Posted on 10/29/2007 12:48:01 AM PDT by neverdem
This article appears in the "Geopolitics" section of the recent issue of The American.
By October, 15 months before his presidency would end, George Bush’s approval ratings still hovered around 30 percent.
His administration will go down, say historians such as Columbia’s Eric Foner and Princeton’s Sean Wilentz, as a disaster. As Wilentz put it, “Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.”
A new genre in American popular culture has arisen comparing Bush to Hitler — on the Internet, and in fiction, stand-up comedy, and drama. To the novelist Garrison Keillor, Bush’s Republicans are “brownshirts in pinstripes” — echoing Al Gore’s similar slur of “digital brownshirts.”
Even Bush’s supporters seem resigned to such abuse. They now talk not of a restoration in public esteem before the president leaves office, but rather of a Trumanesque turnaround: a once-despised president only years later becomes appreciated for his unpopular but necessary decisions.
But for now, Bush seems to have an orphaned presidency defended by very few. From the left, he is criticized for his tax cuts for the rich, his lack of concern for African-American victims of Katrina, his illiberal homeland-security measures — and always for Iraq, with shrill persistent choruses of “preemption” and “unilateralism.” Much of this anger against Bush is Pavlovian and superficial, deeply embedded within the president’s caricatured dead-or-alive, smoke-’em-out lingo.
As a result, the left gives the president no credit for policies that have irked his conservative base. In his first term, he increased federal spending at a faster rate than Bill Clinton. He extended the reach of federal education policy with his No Child Left Behind legislation, and he did not veto a single spending bill, instead sponsoring a major new prescription entitlement...
(Excerpt) Read more at victorhanson.com ...
Destroyed two terrorist regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq and freed 50 million people.
Destroyed Al Qaeda and their allies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Out of fear of what happened to Saddam Qadafi of Libya gave up his WMD program.
Forced the Syrian terrorist regime to leave Lebanon after 30 years of brutal occupation.
Cut our taxes which helped us a lot in avoiding a recession and the economy has been at one if it best historical performance for the last 6 years.
Appointed conservative judges including two great Supreme Court judges.
Signed a ban on partial birth abortion.
God bless President Bush.
...gave a great speech, though.
There are a whole lot of people in both countries that disagree with that.
Speechifying never hurt no one...except maybe Billy Harrison.
Speechifying never hurt no one...except maybe Billy Harrison.
...or so they would like you to believe. Oliver Stone is working up a screenplay on the death of Harrison.
Let’s revisit this question in say ... twenty years.
Losers said the same thing about Reagan.
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When did that happen? Last I looked we were still fighting in both countries.
Intellectually vacuous argument. Spending increases under EVERY President. Federal Spending DOUBLED under Ronald Reagan. The natural increase in mandatory Entitlement Spending sees to most of those increases.
It is intellectually disingenuous to talk about “Spending Increases”. It is especially dishonest to compare the peaceful calm Clinton era of the 1990s with the war and recession racked 8 years of Bush.
What would be intellectually honest would be to compare how much of GDP was consumed by the Govt during each President’s term. By that measure Bush is not much different from most Presidents.
Bush The Big Spender? Check Again
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1916924/posts
But I know, waste of time. The paused Conservative talking heads have screamed this lie about spending so loudly so long people cannot be bothered to actually look at the facts
After his reelection in 04, he pushed his globalist agenda.
He stuck his middle finger up at the conservative base and continued to push it.
He is still pushing it with the frequent (6+ in the last 2 years) attempts to pass amnesty for illegals.
It sank his legacy. He never seemed to be get a handle on using the political capital effectively. He never seemed to understand the use of the bully pulpit. And his last 2 years seem to hinge on his learning the meaning of ‘veto’ and finding his veto pen, as he has threatned some 18 vetoes since the Dems took both chambers in 06.
NO, there are a whole lot of people in THIS country who will NEVER admit to this because it requires them to admit they have been wrong about Iraq all along. These people's child level intellect and ultra fragile egos will prevent them from EVER admitting they have been wrong about Iraq from the start.
Instead they will simply continue screaming the same set of lies about the mission in Iraq in the hopes they can drown out this painful truth. They have been, and are, completely wrong and "that idiot cowboy" Bush has been, and remains, right.
You think so? Go back and look at events around the Johnson and Nixon administrations. It’s 1973 all over again — and in both cases the primary culprit was the gross fiscal irresponsibility of the White House (i.e., paying the exorbitant costs associated with a massive military campaign overseas while at the same time funding the largest new entitlement program in history).
That would be stupid. It would mean you would rather have the next SC Justice be a Ruth Ginzburg clone instead of another Justice Alito or Roberts type. You don't just elect the guy spewing the nice sounding retoric, you are electing his whole team.
Yep! During Carter’s administration, there were 18% interest rates, a daming of our military, and on and on.
Bush tried to broaden the appeal of the conservative movement by playing ball with the rats. He was naive on his belief that the rats can be trusted. More than anything, the Iraq war has turned Bush into an unpopular president. If Iraq had been pacified in 2005, Bush would be popular.
Bush has been strong on many conservative values: judge selection, tax cuts, energy policy (except for ethanol), abortion and stem cell issues, war on terror, entitlement reform, and tort reform. Some of these areas have been stopped by the rats and rinos.
Since the rats have gained control of Congress, Bush has dealt with the rats with a firmer hand. He has prevented some bad ideas from becoming laws.
Completely ignorant assessment that would require one to ignore all factual reality to cling madly to an ignorant knee jerk Neo isolationists BDS outlook. There are NO parallels to anyone who bothers to actually look at that facts instead of madly clinging to their failed political dogmas and ignorant 09-10-01 mindset.
Start with this
Bush The Big Spender? Check Again
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1916924/posts
The only thing stupider then comparing Bush to LBJ would be to think Ron Paul has a chance of ever being anything but a lunatic fringe congress twit from Texas.
Thank you for that BFO, never would have thought of it myself.
I sincerely doubt it.
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