8 Years of Bush

[Fudzy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vTFesgMkzk

8 years in 8 minutes, do you think we're better or worse off?

 

[supersunbird]

Better off.

"George of the bungle" is what the newspaper said. He should rather have chosen to go into Dodgeball than politics if I check that shoe incident.

 

[nivek]

Gonna miss him, he was great

 

[Alan]

Never mind Bush Obamasiah is here to deliver 'change' or is he?

WASHINGTON -- Except for Richard Nixon, no president since Harry Truman leaves office more unloved than George W. Bush. Truman's rehabilitation took decades. Bush's will come sooner. Indeed, it has already begun. The chief revisionist? Barack Obama.

Vindication is being expressed not in words but in deeds -- the tacit endorsement conveyed by the Obama continuity-we-can-believe-in transition. It's not just the retention of such key figures as Secretary of Defense Bob Gates or Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner, who, as president of the New York Fed, has been instrumental in guiding the Bush financial rescue over the last year. It's the continuity of policy.

It is the repeated pledge to conduct a withdrawal from Iraq that does not destabilize its new democracy and that, as Vice President-elect Joe Biden said just this week in Baghdad, adheres to the Bush-negotiated status of forces agreement that envisions a U.S. withdrawal over three years, not the 16-month timetable on which Obama campaigned.

It is the great care Obama is taking in not pre-emptively abandoning the anti-terror infrastructure that the Bush administration leaves behind. While still a candidate, Obama voted for the expanded presidential wiretapping (FISA) powers that Bush had fervently pursued. And while Obama opposes waterboarding (already banned, by the way, by Bush's CIA in 2006), he declined George Stephanopoulos' invitation (on ABC's "This Week") to outlaw all interrogation not permitted by the Army Field Manual. Explained Obama: "Dick Cheney's advice was good, which is let's make sure we know everything that's being done," i.e., before throwing out methods simply because Obama campaigned against them.

Obama still disagrees with Cheney's view of the acceptability of some of these techniques. But citing as sage the advice offered by "the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history" (according to Joe Biden) -- advice paraphrased by Obama as "we shouldn't be making judgments on the basis of incomplete information or campaign rhetoric" -- is a startlingly early sign of a newly respectful consideration of the Bush-Cheney legacy.

Not from any change of heart. But from simple reality. The beauty of democratic rotations of power is that when the opposition takes office, cheap criticism and calumny will no longer do. The Democrats now own Iraq. They own the war on al-Qaeda. And they own the panoply of anti-terror measures with which the Bush administration kept us safe these last seven years.

Which is why Obama is consciously creating a gulf between what he now dismissively calls "campaign rhetoric" and the policy choices he must now make as president. Accordingly, Newsweek -- Obama acolyte and scourge of everything Bush/Cheney -- has on the eve of the Democratic restoration miraculously discovered the arguments for warrantless wiretaps, enhanced interrogation and detention without trial. Indeed, Newsweek's neck-snapping cover declares, "Why Obama May Soon Find Virtue in Cheney's Vision of Power."

Obama will be loath to throw away the tools that have kept the homeland safe. Just as he will be loath to jeopardize the remarkable turnaround in American fortunes in Iraq.

Obama opposed the war. But the war is all but over. What remains is an Iraq turned from aggressive, hostile power in the heart of the Middle East to an emerging democracy openly allied with the United States. No president would want to be responsible for undoing that success.

In Iraq, Bush rightly took criticism for all that went wrong -- the WMD fiasco, Abu Ghraib, the descent into bloody chaos in 2005-06. Then Bush goes to Baghdad to ratify the ultimate post-surge success of that troubled campaign -- the signing of a strategic partnership between the U.S. and Iraq -- and ends up dodging two size-10 shoes for his pains.

Absorbing that insult was Bush's final service on Iraq. Whatever venom the war generated is concentrated on Bush himself. By having personalized the responsibility for the awfulness of the war, Bush has done his successor a favor. Obama enters office with a strategic success on his hands -- while Bush leaves the scene taking a shoe for his country.

Which is why I suspect Bush showed such equanimity during a private farewell interview at the White House a few weeks ago. He leaves behind the sinews of war, for the creation of which he has been so vilified but which will serve his successor -- and his country -- well over the coming years. The very continuation by Democrats of Bush's policies will be grudging, if silent, acknowledgement of how much he got right.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/01/obamas_revises_the_bush_years.html

Shame

 

[daveza]

Good riddance to Bush and Cheney.

It was not nice knowing you.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/18/poll.bush.presidency/index.html

Only 3 percent of those questioned say Bush was one of the greatest presidents in the nation's history. Forty-six percent rate him a poor president.

"That's three times higher than the number who gave a failing grade to his father or Ronald Reagan when they left office, and it's 27 points higher than Bill Clinton in 2001," Holland said.

 

[Glock26]

Only 3 percent of those questioned say Bush was one of the greatest presidents in the nation's history. Forty-six percent rate him a poor president.

So what if only 3% think he wasn't one of the greatest ever..that is meaningless. More importanly...if 46% say he was poor, then 54% probably think he was good. And he was. GB was a victim of a liberal media that needs a story every now and then and does the same thing that they do to any celebs in the USA and the world.
PC'ness is taking over, and your kids are all going to suffer for it. The financial crisis started by Clinton is only now rearing its head, and it is natural he is going to take the blame for it. America called for a president to do things, and then turned on him later for those same things.
Doesn't really matter, it pales in comparisson to what Yo'mama is going to do to the USA. Don't even argue..just tune in back here in 2 years and let's see who was right. Welfare state, here we come.

G26

 

[kryptik]

I'll remember him only because his command of the English language was a joke. If I had my way, I'd waterboard him on general principles. Good riddance to him.

 

[daveza]

In the same report -

As George W. Bush spends his final days in office, a national poll suggests that two-thirds of Americans see his presidency as a failure.


President Bush gives his farewell address to the nation on Thursday at the White House.

Sixty-eight percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Sunday said that Bush's eight years in the White House were a failure

Bush is history - Obama the future.

 

[LazyLion]

I agree with Condaleeza Rice that in time people will come to thank Bush for his actions. I know he did it in a bungling way... but the next 50 years will show that at least he had the right intentions even if he never went about it in the best way. The threat of radical Islam is greater than most people realize. It is truly a clash of civilizations and cultures that will not go away until it is dealt with from without and from within.

 

[The_Right_Honourable_Brit]

Well it must be noted that unlike liberal Western Europe, the US has not had a terrorist attack on its home ground since 9/11. And one of any president's priorities is national security, so George W. Bush can get 5 stars for that aspect anyway.

 

[Alan]

I agree with Condaleeza Rice that in time people will come to thank Bush for his actions. I know he did it in a bungling way... but the next 50 years will show that at least he had the right intentions even if he never went about it in the best way. The threat of radical Islam is greater than most people realize. It is truly a clash of civilizations and cultures that will not go away until it is dealt with from without and from within.

Churchill was vilified as a warmongering old git. So was Reagan. While mad Bob was championed as an example of leadership.

History will judge his actions. Don't be surprised if all these dubya loathers suddenly start suffering amnesia in the not too distant future like they do with mad Bob now

 

[Fudzy]

Churchill was vilified as a warmongering old git. So was Reagan. While mad Bob was championed as an example of leadership.

History will judge his actions. Don't be surprised if all these dubya loathers suddenly start suffering amnesia in the not too distant future like they do with mad Bob now

I hope so, at present he's going out as the least liked president in America's last 70 years.

Bush's Final Approval Rating: 22 Percent

 

[icyrus]

I agree with Condaleeza Rice that in time people will come to thank Bush for his actions. I know he did it in a bungling way... but the next 50 years will show that at least he had the right intentions even if he never went about it in the best way. The threat of radical Islam is greater than most people realize. It is truly a clash of civilizations and cultures that will not go away until it is dealt with from without and from within.

Sigh. Terrorism of any form is no threat to America. Incompetent governance on the other hand...

 

[Hosehead]

Good Riddance to the outgoing Administration. The history books will show GWB as the most unpopular President EVER. Rice is but an academic and should have never left her ivory tower.

 

[Dohc-WP]

Im capped but I hope the video ends with the shoes being thrown @ him

 

[PPC_SouthAfrica]

I am sure he will be missed by some.

 

[rwenzori]

Churchill was vilified as a warmongering old git. So was Reagan. While mad Bob was championed as an example of leadership.

Ah yes, Churchill, who said this of Stalin:

"I have had a very nice talk with the old Bear. I like him the more I see him."

Some good has come of Georgie's reign though. Morons'R'Us can always take heart from the fact that one of their own made it to President of the USA.

 

[Albereth]

I'd agree that the world is a better place for the Bush administration. You may not like the fact that a calculated and measured response was put in place to deal with global terrorism - but just imagine what a Democrat's response to 9/11 would have been.

Obama is already backtracking on his campaign promises (rhetoric) and, as I have said elsewhere, the world is a scarier place when a Democrat is in charge. Let's hope this one acts for like a Republican.

 

[Hosehead]

I'd agree that the world is a better place for the Bush administration. You may not like the fact that a calculated and measured response was put in place to deal with global terrorism -.

Bush only achieved Police State status for America at the cost and rampant disregard for civil liberties. And forget the sugarplum notion that any difference has been made by the Administration to thwart Global Terrorism. Terrorism has always existed- long before America was founded and always will be with us in a myriad of forms. The US Policies have made not an iota of diffference in dealing with terrorism. The threat will always be there.

 

[rwenzori]

just imagine what a Democrat's response to 9/11 would have been.

JFK did OK in the Cuban Missile Crisis.