass. Once you have a new whipping boy (it won’t take long), the rehabilitation of Dubya will begin in earnest.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Matt went easy on Bush. No explicit mention of the nation’s torture-induced loss of prestige — a situation that, in addition to its gross immorality — is fraught with dire national security implications. And no mention of the disastrously expensive and poorly designed prescription drugs legislation.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I have to say I have rather a soft spot for Hoover, who was really a great and good man who had a terrific career as an
engineer and humanitarian before becoming President. His
relief efforts during and after WWI were a fine achievement.
He had the misfortune to reach the White House just in time to
encounter a crisis which he didn’t understand and for which he
prescribed absolutely the wrong policies. And that makes him
a bad president, undoubtedly. But still a good - even a great -
man. It’s a tough job.
Bush, on the other hand, never achieved much of anything. His combination of incompetence and malevolence puts him way beyond Hoover in every way. He would have been a failure in any field of endeavor he chose. It’s our shared misfortune that he chose politics. And perhaps even more of a misfortune for the Republican party than for the rest of us.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Nara -
I sort of agree with you.
But only because, in these days of grade inflation, a C is now considered to be equivalent to an F.
Seriously, are you able to inhale and exhale without someone telling you what to do every second?
November 4th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Who are these people? Are there really so many of us with minds this burned out? I mean, maybe not anymore, given the electoral whoop-a** which appears to be shaping up. But you gotta wonder what people put in their water.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I mean, say what you will about Bush, but unlike many American presidents he didn’t believe in slavery.
this is an absolutely ridiculous thought and statement. Can there be any doubt whatsoever that had bush lived prior to 1865 that he would have been pro-slavery. And bush certainly would have decried emancipation for long after 1865.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Not another attack on the US since 911. Good job. Iraq in a postition to start withdrawing troops, b/c of the “doubledown” surge. It’s good Saddam is gone.
No attack on Iran. Musharraf escorted off the stage quietly.
Appointed Ben Bernanke. Bush’s tax cuts were a horrible idea, but it just seems like Matt it trying to spin his 8 years the worst possible way.
Warrantless wiretapping, Abu Grahib, Guantanamo Bay, enemy combatants, torture and the imperial presidency - Bush and Cheney went over the edge in reaction to 911, which is why I will be relieved if Obama is elected.
But got to give Bush credit, no attack since 911.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
As Chris Rock says, Bush is not just the worst ever president of the USA, he’s the worst ever president, period. Of anything. City council president, junior college president, PTA president, Kiwanis Club president, glee club president, senior class president, …
November 4th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Shorter Matt: The Bush administration was worse than the sum of its parts.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Good stuff Matt, but not strong enough.
duBois@8 is correct: Bush, to a degree unlike any other president was an actively destructive nihilist as opposed to a merely passive one. He didn’t lead us into the Great Depression, but he came damn close, and he had the lessions of the past Depression to ignore and an entire intellictual and institutional apperatus as an obstacle to his efforts that he almost completely overcame. And that’s the major disaster in his eight years that he’s least culpable in creating/worsening. “Alright, you’ve covered your ass now!”
And unlike some others (Buchanan, Hoover, etc.) he came into office with perfect conditions: peace, prosperity–the only thing that was in some sense a looming disaster, terrorism, was something he studiously ignored. Still his historic incompetence provided an unmatched opportunity…that he completely squandered, driving the entire country into a complete and abject failure.
It not just how low you go, but how far you fall: Worst President Ever.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
el cid @59–
but isn’t this part of bush’s legacy, too?
that if you keep denying reality while keeping a smug simper on your face, then nobody can prove you wrong?
this was one of the most morally catastrophic innovations of the bush/cheney/rove coup: the unaccountable smiling lie.
billy kristol is the current leading practitioner. let’s hope the next few days wipes the smiles off a bunch of liars’ faces.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I mean, say what you will about Bush, but unlike many American presidents he didn’t believe in slavery.
How can you say that? It is perfectly clear he does believe in slavery. He has taken people from all over the world and held them against there will on mere pretenses. He has not made them labor for his profit but there is no real difference.
You should not be so kind.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
In the remaining almost 3 months until 20-Jan-09, bush can and most likely will do a huge amount of damage, if for nothing else, just to piss everyone off - its what he likes best.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
As good an assessment as I am likely to read anywhere.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
@64–
that’s exactly why i think buchanan is taking bum rap, and bush is clearly worse.
look, the civil war didn’t blow up out of nowhere. there were long-term forces in place, for decades prior, which were going to lead to the civil war unless a truly miraculous president stepped in and somehow figured out a way to solve the problem of slavery in america.
a problem that the founding fathers themselves found utterly insoluble, and so kicked down the road.
buchanan was not, of course, that miraculous president. but no other non-miraculous president could have done much better.
the south wanted slavery. and it wanted slavery to expand. it was headed on a collision course with the declaration’s principle that all men are created equal. that collision was going to happen.
it’s just not buchanan’s fault that he couldn’t stop it. a far greater president than he was unable to stop it.
bush, by comparison, had no historical legacy to overshadow his term in office. the problems that he faced were all created by his own actions and omissions. even 9/11 was the result of his refusal to take a pdb seriously, and his refusal to treat seriously the terrorism experts that were held over from the clinton term.
every singly fuckup on his watch was his own fuckup.
bush is far worse than buchanan.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Matt,
Der Spiegel put the same sentiment into pictures. And I am given to understand that the commentary is pretty funny, but I’ve forgotten most of my college German by now. Anyway, enjoy the cringes:
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-36611.html
November 4th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
holy crap. How can anyone recount the traveties of bush and leave out:
* promoting torture and rendition
* ruination of the rule of law
* evisceration of the Constitutional separation of powers
* destruction of US standing and moral authority
* the ultimate presidential betrayal: lying the nation into war
* evisceration of environmental and public safety regulations
* covering up the intentional outing of a CIA operative (pardoning a major criminal operative in the crime)
the list goes on on on - it is staggering. I think the US and the world remains in state of shock, disbelief, and denial at the criminal and amoral magnitude of the bush presidency.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
About the Bush administration’s efforts to combat AIDS in Africa…
Their long-standing hostility towards condoms and unwillingness to fund groups involved in family planning is hardly admirable. Even when these people have tried to do something good and decent, their essential meanness and hysteria comes shining through.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
A disgusting, vile, absolutely reprehensible presidency. Dishonest, corrupt and destructive.
The man has not created anything, achieved anything or built anything of lasting value - and yet undoing his pillaging ways will take decades of hard work and enormous resources, time and money that could have been better spent, towards more fruitful goals.
That people defend him is due to the fact that if they don’t, they would have to consider themselves just as vile and disgusting, for having supported him in the first place.
Bush the Younger will be remembered in history as a useless man.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
> But got to give Bush credit, no attack since 911.
As Duncan Black consistently points out, once again the anthrax attacks (about which we still know nothing) are conveniently flushed down the memory hole. Perhaps because 3 of the 4 of them were directed at prominant Democrats?
November 4th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
But got to give Bush credit, no attack since 911.
Because if we pretend hard enough, it is like anthrax never happened.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Eight years later let us remember that bush was never elected. The evidence that he stole the election (through voter suppression and the extreme court) is irrefutable. Imagine what this country (and the world) would be like right now after eight years of good government run by Al Gore. As happy as this day is, let us never forget that we witnessed the theft of the highest office in the land eight years ago and have been paying the price for it ever since.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Why don’t you go there and tell us firsthand?
November 4th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The *best* candidates the Republicans could come up with were McCain and Palin. Out of a nation of 350 million that’s the best they could do.
They’re gangsters, plain and simple. Extraordinary gangsters who have pulled off a heist of over $4 trillion, and whatever more we’re willing to pay in the next several years to “restore our faith in the capitalist system”.
And they couldn’t have done it without us. We’re still putting people in jail for smoking pot, and wondering why Bush is the one who gets to hand out the pardons. Well, duh!
Bush is currently the worst ever, but if McCain got elected Bush could climb up on the marble column and settle back in the marble armchair, secure in the knowledge that he had just become ‘presidential’.
We ain’t out of the woods yet.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Damn you for faster typing, Not Really.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
So how’s the weather in Pluto, where you seem to reside? Nuff said.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Right, no one went around mailing anthrax to people in late 2001.
But, let’s praise Bush because there was only one incident during his presidency of foreign enemies killing more Americans on our own soil than any time since the War of 1812. There was just the one. Not two or three, just one. Very impressive. What’s one incidence of easily-foreseeable mass murder between friends?
You really think that? We were told the surge would allow a political reconciliation that would lead to lasting peace in Iraq. Guess what? There hasn’t been one. That’s why we have more soldiers in Iraq than before the surge. At any rate, we will likely be kicked out of Iraq long before we’re in a position to draw down (our legal right to occupy Iraq expires at the end of this year).
It’s not our fault you Republicans keep nominating worse and worse people.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
In further defense of Hoover, let’s point out that Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, which laid out the basics of macro-economics, wasn’t published until 1936. Doubtless those ideas were floating around amongst economists, and FDR was canny enough to grasp the essentials and act on them. But “not as good as FDR” is not especially damning.
Hoover had the wrong policies, but at the time there wasn’t any
consensus about the correct policies, nor any good theoretical framework to analyze the choices. Hoover failed, but in that
situation at that time, probably few others would have done
better.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
“he drove or suppressed the best elements of his coalition”
I think you mean “drove away,” no? Quite a different meaning otherwise.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
He’s worse than the President in Superman II who kneeled before Zod. Bush would totatlly have kneeled before Zod.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
As Duncan Black consistently points out, once again the anthrax attacks (about which we still know nothing) are conveniently flushed down the memory hole. Perhaps because 3 of the 4 of them were directed at prominant Democrats?
I was thinking along the lines of a dirty bomb in a major city. People would have freaked.
They screwed up on Georgia, but maybe the Georgian leader went rogue.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
So are you going to offer the prez some aloe after that wicked burn?
November 4th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Yes, Bush sent lots of money to Africa to fight AIDS–and stipulated that most of that money be used in abstinance-only education. And we all know how well abstinance-only works.
Yeah, because it’s not like our economy is DOA right now.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Liberal outrage is contrived to meet the needs of the moment. Nixon was the Great Satan to liberals in the 70s, and Reagan in the 80s. Now it’s Bush’s turn. This too shall pass. Once you have a new whipping boy (it won’t take long), the rehabilitation of Dubya will begin in earnest.
What a strange thing to say. Since Nixon and Reagan are both out of office, and we have someone in office who is, in fact, categorically worse than either of them, it makes sense to be outraged at the Current Occupant now. W Bush is at the bottom of a sliding scale. That’s not to say that there couldn’t be someone even worse than Bush in the future, but it would take some real doing.
And, oh yeah, the Iraq war is going so well now…. Here’s the non-blood clogged analogy: you and your family are desperately poor and living in Western Nevada. Luckily, you get a good job offer 20 minutes from your home. Instead of taking that and working on your future dreams in your spare time, you Decide to ignore the offer and spend your family’s last $600 on a conference about the exciting world of alpaca-farming, held in Los Angeles. To get to LA from Nevada, you get in the car and, against almost everyone’s advice, drive EAST….for 2600 miles. When you see Manhattan off in the distance, you sagely Decide to turn around. When you get to Altoona, your wife and one kid blow up and call you a stubborn idiot, but your ass-kissing child says, ‘hey, it’s going great now. It’s stopped raining and we’re only 2400 miles from LA!’.
Bush will be remembered, alright. He’ll be remembered for the world-historical blunder of Iraq.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Amen to that. I demand everyone type slower and write less than I do!
November 4th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
The wingers running around screeching that Dubya will “be remembered like Truman!” just kill me. Uh, no. Truman actually accomplished things; Shrub destroyed everything he touched. He and the rest of his foul gang should end up against a wall.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Well constructed, love the passion informed by reason.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
I guess history’s verdict on Bush will be, to debate exactly how awful he was as president.
I suspect that historians will attribute certain long-term things to Bush that we haven’t yet appreciated. The way Bush mishandled NATO, I think, is only starting to become apparent.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Peter K. wrote,
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
To be fair, Mixner might turn out to be slightly right about this. I know I’ve felt like apologizing a couple times while comparing McCain or Palin unfavorably to Bush.
On the other hand, I just don’t think it’s entirely accurate. Pundits and partisans caught in the moment will rate the current president the best or worst ever, depending on their party ID, sure. It’s an entirely natural reaction, I think, even though it shouldn’t be mistaken for rational analysis. But it’s not just Yglesias and commenters calling Bush the worst president ever, it’s also historians and disgruntled ex-Republicans. I doubt they were saying the same thing about Reagan and Bush I at the time.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
People who think it’s an accomplishment of Bush that the US has not been hit by a “major terrorist attack” since 9/11 not only are ignoring the Anthrax attacks (which were almost certainly not an Al Qaeda attack) but are also flying in a joyful ignorance about what the purpose of the 9/11 attacks was.
The purpose of the attacks was not to show that evil evildoers can invade America and destroy “our way of life” by random acts of terror. Rather, the purpose was to get the US to act like a nation of imperialistic assholes in the Middle East, thereby alienating our allies and unifying the Islamic world.
I would say that they worked, if that was their aim.
By sending in our army at the wrong target, while openly taking aim at a third target that also was not behind the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration displayed to the world that the US was exactly what Bin Laden was claiming it was: a violent, imperialistic power more concerned with oil resources than any considerations of human lives or international laws.
Meanwhile, the US has continued to support the royalists in Saudi Arabia, the home nation of almost all the 9/11 hijackers.
Future generations are going to look back at this sequence of events and wonder how Americans could have let it happen. I was here and I’m still baffled.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Matt’s diatribe pretty much captures my customary morning reflections as I brush my teeth. Although I think that with the passage of time that has been accompanied by the same sort of behavior and choices by Bush, he has crossed into “bad man” territory.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
ya’ll folks are forgetting Bush’s greatest innovation, starting an unnecessary war as a re-election strategery(sic). Till Dubya, nobody had the evil balls to do that except third world dictators.
And that ‘he’s our Truman’ crap, the buck stopped with Truman, Bush’s sycophants always want to blame somebody else.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Hrrmm. If Bush had been living in the later 1700s/early to mid-1800s, and come from the same milieu he does today, he would have backed slavery. Does anyone truly doubt it? Mr. Conservative Status Quo Protect the Wealthy? So, yes — worst President ever.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
W W W OOO RRRR SSSSS TTTTTT
W W W O O R R S T
W WW W O O RRRR SSSS T
WWWW O O R R S T
WWW OOO R R SSSS T
Period
November 4th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Pundits and partisans caught in the moment will rate the current president the best or worst ever, depending on their party ID, sure. It’s an entirely natural reaction, I think, even though it shouldn’t be mistaken for rational analysis.
Don’t worry, it isn’t mistaken for rational analysis by anyone except those doing the rating.
But it’s not just Yglesias and commenters calling Bush the worst president ever, it’s also historians and disgruntled ex-Republicans.
Historians and disgruntled ex-Republicans are not immune to the hysteria that afflicts Matthew and commenters.
It’s far too early to make any kind of serious evaluation of Bush’s presidency in a historical context. Much will depend on what happens in Iraq and the middle-east over the coming years.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
Thing about Bush is that he was so dumb, he literally dumbed down the rest of the nation. Will Ferrell did a good impersonation. I can’t even remember what that latin means anymore. Something about correlation does not prove causality?
November 4th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Good thing(s) about George W. Bush:
1) He gave more AIDS money to Africa.
2)…
OK thats all I got, really that’s it. And even that $ had a bunch of american taliban conditions attached.
Bill Kristol wanted W on Mt. Rushmore, I think they should carve W’s image into a pile of dog $h*t.
November 4th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Fuck George Bush. I want him to resume drinking bigtime once he’s out of office. I want his wife to leave him. I want him to be pelted with rocks and garbage wherever he goes. I want him to forget to bathe, and to be seen stumbling around in public soiling himself and throwing up on assorted cops. I want him to be found in an hourly-rental motel with 3 illegal immigrant transexual prostitutes and the John Holmes of burros. I want him to finally reach rock-bottom and call on Jesus for salvation. And even though I think Jesus is a myth, I hope Jesus tells him to fuck off.
And that’s when I hope his library burns to the ground.
November 4th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Again, while I think Bush himself added his own particularly toxic element to the mix, I think most of you are wrong in assigning too much emphasis to him as an individual (not that he doesn’t greatly deserve the condemnation). It wasn’t simply him - his party (or bewegung) were eager for precisely someone like him, and were essentially waiting for a dozen years (1988-2000) to get someone fitting their fantasies of what a statesman looked like into office. They didn’t like his father because he was too moderate and too prudent for them. They didn’t like his father precisely because Bush Senior wasn’t a complete fake, liar and coward (Bush Sr. had some amount of reality about his heroism - the conservatives’ heroes Nixon, Reagan and Bush Jr all were ludicrously shameful cowards or at best extremely ignominious time-servers in wartimes). (Even though much or most about Bush Sr. was propaganda, at least some of it wasn’t - unlike Reagan or Bush Jr. all of which was spun out of fantasy worlds.)
Remember, these are nihilists. There’s an irrestible pull towards the most radical solutions for them. Being a successful statesman means precisely achieving the most “daring” things (”daring” here meaning in the sense Thucydides uses it - more a synonym for “hubris” or “arrogance”.)
November 4th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
“the man is an appalling moral leper.”
“the soldiers he’s sent to be maimed or killed in a war there was no need to fight”
What was the worst thing he did? The decision which all others seem trivial next to…? Invading Iraq. It was immoral, and criminal. But yet, smug little pundits ALL supported this decision. Everyone with any memory at all remembers, knows, that the “liberal” media: NYT, WashPo, LATimes, NPR, TNR, the think tanks: Brookings, AEI, Heritage, Hudson, WINEP, and the “liberal” bloggers: Yglesias, Drum, Ezra Klein, Josh Marshall, all of them, SUPPORTED THIS WAR.
So, are all the pundits saying, sure, Bush was right to invade, but he should have, what, left immediately after overthrowing Saddam’s government? That would have been better? Or, what, he shoulda planned more…and stuff?
Or, they saying that Bush was wrong to invade? I think the most that formerly war-supporting pundits (meaning, all of them) can say is that Bush must’ve been unlucky. And don’t fall back on “Bush was feeding us wrong information” cuz anyone with sense, and a pulse could read Blix’s reports before the war and see that nothing was being found, nothing was there, our claims were lies. It was easy to see, except for neo-con/liberal-hawk media wannabees who had different incentives.
As for the remaining litany of Bush’s misdeeds, most are relatively minor, and Bush’s responsibility is debatable. Katrina? How many people died from the slowness of the federal response, vs. those who died by not evacuating? (a 1/100 ratio, at the highest). Rising inequality? Increasing imports from low-wage countries, technology, increasing returns from human capital investment, etc. To blame increasing inequality on Bush’s policies is a stretch.
Yes, those things were bad, but nothing compared to one million dead innocent people. And on that score, your judgment was exactly the same as Bush’s. Moral leper? Yeah, I agree.
November 4th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
The decision which all others seem trivial next to…? Invading Iraq. It was immoral, and criminal.
And yet, half of the Iraqis themselves now believe it was the right thing to do.
Maybe you need to try thinking outside the box.
November 4th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
El Cid asked: “Who are these people? Are there really so many of us with minds this burned out?”
Cid, you need to realize that people like Mixner and Nara voted for Bush at least once and most likely twice. They have to defend his legacy to avoid having their brains explode from cognitive dissonance. They are directly complicit in the damage Bush has wrought on the country, thus they have to find any silver lining possible. What is absolutely hilarious, however, is how much even Bush sycophants have lowered the bar for evaluating their man. A few years back, these folks were proclaiming Bush to be a political genius and claiming that his presidency wold be seen as a high water mark for America. Now they are reduced to to trying to salvage his legacy by pointing to AIDS funding in Africa and explaining why he Buchanan was worse. They are every bit as pitiful and delusional as the small, stupid man they idolize.
November 4th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Damn you, flubber, for spewing your crap all over the site after I posted - now I have to add you retroactively to the brain-dead chorus of continued Bush bootlickers. Denial STILL isn’t a river in Egypt…
November 4th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
It should also be noted that the fact that Bush is the personification of the conservative id is in no way a contradiction of the fact that Bushism is the reification of the conservative id.
George W. Bush = Worst President Ever.
Conservative id = Worst Id Ever.
November 4th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
“And yet, half of the Iraqis themselves now believe it was the right thing to do.”
That’s nice (if true). Tell me, what do the hundreds of thousands who are dead think? And the millions uprooted and in exile, were their opinions included?
November 4th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
That’s nice (if true).
Not for you, obviously. How dare those darn Iraqis think it was a good idea for us to invade their country!
Tell me, what do the hundreds of thousands who are dead think?
Nothing, I imagine. What did the hundreds of thousands killed by Clinton’s sanctions think?
November 4th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Thinking outside the box is for smart people. The box is for you. You need the box. Stay inside the box.
To quote Bill Maher, “Thinking outside the box is for smart people. The box is for you. You need the box. Stay inside the box.”
November 4th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
“Nothing, I imagine. What did the hundreds of thousands killed by Clinton’s sanctions think?”
So you’re implying that both Clinton and Bush are depraved monsters? I agree!!!
November 4th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
By the way, I love the pith:
“What do the dead people think? Why, nothing I imagine…phffaw ha ha…hahahahahahha….hahahahahaha…They’re dead you see, get it…ha……ahhhhhh.”
November 4th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
“One could find a redeeming feature amidst the wasteland of Bush-era policymaking, but it would be difficult.”
Found it!
Bush put the postal service on solid footing, by permitting automatic price increases, tied to the consumer price index. Now the post office has the potential to invest in productivity improvements.
Bush also gave us the Forever stamp. Rah rah.
November 4th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
So you’re implying that both Clinton and Bush are depraved monsters? I agree!!!
So you haven’t stopped beating your wife yet? I agree!!!
November 4th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Anyway, the point is, no I’m not stressing about all the dead Iraqis. What is life, anyway?
November 4th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Mixner is correct about Iraqi public opinion. It’s starting to vindicate Bush’s decision.
November 4th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
The Medicaid Prescription Benefit is the largest social program instituted in the past 16 years (what equivalent did Clinton do?)
You Democrats make me sick.
Oh gawd. Where to begin? The Medicare drug plan was a massive Republican-led scheme to transfer hundreds of billions of tax dollars to the pharmaceutical industry and not much more. Democrats fought tooth and nail to 1. cover people more completely, and 2. negotiate drug prices with the drug manufacturers to save the taxpayer money. What we got instead was piecemeal coverage that screwed lower and middle-class seniors and basically opened up a government-funded spigot over the bank accounts of Big Pharma and their fat lobbyists and CEO’s.
Way to go, Dubya! Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.
November 4th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Oh, I got one. Over the past couple of years, the administration has implemented a program to help the chronically homeless that appears to have been relatively successful.
The upshot? It worked because they basically ditched the old conservative nostrums about homelessness being caused by undisciplined people just not getting up off their lazy asses and finding a job and a place to stay. Instead they tried a progressive theory out that said why not get them into a stable housing situation and off the street first, then work on the drug issues, mental health, unemployment, etc.
Funny how that works.
November 4th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
The Medicare fraud hinged on the fact that Bush forbade there to be any funding source for the benefit. It was designed from the git-go to bankrupt the program.
November 4th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
> I suspect that historians will attribute certain
> long-term things to Bush that we haven’t yet appreciated.
> The way Bush mishandled NATO, I think, is only starting to
> become apparent.
Turning South Korea from a good friend to a suspicious friend, Vietnam from a cautious partner to a suspicious neutral, and Russia from a cool neutral to an angry proto-enemy are probably worse than the damage done to NATO.
Cranky
November 4th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
One could find a redeeming feature amidst the wasteland of Bush-era policymaking, but it would be difficult.
So you don’t think reducing homelessness with innovative policies was a good thing? That’s weird.
November 4th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
I’m trying to post a comment, but wordpress is saying I’ve “already said that”!
Lemme try again:
So you don’t think reducing homelessness with innovative policies was a good thing? That’s weird.
November 4th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
“Mixner is correct about Iraqi public opinion. It’s starting to vindicate Bush’s decision.”
Its difficult to assess true opinion when a significant percentage of the people are dead or in exile.
November 4th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
> I was thinking along the lines of a dirty bomb
> in a major city. People would have freaked.
Interesting. You claim “no terrorist attacks since 9/11 under the Bush/Cheney Administration” and when you are reminded of a critical, Constitution-shredding terror attack in 12/2001 you move the target about 27,000 miles. Typical behavior on the Radical Right.
Cranky
November 4th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
“Its difficult to assess true opinion when a significant percentage of the people are dead or in exile.”
Why? What percentage?
November 4th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
> Why? What percentage?
You forget the “Huh?”.
Cranky
November 4th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
But Mixner’s happy at least. The hundreds of thousands of dead under Bush make him positively fucking giddy. He keeps pretending that Clinton == Bush because he imagines this makes some kind of point. But Mixner can’t point to a single statistic that is better under Bush’s dictatorship than it was under Saddam Husein’s.
Mixner only has two points now: 1) Clinton didn’t prevent the deaths from sactions and 2) the Iraqi opinion appears to be that nearly half support the invasion.
These fall apart as soon as you look at them. The first because Clinton inherited a disaster from Bush the elder and, by the end of his term, make the lives of the Iraqi people better. Just as Clinton’s net economic result was to increase the debt even though he turned the deficit around by the end of his term, it is impossible to make the body count from the Bush imposed sanctions go down. Should Clinton have done more? Sure. Could he with genocidal Republicans like Mixner blocking him at every turn? Not a bit of it. Mixner has been given all the information he needs to know that. He just pretends that it is the same as Bush’s brutal assault.
It’s also important to notice that Bush’s Iraq has been worse than the sanctions, so in addition to the violent death rate caused by Bush’s unprovoked assault on the Iraqi people, all of the deaths that would have occurred had there simply been a continuation of Clinton era sanctions are still attributable to Bush.
Bush = Violent deaths + deaths due to lack of infrastructure.
The second bit has already been debunked above - the hundreds of thousands of Bush’s dead didn’t get a voice and the millions of displaced are unlikely to have been counted.
In any case, Mixner doesn’t bother to give any reason why the desires of the Iraqi people should be given weight in the deployment of our military. Sure, it would be nice if we could help people who want it, but the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives seems rather steep. Only genocidal racists like Mixner, who derive joy from the slaughter, would chose otherwise.
November 4th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Bush = Violent deaths + deaths due to lack of infrastructure.
Clinton = deaths from starvation + deaths from lack of medicine + deaths from lack of infrastructure.
the hundreds of thousands of Bush’s dead didn’t get a voice
The more Iraqi deaths, the more Iraqi anger. If the Iraqis who died had lived instead, support for the invasion would have been even higher.
Mixner doesn’t bother to give any reason why the desires of the Iraqi people should be given weight in the deployment of our military.
Hilarious. So you think public opinion in another country should not influence the deployment of U.S. troops to that country. If Germany and Japan didn’t want our troops, we should just send them in by force anyway. You truly are a raving lunatic.
“Not as stupid” is a genocidal maniac.
November 4th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
If three million Iraqis have been killed or displaced (and therefore unable to receive the nice pollster knocking on the front door) then out of a pre-invasion population of 24 million, 12.5 percent of population is left out. Three million is probably a conservative figure.
Anyway, 12.5 percent of the US population is 37500000.
Food for thunking!
November 5th, 2008 at 6:47 am
It’s true that Democrats, Republicans, voters, Tony Blair, many others have been complicit in Bush’s crimes. But there’s one central policy that Bush did all on his lonesome absolutely totally contrary to all professional opinion, opposed by decent people everywhere, and very revealing of the man’s character: torture.
Torture doesn’t work — it doesn’t dig out the truth, it doesn’t save time, it doesn’t pass muster in court, it degrades our soldiers and it makes the enemy less likely to surrender.
Its only virtue is to titillate the inner sadist of the man who orders it done.
To be sure, plenty of people who ought to have known better enabled (this means you, John McCain!) him. Cheney and Rumsfeld probably came up with soothing reasons why it was good policy; and we have Gonzales’s infamous torture memo.
But at bottom, it was Bush’s willful indulgence of his most base, cruel impulses — the same ones manifested by mocking (to a reporter!) that women on death row or by calling his closest associate “Turdblossom” — that powered and sustained his torture policy.
That damns the man for all time, all by himself.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Now that I’ve had a couple of days to relax, I came back to this post to ponder it anew.
It is still right on the money.
The only redemption for the two months we still have to suffer the current Administration is that we’ve elected someone who intends to act to undo what has been done, rather than the one who would merely be less abysmal.
November 8th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Agreed about Bush as an eviol dickhead but what’s most notable about Matthew’s “screed” is what it leaves out:
1) stolen election of 2000
2) WMD Hoax
3) Illegal war of aggression…
4)…that lead to 1,000,000 Iraq and thousands of American deaths
5) torture
6) flagrant lawbreaking, e.g. FISA
That’s just the short list but what does it say about Matthew that he left these out? Its a bit like writing an anti-Hitler screed and forgetting the part about the Jews.
November 16th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
What qualifies someone for the title “worst of all time”? Lies? Plenty of those from the Bush White House. Fraud? Look at the rigged elections in 2000 and 2004. Warmongering? Plenty of that on display here. Fiscal dishonesty? The sanctioning of Enron and the tax handouts to his rich pals are ample evidence of that. Torture? No possibility of doubt there either. Direct breach of his presidential oath to “uphold, protect and defend the Constitution”? He has never missed an opportunity to attack the Bill of Rights which, by definition, is part of the Constitution.
No doubt about it, guilty on all counts. An earlier respondent suggested lining him and his criminal cronies up against a wall and shooting them, but that’s too quick a death for the misery they caused. Do what they would still be doing in Taxas if he’d had his way, strap them in a chair and switch it on.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
speaking of Pres. Bush leaving office:
http://www.goodriddance.org
visit and post a parting comment to Pres Bush in anticipation of his leaving office
November 18th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Matthew, have you not read “Bush on the Couch”?
Whether or not you think psychoanalysis is mumbo-jumbo, it’s a fascinating read, and goes a long way toward tying childhood issues to adult destructive behavior (in this case, the destruction of OUR COUNTRY), and makes a strong case for “child is father to the man”.
HIGHLY recommended.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
I believe that George Bush has taken the “law” into his own hands and committed crimes against this nation. He has not been held legally accountable for his actions. Since legal action has not been taken against him, “history” will quickly be re-written to make him look only slightly offensive or even heroic. (I am sure that there is still a picture of him under the Mission Accomplished sign).
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