While I have no doubt Bush loves this country, he created this monster for massive spending, and he created the TSA, PATRIOT Act, etc. He over reacted to 9/11 and to the banking issue.
Agree mostly although I will say that no one realizes they are in a bubble when they are in a bubble. We were in a bubble in 1999. The Fed and Bush re-inflated the bubble by 2007. At the time, it looked like a normal economic expansion from 2001. With 20/20 hindsight, we can say it was a bubble.
Of this I am sure, we are now running deficits now that are going to crush our country’s future. Hopefully it will be a slow decline although there is every reason to think it won’t be. We have about two to five years before we become the latest chapter in this book, “This Time is Different” (A 121 page pdf, http://www.nber.org/~wbuiter/cr1.pdf . We don’t have a Germany to pay our bills like Greece does.