Jan 8th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Surveying the Wreckage
Here’s some numbers from NBC News on the Bush Legacy:
And more:
And this doesn’t really take into account how he’s devastated the American geopolitical situation, made tackling climate change incredibly more difficult, or the fact that he’s responsible for a humanitarian tragedy in Iraq that’s created millions of refugees and hundreds of thousands of casualties.
44 Responses to “Surveying the Wreckage”
Register
RSSLogin
Advertisement
Visit Our Affiliated Sites
Books By Matthew Yglesias
Topic CloudView topics sorted by popularity
Afghanistan
Bailout
Basketball
Budget
Bush Legacy
Cars
climate
Congress
Conservatism
Culture
DC
Economics
Economy
education
Energy
Environment
Finance
Health care
Health Care
History
Housing
Inequality
Iran
iraq
Israel
mccain
Media
National Review
National Security
NBA
obama
Pakistan
Palin
planning
Public Opinion
Race
Regulation
SCOTUS
Sports
Stimulus
taxes
Torture
transit
Transition
transportation
Featured
Subscribe to the Progress Report
Contact Matthew Yglesias
Use this form to contact blog author Matthew Yglesias.
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
January 8th, 2009 at 10:16 am
You know, I had a hard time sleeping for days after the election in 2000 worrying about what a W Bush presidency might mean. And what I imagined wasn’t anywhere close to this. The guy has really redefined the idea of an unsuccessful administration.
January 8th, 2009 at 10:24 am
You can’t fairly compare the economic situation at the very peak of an economic cycle to the economic situation at the nadir of another.
You are so right! Comparing 2008 to 2000 would be like comparing 1930 to 1922 and concluding that large systemic errors had occurred. When—after all— differences between 1922 and 1930 were just part of the “economic cycle,” right Al?
January 8th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Herbert Hoover can finally rest in peace. He is officially no longer the Worst President Ever.
January 8th, 2009 at 10:32 am
You know, Al, it’s funny– because of the ideology you adhere to, you instantly think that propaganda is the final arbiter of reality. It’s like you’re morally outraged and angered by a politician that’s, you know, actually honest, and that you thnk the solution to problems is simply “better propaganda.” It’s no wonder people regard Republicans as a bunch of ignorant bs artists who are to be ignored and disdained.
January 8th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Al said:
“Can Matthew get any more hackish? I doubt it.”
You missed the part where this blog is hosted on the Center for American Progress, a partisan think tank, didn’t you?
January 8th, 2009 at 10:42 am
or the fact that he’s responsible for a humanitarian tragedy in Iraq that’s created millions of refugees and hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Correction — the Iraq War has caused, best estimate, about a million dead and many more maimed and wounded, so I’d say millions of casualties (casualties is dead plus wounded, not just dead).
January 8th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Al - you’re right. The whole mess in the economy is Obama’s fault.
January 8th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Poor Al. I actually think he’s about as high quality a hack as we could expect to come commenting, but he’s dealing with such a bad set of facts.
January 8th, 2009 at 10:48 am
But just think of the massive increase in Freedom™!
(Freedom!™, all rights reserved, Republican National Committee)
January 8th, 2009 at 10:49 am
What do you expect him to be saying? That at least the ADP numbers were less than a million? By all measures the economy is falling off a cliff, and no amount of sweet talking is going to change that.
January 8th, 2009 at 10:52 am
It doesn’t take inflation into account either, in the case of the the DJIA. $9,051 in 2008 dollars is only $7,516 in 2001, meaning the Dow has dropped 29%.
January 8th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Already covered by The Onion - my primary source of news.
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/bush_tours_america_to_survey
January 8th, 2009 at 10:59 am
What about George Bush projecting in his 2001 Budget that the Federal debt would only be $6 Trillion by 2009. Last Time I checked , it’s $11.3 Trillion and heading on up.
Maybe Sweet Al would like to address this charts — showing what debt has done in Republican administrations vice Clinton’s:
http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm
The silver lining to all this is that Republican supporters like Al have been fucked like a dog by Bush and are not smart enough to realize it yet. Their life savings are toast. If Al doesn’t believe me, let him try to calculate what he owes on the debt personally approved by the last three Republican Presidents.
January 8th, 2009 at 11:17 am
And what I imagined wasn’t anywhere close to this. The guy has really redefined the idea of an unsuccessful administration.
Actually, it will certainly turn out to be much worse than current reports — the numbers on jobs and deficit are heavily gerrymandered, and confidence will fall further once they find out what sorts of other damage Bush has done “off the books”.
Criminal negligence (Bush) coupled with greed (Cheney). Not a good combination for a republic.
January 8th, 2009 at 11:29 am
You can’t fairly compare the economic situation at the very peak of an economic cycle to the economic situation at the nadir of another.
I love it. Economic cycles are like phases of the moon or something; administration policies have no effect on them.
No doubt this will also be Al’s attitude regarding the effect of the Obama administration’s policies on the economy.
January 8th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
While doing variations on AL-bots posts is generally pointless, since they contain little or no substance, sometimes substance accidentally sneaks into them. In this case, he puts his finger on the central problem with Bush’s economic policy - he governed as though there were no such thing as a business cycle. It was responsible to argue for a tax cut of some sort to respond to the recession of 2002. The way the tax cut was constructed made it highly regressive and ultimately contributed to the freezing of the median household wage - but in principle money had to be delivered into the economic system. To continue to argue for tax cuts after 2003 was, of course, the mark of a pilferer with the morals of a Russian oligarch. When the business cycle picks up, it is certainly time to plan for when the cycle goes down. Bush, of course, didn’t, continued borrowing to pay for the unnecessary Iraq war, borrowed to pay for his pill program, and continued to press for tax cuts. These are his positively vile acts - all of which are remarkably like all Bush’s short-horizon mistakes, from dropping the ball on terrorism in the spring and summer of 2001 to the occupation to whatever disaster one wants to name. It was a governing style that alternated between smug unpreparedness and panic. Meanwhile, of course, he actively collaborated in hollowing out the U.S. regulatory structure, and of course failed to address issues that, by 2005, had become obvious, most notably the failure of the population at large to enjoy the benefit of the business pickup. Instead, Bush and the rightwing crowd engaged in what they did best, muddying the waters and pretending that nobody could really define simple matters like wealth inequality or stagnating income. Behind the Bushian muddle, it is true, stood thirty years of failed conservative economic policy. In order for a policy that grossly and disproportionately rewarded the wealthy five percent the gains in the economy that should have been distributed downward to the “bottom” eighty, credit was made the substitute of solid wage gains - for after all, conservative policies would have been rejected out of hand if the middle class lifestyle was as badly eroded as it would have been if households didn’t have extended credit as well as a second income earner to fall back upon. Thus, the political importance of allowing for much looser credit limits. Bush, with the mind of a non very bright caddy at a second tier Southern country club, was still the product of the conservative culture, and knew by instinct that if the credit faucet was turned off, he and the interests he represented would be in trouble. This is why, even if he had had more neurons to rub together, he would have had trouble devising a prudent policy to manage the cyclical nature of the economy. It would have busted his ideology.
January 8th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Hurray! One cheer for Matt for mentioning the “hundreds of thousands” of “casualties” that Bush is responsible for in Iraq. That is a distinct improvement over a recent post in which he took Bush to task for driving millions of iraqis out of their homes but didn’t even mention “casualties” at all.
But as someone noted above, hundreds of thousands is probably low even as en estimate of deaths, which may well be around a million. But because Matthew used the weasel word “casualties” his hundreds of thousands number is undoubtedly a serious low ball. Since casualties include wounded and the wounded are a multiple of the dead, the number of casualties is certainly in the millions.
January 8th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
The peak of the economic cycle in January 2001? hardly - the Repblicans made great pains to point out back in January 2001 that they had “inherited a recession” from the Clintons.
What’s the matter Al - don’t you remember your taling points from 8 years ago?
January 8th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
So I’ll pencil you in for “greatest” President, then?
January 8th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
there’s no way those poverty numbers are accurate either
January 8th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
there’s no way those poverty numbers are accurate either
And your supporting evidence is…?
January 8th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
So Bush, despite actually being President and actually doing a whole bunch of stuff for the last eight years, isn’t responsible at all for these “economic cycles” that have somehow left us in a really shitty situation. But Obama, who, you know, doesn’t have any actual power yet is somehow going to “harm the economy” by talking about it.
Awesome.
January 8th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Pretty soon the last of the Bush apologists will have about as much credibility as Holocaust deniers. Those that aren’t already Holocaust deniers.
January 9th, 2009 at 12:00 am
This isn’t exactly a moronic post. It’s a useless post, with no useful information. Bush is largely responsible for the change between 2001’s apparent good times and today’s disastrous clusterfuck. However Bush was, and remains, a product of prosperous times. But Obama’s economic policies appear to be the same as what Bush’s were. TARP, like the No Child Left Behind Act and the “pill program”, were bipartisan failures. Stimulus packages? Are you freaking kidding me? See, Obama and Bush are into the same flawed thinking of using debt to fix a solvency problem. In the long run, it won’t work. Because it can’t work. Off all the people in America, the gulf between a person’s level of education and their knowledge of economics is the widest among progressives. Even a GE-diploma holder who spends 15% of their yearly income at Walmart will eventually figure out that you can only borrow so much against the house.
January 9th, 2009 at 1:56 am
Al,
Don’t worry. Bush’s numbers are going to look great compared to Obama’s. Of course, Matt will lose all interest in such invidious comparisons once he sees how Obama’s deficit and unemployment numbers will compare to Bush’s.
January 9th, 2009 at 1:58 am
“Pretty soon the last of the Bush apologists will have about as much credibility as Holocaust deniers. Those that aren’t already Holocaust deniers.”
Riiight, because the Venn diagram overlap between Bush supporters and Holocaust deniers is so big. In fact, I can’t think of one such person. Can you? The vanishingly-small, anti-Jew right in this country (most of whom probably don’t deny that the Holocaust happened) tends to be anti-Bush as well.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:24 am
Of course, Matt will lose all interest in such invidious comparisons once he sees how Obama’s deficit and unemployment numbers will compare to Bush’s.
Even supposing this is an accurate prediction (and anyone who claims to see the future about that at this point is full of shit), the implied notion that Obama’s term(s) will meaningfully be compared to Bush’s achievements over the same time duration, as if they are beginning from comparable starting situations, is stupid. Obama is starting with an exceptionally shitty hand, which was largely dealt by Bush. Much shittier than the hand Bush started with.
January 9th, 2009 at 10:28 am
“Obama is starting with an exceptionally shitty hand, which was largely dealt by Bush. Much shittier than the hand Bush started with.”
Like Al said, Obama is starting at the bottom of an economic cycle, that’s a good hand, not a shitty hand for him. Bush had the misfortune to start at the end of an unprecedented 18 year bull market which culminated in the biggest economic bubble since the 1920s.
January 9th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
That list is bullshit. It blames him for a bunch of crap he doesn’t control, and ignores all the absolutely horrible things he actually did.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
the real problem is that the true damage caused by a admittedly less than brilliant president all to willing to make the “hard” decisions , is always left out of “numbers” ,how hard is it now for those 20 somethings just starting out in life to achieve there “american” dream and what kind of future can our children expect ? the nightmare caused by Bush isn’t ending nor will it for years to come
March 1st, 2009 at 5:00 am
viagra
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:30 am
levitraI want to say - thank you for this!
March 11th, 2009 at 4:15 am
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
March 17th, 2009 at 2:19 am
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
tramadol
March 22nd, 2009 at 5:53 am
tramadol
I want to say - thank you for this!
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:20 am
viagra
I want to say - thank you for this!
March 23rd, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Buy Viagra Online…
http://url.edna.edu.au/4bbN Buy Viagra Online…
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:00 am
Great site. Good info
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 6th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Generally I do not post on blogs, but I would like to say that this post really forced me to do so! really nice post.