Posted on 09/10/2021 10:12:43 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
Don't 'misunderestimate' George W. Bush © Getty Images Americans typically support newly elected presidents and those who have left office. It’s incumbents they often dislike. George W. Bush is no exception. Although he lost the popular vote in 2000 by a half-million ballots but achieved an Electoral College victory over Vice President Al Gore by the barest of margins (after a Supreme Court decision in Bush’s favor), his initial approval rating was 57 percent, 10 points above the percentage of votes he garnered from the electorate. His support would soar over 90 percent after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as Americans demonstrated their propensity to “rally ’round the flag” and commanders in chief during wartime.
When Bush turned the Oval Office keys over to Barack Obama in 2009, however, with “endless wars” still raging in Afghanistan and Iraq, Osama bin Laden very much alive, and a financial crisis threatening another Great Depression, his approval score had plummeted to 34 percent. He seemed destined to inhabit the failed presidency category of FDR’s successor, whose opponents branded him with the snarky aphorism, “To err is Truman.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Just about the only people who like W today are the Democrats. So, no surprise that the media is thinking he’s a swell guy after all.
No they don't, he's just a useful idiot to them when he speaks out against Trump.
I’d like to have my votes back.
One term of AlGore may have saved us a lot more grief.
GWB is a bought and paid for milquetoast of a man. Great reset supporter. The Hill is a rehatched Pravda mouthpiece.
GWB was a rock ribbed conservative compared to the fetid offerings of John McCain and Mitt Romney.
Yes, I voted for all of them, not in the primaries, but I figured they were still better than the alternative. In hindsight, you can only make that argument for GWB. Neither McCain nor Romney would have been any better than Obama. Likely worse because Obama gave rise to Trump.
Dubya was great on 9/11. That said, stop trying to change the subject. Joe messed up with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Not Trump. Not Obama. Not Dubya.
If his initial approval rate was 57 percent he probably got at least 55 percent of the vote. I now believe we have had massive SYSTEMIC fraud for a long time. (There will always be small individual instances). Thanks Democrats
Bush should have continued to lay low after leaving office....instead he flaunts himself with the Obamas and others as if the best of friends. It’s not going to untie people looking like you’re on their side in various photo ops nor the tweets etc he sends out.
Frankly any respect I had for Bush in his first term has most definitely gone out the window.
i voted for him twice too... was disappointed in him when he refused to allow freedom of religion in rebuilding iraq...
We had two really fine Republican Presidents since Eisenhower: Reagan and Trump. Nixon had his good points but let his justified anger get in the way. The rest of them? Ugh. And you don’t see the talky GW Bush saying a word about the Afghanistan disaster, do we?
Bush’s war in Iraq was a complete fraud. There were no WMDs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBWGAR2VPEg
You caught on quicker than I did. I wasn’t ashamed until he came out against President Trump.
Why have they cynically rehabilitated the man they used to revile as the Smirking Chimp? It should be obvious to one and all that they’re simply propping up Shrub as a “decent Republican” as a foil for Trump and those of us who agree with Trump. He’s the “good kinda Republican” because he hugs Mooch Obama and Hillary Clinton and backslaps good old Dementia Joe for whom he probably voted.
As far as I’m concerned, he’s the worst President of the 21st century, thus far. No one else has committed a blunder even in the same ZIP Code as the invasion of Iraq.
As Texans, we cringe at his name 😣
I misunderestimated the Bushes capacity for being total worthless trash. I’m glad his dad is dead too.
> Joe messed up with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. <
No doubt about that. But it was George W. Bush who set the stage for that fiasco to happen. We need to remember both of those things.
An analogy: A bus driver carelessly drives his bus over a cliff. The paramedic in charge of the rescue operation carelessly lets some of the passengers die.
Bush is that bus driver. Biden is the paramedic.
I hate to draw the comparison, obviously, because those left in Afghanistan are in a far more dangerous situation, but on philosophical plane, GWB was no less duplicitous.
I and many of my friends and associates defended GWB at the expense of friendships and family relationships, only to have him and his administration fold and stab us in the back.
Bush was at best a mediocre POTUS, but he has become a miserable former President. His legacy will consist of little more than gravestones, wounded soldiers and shitty paintings.
Bush was as good a president as he is a painter.
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