The nation was spared a President Gore or President Kerry ... given Chief Justice John Roberts ... Justice Samuel Alito ... and a good, decent and honest man who loved his country, its Constitution and its people.
Posted on 09/16/2010 5:06:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
Former President George W. Bush left office with the lowest approval ratings since Richard Nixon. In reaction, for nearly two years President Barack Obama won easy applause by prefacing almost every speech on his economic policies with a "Bush did it" put-down.
But suddenly Bush seems OK. Last week, the president did the unthinkable: He praised Bush for his past efforts to reach out to Muslims. Vice President Joe Biden went further and blurted out, "Mr. Bush deserves a lot of credit." Biden topped that off with, "Mr. President, thank you."
Even liberal pundits have now called on Bush to help Obama diffuse rising tensions over the so-called Ground Zero mosque and Arizona's illegal immigration law.
What's going on?
For one thing, recent polls show an astounding rebound in the former president's favorability -- to the extent that in the bellwether state of Ohio, voters would rather still have Bush as president than Obama by a 50-42 margin. Nationwide, Obama's approval ratings continue to sink to near 40 percent -- a nadir that took years for Bush to reach. It has become better politics to praise rather than to bury Bush.
Iraq seems on the road to success, with a growing economy and a stabilizing government. Don't take my word on that; ask Vice President Biden. He recently claimed that the way Iraq is going, it could become one of the Obama administration's "greatest achievements." Obama himself seconded that when the former war critic called the American effort in Iraq "a remarkable chapter" in the history of the two countries.
Then there are the growing comparisons with Bush's supposed past transgressions. Compared to Obama, they're starting to look like traffic tickets now. Take the economy and the war on terror. Americans were angry at the Bush-era deficits. But they look small after Obama trumped them in less than two years.
For six years of the Bush administration, Americans enjoyed a strong economy. So far, there hasn't been a similar month under Obama. Bush had a one-time Wall Street meltdown, but Obama's permanent big-government medicine for it seems far worse than the original disease.
If Hurricane Katrina showed government ineptness, so did the recent BP oil spill. Maybe such problems in the Gulf were neither Bush nor Obama's fault alone, but are better attributed to the inept federal bureaucracy itself -- or to freak weather and human laxity.
On the war on terror, Obama has dropped all the old campaign venom. Bush's Guantanamo Bay detention facility, renditions, tribunals, intercepts, wiretaps, predator drone attacks, and policies in Afghanistan and Iraq are no longer dubbed a shredding of the Constitution. All are now seen as national security tools that must be kept, if not expanded, under Obama.
In comparison to Obama and his gaffes, Bush no longer seems the singular clod whom his opponents endlessly ridiculed. The supposedly mellifluent Obama relies on the teleprompter as if it were his umbilical cord. His occasional word mangling (he pronounced "corpsman" as "corpse-man") and weird outbursts (he recently complained that opponents "talk about me like a dog") remind us that the pressures of the presidency can make a leader sometimes seem silly.
Bush now seems cool because he has played it cool. The more Obama and Biden have trashed him, the more silent and thus magnanimous he appears. Bush's post-presidency is not like that of Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton -- both have criticized their successors and hit the campaign trail -- but similar to that of his father, who worked with, rather than harped about, Bill Clinton. That graciousness not only has helped George W. Bush in the polls, but it finally seems to be mellowing out Obama as well.
Criticism of Bush got out of hand the last few years of his term. Writing novels or making documentaries about killing the president, or libeling him as a Nazi, is not the sort of politics that we want continued during the Obama years. So it makes sense before the general election to halt the endless blame-gaming, before what goes around comes around.
The frenzy of Bush hatred and Obama worship that crested in the summer of 2008 is over. We now better remember the Bush at Ground Zero with a megaphone and his arm around a fireman than the Texan who pronounced "nuclear" as "nucular." Meanwhile, hope-and-change now seems to offer little hope and less change.
America woke up from its 2008 trance and is concluding that Bush was never as bad, and Obama never as good, as advertised.
Well stated. I would start with jettisoning Karl Rove and his mind numbing "realpolitick" B.S. If Bush had been more mindful with regards to restraining spending, we doubtfull would be stuck with this spendthrift man-child in office now.
If you perceive this as Bush bashing, I can't help you.
Bush’s incompetence? Oh perhaps you think that 0bama is competent? *rme*
‘For six years of the Bush administration, Americans enjoyed a strong economy.’
I guess people still don’t comprehend a bubble and living on credit.
The nation was spared a President Gore or President Kerry ... given Chief Justice John Roberts ... Justice Samuel Alito ... and a good, decent and honest man who loved his country, its Constitution and its people.
GW Bush is that annoying seat belt you wear....you may not liked it but you felt safe.
Obama cut the seat belt, removed the front bumper, drained the brake fluid and put the peddle to meddle on a 2 mile hill.
There is no such thing as a semi-Progressive.
Bush is a Progressive - PERIOD.
McCain is a Progressive
Lindsay Graham is a Progressive...and the list goes on.
They have inflitrated our government, completely hijacked the DEM party and now finally our country.
The Progressives do not support or like America as the Founders had intended and they have little regard for the US Constitution our legal binding contract.
People are just rationalizing Bush now because Ozero seems so bad...they really aren’t all the different just traveling at different speeds of destruction.
There are many people in the GOP and supporting the GOP that suffer from GOP Establishment Worship Derangement Syndrome.
Being from TX I wouldn’t think you would sugar coat it with semi... :)
I will always remember Bush for trying to ram amnesty with chain migration down our throats, in much the same manner that Obamacare WAS rammed down our throats.
Old saying we have in Texas,
Anything that’s *semi* is F@$ked.
(I was being nice)
I can still remember my anger on 9/12/01 when President Bush visited the DC mosque to assure the local iman that relations between the United States and muslims was still strong and how he sat there listening to the iman go on about some story about mohammad hiding among the Christians when the Jews were trying to hunt him down. Muslims had just murdered 3,000+ innocent civilians and this guy had to get his two cents in about the "evil" Jews. Bush just sat there and listened politely when he should have been handing the guy a demolition permit for tearing down the DC mosque as the bulldozers waited outside.
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Excellent point?
OHH Goody a “We Love RINO Bush” thread. BUSH was/is a rino, establishment, Inside-the-Beltway, Northeast TURD! For more info on Karl Rove see: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2589386/posts
I meant to say Excellent point without the question mark
You are correct. The mess started when Pelosi and Reid took over and we can blame the arrogant pos also for it, because he was part of it when he was in the Senate
They need to make a statue out of that picture.
While I didn’t care for GWB’s big spending, he was able to lead. Obama is incapable of leading....only rabble rousing.
W tried to reach out to everyone, including the moonbats with the “He’s not MY President” bumper stickers. Obama openly ridicules and scapegoats entire segments of the population.
Don't let the Libs and their sycophants in the LSM twist this fact. If conservatives want to blame GOP involvement, McCain, Graham, Snowe, Collins, Voinovich, etc. etc. are the ones who get most of the blame not W. It was the congressional leaders of his own party who gave away the store. And they did that too in the early years of the Bush administration.
Yes, that is the case.
From the moment Pelosi got into office, the Dems and the MSM engaged in a non-stop bashing of the economy and Bush.
They did a pivot from non-stop bashing of Iraq to the economy in order to crash the economy and, thus, pave the way to capturing the White House.
Both liberals and conservatives ended up convinced after this non-stop hate fest that Bush was to blame for everything under the sun. Appreciation for the incredibly hard work Bush had done to protect America (and the work on the economy he had done to restore confidence) vanished.
Something disgusting took place and we are all suffering now due to that witch taking the Speaker's gavel.
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