Do you miss George W. Bush? [we won't miss you - ZOT!]

The Grand Rapids Press ^ | March 09, 2010, 12:02PM | By Troy Reimink |

[meandog]

When former President George W. Bush addresses the Economic Club of Grand Rapids in June, will he be riding a wave of nostalgia?

New York Times columnist Stanley Fish points to a few signs that Bush's image rehab has begun. One literally is a sign -- a billboard in Minnesota with an image of a smiling, waving Bush and a message that reads, "Miss Me Yet?"

He also notes a Newsweek cover story that vindicates Bush's Iraq policy, "Mission Accomplished" and everything.

Fish writes that Bush nostalgia, if it indeed exists, is the result both of Bush's relative silence since leaving office and growing public frustration with the Obama administration:

Bush profited from the fact that he kept a low profile and didn't snipe at his successor, a task left to his vice president, who therefore took upon himself the enmity and scorn previously directed at his former boss...

[McGruff]

Pardon my spam but

[Little Ray]

At least Clinton was only an ambitious crook. IMHO, Obama is an Enemy of the Republic!

[CounterCounterCulture]

He’s been doing that for the last eleven-plus years.

[SunkenCiv]

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.

[dirtboy]

'98, yes.

Class, no...

[mkjessup]

As I see you have been euthanized there meandog, my response may be a moot point unless you're reading from the outside of the FR plate glass window, but the fact is, George W. Bush did a number of very good things while he was in Office, I give him full props and credit for restoring the dignity of the Oval Office after eight years of a sexual predator stinking up the joint, aka 'The Sink Emperor'. I also give him credit for pushing large tax cuts with the only unfortunate side effect being that they were not made permanent.

George W. Bush treated the Oval Office with the respect it deserved, he was not one to show up in a t-shirt or jeans, or any of the casual attire that was reportedly acceptable apparel during the Clinton/Gore years, and during the current reign of the illegal 0bamunist regime in power today.

I believe he was a Christian man, although flawed like the rest of us sinners, he made a serious error in equating the death cult of Islam with Christianity and other faiths, the old "many paths to God" trap that many have fallen into. Of all people, surely GWB should have realized that Islam is anti-Christian, wicked and evil to it's rotten core. But that is for him and his God to work out.

In areas of foreign policy, Bush's results are a mixed bag to be honest. Iraq may be having free elections, but despite the GWB promises that Iran "would not be permitted" to obtain a nuclear capability, those little Persian jokers are on the precipice of obtaining exactly that, and there was a window of opportunity between the middle of November 2008 and January 20th 2009 when Bush could have launched preemptive air strikes on Iran, taken out their nuclear programs, and there isn't a damn thing anyone could have done about it. Ditto for North Korea. There is no question that the so-called 'Six Party Talks' were doomed to failure from the beginning, and one needs only to consult a true authority, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, to understand that. The bottom line is that after telling America about that wicked 'Axis of Evil', GWB seemed content with taking out only 1/3rd of that Axis, leaving Iran and North Korea not only intact, but in a more powerful position as he left office last year.

Two inconvenient truths that cannot be refuted are that a.) George W. Bush proportionally spent more money than even Lyndon Johnson on his abysmal 'Great Society' programs (GWB never even found his veto pen until 2006 and then only wielded it when a bill allowing for embryonic research came across his desk), and b.) even the buffoon from Plains Georgia, Jimmy Carter had more vetos in his 4 year term, than George W. Bush had in his EIGHT. There is no arguing the point that GWB presided over 8 years of massive spending, the largest expansion of federal power since FDR, and his own inability (or refusal) to defend his decisions, and the policies of his Administration, allowed his political adversaries (i.e., 'Rats) to define him and his policies as THEY chose to do. With their accomplices in the lamestream media it was child's play to create the whole 'Bush fatigue' mee-mee, and the public licked it up.

Even in the 2008 election cycle, GWB could have lambasted 0bama at any time, pointing out his inexperience, his questionable credentials, hell - he could have at least raised an eyebrow at the issue of whether or not 0bama was even Constitutionally qualified to serve as POTUS, but we saw none of that. The fact is, even on the dawn of the day he left the White House to head back to Crawford Texas, George W. Bush was still trying to 'change the tone in Washington', and as admirable a human trait as that is, in an alleged savvy politician as everyone seems to think he was and is, it was utter folly and that is why the GOP got it's ass handed to it with RINO McCain at the top of the ticket.

Now there are millions of Americans who admire George W. Bush, a vast number here on FR, and they all have their own reasons why they love and admire the man, but there can be no pretending that George W. Bush was any sort of 'conservative' in the classic Reagan sense. GWB stated in his own words to former White House speechwriter Matt Latimer (prior to the 2008 CPAC convention) that "there is no conservative movement"...that he (GWB) had "redefined the Republican Party". Now GWB DID some conservative things while in Office, and the examples of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito come to mind, but overall George W. Bush governed as a moderate-to-liberal Republican, he supported moderates and liberals within the GOP (the eventual turncoat Arlen Specter, for one), and genuine Reagan conservatives mostly got the back of his hand, albeit with a smile.

As for missing GWB? Compared to the Kenyan Usurper and his Chicago thugs that are destroying everything they can lay their hands on, only a fool would say they would prefer to see 0bama in the White House than GWB. But we shouldn't fool ourselves: George W. Bush was no conservative Republican, and he has acknowledged that himself.

[OhioWfan, I'm pinging you to this post in hopes that you won't think I'm being too severe in my analysis of GWB.]

[TADSLOS]

Yawn. Keep trying deb. Someday when you grow up you’ll actually be able to pull off a comment to FReepers that really means anything besides a slur. Until then, your just so much lost FR bandwidth to ignore.

[kcvl]

Stanley Eugene Fish (born 1938) is an American literary theorist

He is often associated with postmodernism, at times to his irritation, as he describes himself as an anti-foundationalist

Professor Fish has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley

Fish started his career as a medievalist.

Fish as university politician

As chair of the Duke English department from 1986 to 1992, Fish attracted attention and controversy. Fish, according to Lingua Franca, used “shameless–and in academe unheard-of–entrepreneurial gusto” to take “a respectable but staid Southern English department and transform it into the professional powerhouse of the day,” in part through the payment of lavish salaries. His time at Duke saw comparatively quite light undergraduate and graduate coursework requirements, matched by heavy graduate teaching requirements. This permitted professors to reduce their own teaching. In April 1992, near the end of Fish’s time as department chair, an external review committee considered evidence that the English curriculum had become “a hodgepodge of uncoordinated offerings,” lacking in “broad foundational courses” or faculty planning. The department’s dissipating prominence in the 1990s was featured on the front page of the New York Times

Within the first years following Fish’s departure as chair, many of his most prominent hires left, including Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (citing anti-intellectualism and homophobia), Michael Moon, and Jonathan Goldberg. By 1999, Fish’s wife, Americanist Jane Tompkins, had “practically quit teaching” at Duke and “worked as a cook at a local health food restaurant.”

Writing in Slate Magazine, Judith Shulevitz reported that not only does Fish openly proclaim himself “unprincipled” but also rejects wholesale the concepts of “fairness, impartiality, reasonableness.” To Fish, “ideas have no consequences.” For taking this stance, Shulevitz characterizes Fish as “not the unprincipled relativist he’s accused of being. He’s something worse. He’s a fatalist.”

R. V. Young writes,

“ Because his general understanding of human nature and of the human condition is false, Fish fails in the specific task of a university scholar, which requires that learning be placed in the service of truth. And this, finally, is the critical issue in the contemporary university of which Stanley Fish is a typical representative: sophistry renders truth itself equivocal and deprives scholarly learning of its reason for being. . . . His brash disdain of principle and his embrace of sophistry reveal the hollowness hidden at the heart of the current academic enterprise

Camille Paglia, author of Sexual Personae and public intellectual, denounced Fish as a “totalitarian Tinkerbell,” charging him with hypocrisy for lecturing about multiculturalism from the perspective of a tenured professor at the homogenous and sheltered ivory tower of Duke

[kcvl]

Stanley Fish

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

It’s about damn time.

[Carry_Okie]

Because his general understanding of human nature and of the human condition is false, Fish fails in the specific task of a university scholar, which requires that learning be placed in the service of truth.

Thanks. He is apparently responsible for a loose movement at Duke. I shudder to contemplate the number of lawyers he and his ilk have spawned.

[Luke21]

Two magnificent SC appointments, otherwise very disappointed with Bush. Will be nice not to get our butts handed to us this fall.

[rdl6989]

How’s the zot working out for you?

[reagan_fanatic]

LOL - I missed out on this thread until it was too late.

I love a good ZOT.

[rdl6989]

I’m always in after the zot it seems like.

[Servant of the Cross]

um ... meandog, I don’t understand the added title to your thread - what does [we won’t miss you - ZOT!] mean exactly?

[CounterCounterCulture]

The parenthetical note was added by a moderator (or JimRob himself) after meandog’s suspension.

[Servant of the Cross]

I know ... I was just messing with the 'toothless' dog ....

He's not mean, he's lovable.

[Deb]

Even the “toothless” ones cover you in spit. Fortunately, I like it.

[Impy]

When Republicans govern like democrats it doesn’t turn out well.