Bush going down as the worst POTUS in history!

I wonder what George II is doing these days. My bet is he is going to try to make a quick buck. I know he will not be the kind of expresident his daddy was or Clinton is or Carter. My bet is he will be a failed money grubbing kind of expresident and do the office no honor.

 

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Bush did the office no honor when he was president. No reason to expect him to do any different now, except to ly low and hide from public view.

 

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That seems to be one of his few talents.

 

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Well it is official W.'s first official ranking by historians:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/02/16/historians-give-bush-bad-early-verdict/#more-40184

Brought to you courtesy of limbaugh, hannity, levine, etc.

 

You think he should be below Hoover and Buchanan?

The Iraq War is worse than the Civil War? Our current economy is worse than the Great Depression? Hmmm...

 

Yeah I would. We are facing a huge economic problem as big as The Great Depression. Georgie has been asleep at the helm enjoying his title as Commander In Chief. When recently asked what he is going to miss about being president, he replied being Commander in Chief.

And it is not just one thing, with Georgie but a multitude of things. It is not just wars, including a botched and unnecessary war. It is they way he sold out the nation.

He is a spoiled little kid living out his fantasies at the expense of the American people.

 

Holy shit, dude. Do you know what went on during the Civil War? Or the Great Depression? People were starving to death while we burned crops to prop up the prices to protect farmers. This current recession isn't as bad as two that we have had SINCE the Great Depression. Unemployment hasn't hit 10% yet, a number that Europe lives with constantly.

What Obama is about to sign into law is far worse than anything we have been suffering through up 'til now. My savings is about to become worthless sitting in the bank, which is where we need people putting money so banks have it to lend. With the threat of inflation, I'm going to have to pull my money out and buy gold or land/property.

This is a hot mess, and it is more the fault of Congress (R's and D's) than Bush.

 

If you have not yet pulled your money out and purchased precious metals, you are way behind the curve.

And you are missing my point, Georgie's rule was characterized by a lot of bad...not a single bad. And sometimes the president is a victim of history. Presidents cannot always control the circumstances in which they find themselves. But they are always responsible for their actions or inactions.

So you go a head and continue to impress yourself with your knowlege that a lot of folks died in the Civil War and that people were homeless and starving during the Civil War and The Great Depression. But when you look at the effectiveness of a president, you need to look at what they did or did not do in response to the situation in which they found themselves.

 

I agree. And if Gore was president for 8 years, we would be in a war with Iraq and the economy would be bust. I can't see anything Bush did or didn't do that would have prevented either of the major issues he is saddled with.

America wanted war after 9/11. While we were in Afghanistan, we were nervously looking to see who would strike us next. Gore would have had the same advisers and the same blood-thirsty congress and the same polls which showed the majority of Americans supporting war in Iraq. The UN was embroiled with Iraq before 9/11 and none of that would have changed. The intel would have been the same (right or wrong).

Even worse would have been the supposed weakness of Democratic presidents, who seem more eager to wage in war because of the false perception of them being "doves". I think Gore would have been hastier to go to war than Bush because of this (same reason I think Bush was eager to promote green energy, pass federal education packages, increase medicare, etc...)

This is why the parties trade places after awhile. They are so busy fighting perception that they become the opposite party.

Meanwhile, the idea that the housing bubble could have been prevented by a President is laughable. Only if they could have convinced Congress to stop promoting home-ownership as an American right. Good luck with that as the bubble was forming!

I liked Clinton more than Bush as a President, but I blame Clinton for not halting the tech bubble more than I blame Bush for not halting the housing bubble. That isn't saying much, of course, because I barely blame either. Neither bubble would have formed if the interest rates floated according to supply and demand. Our boom/bust cycle was predicted by the Austrian school and yet everyone is still a Keynesian. It boggles the brain.

 

Everyone is Keynesian because you simplify and ignore a lot of events in order to come to/justify your conclusion. If it were just a housing bubble or a tech bubble it would be much better than what we are currently looking at.

We are looking at Panic. We are looking at FEAR. And that is what Republcans don't seem to understand. People do not have confidence in government nor the insitutions that we have traditionally relied uppon. Why, because of incompetence in government..failure to enforce law...failure to regulate appropriately...and failure of trade and economic policy. All of which can be laid at the feet of George II.

The War with Iraq was not a forgone conclusion. There was no reason to invade Iraq. And the only one wanting to do so was George II. Sadam had tried to kill his daddy...not a reason to go to war. We would have invaded Afganistan and would have better though through and invasion plan. And it is very likely that we would have not let Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora as Gore is a more thoughtful kind of leader...not the fly by the seat kind of guy George II is and was.

 

You think Iraq was about revenge for Bush Sr.? Holy conspiracy theories, Batman!

I agree about the panic and fear. Economies are largely psychological. Which is why bubbles form in the first place. But it is too much regulation, not too little, that leads to bubbles. Floating interest rates would prevent all bubbles from forming, as the cost of borrowing would become too dear during hysterias, and too cheap to ignore during gloomy times. What they did in the 90's, by keeping interest rates low during boom times, resulted in the tech bubble. Same thing happened after 9/11. The fear of the economy retracting, even though it was healthy already, led to low interest rates which promoted borrowing at an unhealthy level. People are concentrating too much on how banks were loaning the money out instead of on the reason for the failures that exposed these problems. The schemes for lending the same dollar multiple times were not the reason the bubble popped, they just made the popping louder. I argue that these schemes are a viable way to stimulate an economy during healthy times, and now they will be lost to us because we are going to confuse a symptom for a cause.

 

Say what you want like the other Republicans, the FEAR is justified and it has nothing to do with interest rates or bubbles. It has do with crap financial instruments being sold as investment grade assets. It has to do with people not knowing how much crap is out there or who has it.

That crap got there because no one was pay attention. No one was enforcing the rules. In fact they were actively changing the rules to allow crap to enter the markets disguised as investment grade assets.

 

Nah... our standards have done nothing but improve over the years. There was far more graft and corruption in business the farther back you go. Same goes for politics.

What is going on right now is akin to determining the destructive power of a hurricane by looking at monetary losses. A Cat 1 hitting Florida today results in more lost revenue than a Cat 5 hitting Florida 50 years ago. This current financial slump is no different than a half-dozen others. We just have more buildings, powerlines, and what-not in its path.

If you want to help stop the fear and panic, stop posting conspiracy theories as if they are fact and go bone up on some history. You will realize that the world keeps on improving, despite all the Jeremiads blocking the way.

 

What was conspiratorial in anything I said...one thing?

Did not Sadam try to kill George I? Certianly there is more evidence to support that than there is to support George II's claim that it was for weapons of mass destruction.

But you need to bone up on recent history. I suggest you start with Glass-Stegal and the repeal therof and come back with some relevant facts. But you will not, because the relevant facts do not support your position.

 

I'm not wed to any position the way you seem to be. I float all over and change my mind all the time. I have no ego here, all I care about is the truth.

Bush thought there were WMD's in Iraq because: A) This idea fit a bias that he and those around him already held and B) this is what the vast majority of Intel agencies were telling him, domestic and foreign (largely due to the same bias).

Saddam's behavior, likely due to the ME culture of saving face and being top-dog, led to the same behavior we would expect from someone guilty of something or hiding something. His history of using WMD's did not work in his favor either. Any president in Bush's seat would have been crazy to conclude that there WEREN'T WMD's in Iraq. Of course, you get to play smart with your hindsight and the fact that your job wasn't to protect the American people. I doubt Gore, Clinton, or Kerry would have been so lucky.

Keep in mind that I am not a Republican. I am an atheist, I am anti-gun, pro-choice, pro-environment, anti-war, pro-immigration... just as far as you can get from being a Republican. But your one-sided hysteria and negativism is leading you to some kooky places. You probably need to diversify your friendships and reading sources.

 

W was handed a working economy, a functional government, and a country at peace.

Hoover was handed a robber baron economy in full bubble&crash mode, did not enable corruption, and started no wars.

Buchanan was handed an economy half built on slavery and breaking under the new features of the industrial revolution, overseen by a government less than eighty years old and split into two factions - and he did not enable corruption, or bring about an economic collapse. Neither did he actually start any wars.

We aren't comparing states of the Union, but performances of the Presidents.

Gore could not have been more eager to go to war than W. Afghanistan would have satisfied any "weakness" of his Democratic label (itself a creation of a manipulated media) and without W none of the panic over Saddam WMDs would have even existed.

And W did absolutely nothing to promote "green" anything - the opposite - while his education and medicare innovations were arenas of corrupt and authoritarian imposition fully consistent with his fascist ideology of governance.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Gore would have gone to war in Iraq at all, let alone pushed so hard to gin one up. There is no evidence that Gore would have reduced the Federal oversight of the banks and financial markets as significantly, or prevented the States from enforcing their own.

W leaves a record of complete failure in all major areas of executive performance:

Military: He started and lost - actively worked to launch, overcoming obstacles and defeating opponents and manipulating public opinion in the process, and then failed to successfully prosecute - two wars, both of them land wars in Asia.

Economic: He oversaw and enabled - actively contributed to, by both dereliction of duty and active commission of folly - a major structural breakdown in the economy of a large industrial power. The situation he was handed, while troubled, was several years from even what would have been comparatively minor (serious, but not this) structural problems. He made things much worse, rather than slightly better as was within his power. In addition, he oversaw a large decline in the infrastructural investment and production capabilities of his country's economy, abetted by his policies.

Political: He oversaw and enabled what is shaping up as the largest criminal operation of corruption in US history, possibly of world history (no joke), orders of magnitude bigger than (for example) Teapot Dome. This operation directly involved the White House and officials under his personal supervision, and incorporated official executive orders and arrangements of his issuance as well as Congressional acts under his influence and approval. He appointed incompetent or obviously compromised officials to not just one or two but the majority of the important government agencies, and formally mandated Partisan political oversight of the management of these agencies. He by direct action expanded and deepened the bureaucratic encroachment of the Federal Government, without creating new capabilities or providing new services. He broke or undermined international agreements important to the peace and prosperity of the US, and brokered or backed others damaging to that peace and prosperity.

Authority, image, and morale: His edicts and policies led to, even mandated, actions under the US flag that have seriously reduced the moral authority and persuasive influence of the US, making the US despised and resisted where it was once respected and enjoyed willing cooperation. He employed and supported and enhanced continuing purveyance of media strategies and PR tactics that degraded the public discourse and corrupted the public media, and introduced a level of simple dishonesty as well as misleading rhetoric worse than the one he inherited.

This is a record of failure unmatched by any US President. To even compare it favorably with other failed leaders of history, you have to resort to proportionality arguments - the African kleptocracies stole a higher percentage of their countries' wealth, etc.

 

Thanks for taking the time to write this, you saved me the time.

And to anyone who doesnt believe this, have fun selling your soul to the eye on the back of the dollar bill.

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He lost all credibility when he claimed that Bush lost two wars that aren't over and seem to be overwhelming American victories.

It is just a bunch of partisan gibberish. The claim that Bush was handed a healthy economy is laughable. He was handed a popped bubble and an oncoming recession, followed by the worst attack on American soil by a foreign agent.

Only straight-ticket Democrat voters still claim that Bush was handed a surplus by Clinton. It was paper money projected from ridiculous gains in capital gains taxes that were unsustainable hysteria.

What I love about the insanity in this thread is the relief that I haven't fallen to the Left side of the extreme. Between arguing with you guys over politics, and the whackos in the religion section, I maintain a nice, healthy, centrist position.

 

I totally agree with this post.

I think Historians will rank W as the worst POTUS.


That aside, where are guys buying gold? I think the Perth mint is backed by the WA government. That said, I'd like to have some of that gold in my hands

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I don't think you are fooling anyone but perhaps yourself. You have consistently defended Republicans and Republican positions at the expense of fact and rational thought. You have never been on any side of any issue that was not and endorsed Republican position.