The Frat Boy Ships Out – A fine fiction
(Words of The Rude News in blue)
He leaves the White House as one of the least popular and most divisive presidents in American history.
He leaves the Whitehouse carpets free of cum stains that are the breadcrumbs on the path to 9/11.
At home, his approval rating has been stuck in the 20s for months;
At home, the Democratic Congress approval rating has been stuck below the 20’s for months. They hit 12% late last year, nearly half of Bush’s worst numbers.
abroad, George Bush has presided over the most catastrophic collapse in America’s reputation since the second world war.
Our image abroad is not as bad as we liberals would like it to be, even with the anti-American encouragement we provide.
The American economy is in deep recession, brought on by a crisis that forced Mr Bush to preside over huge and unpopular bail-outs.
Here is the cause:
More details here, for those who like being informed.
America is embroiled in two wars, one of which Mr Bush launched against the tide of world opinion.
World opinion is what is most important. After griping over Iraq, which we won despite world opinion, which thinks the U.N. is doing a fine job. Only 5 million lives have slipped through the cracks, pretty good numbers for the U.N. The U.N. is always serious about the value of human life, and they promise to be there to watch the end of it. Sometimes.
The Bush family name, once among the most illustrious in American political life, is now so tainted that Jeb, George’s younger brother, recently decided not to run for the Senate from Florida. A Bush relative describes family gatherings as “funeral wakes”.
A made up relative reference? If you must. Illustrious? Here are the Democrats in 2000, threatening a TV ad showdown and saying “we could change politics forever if you just listen to us”
Where have we heard that line before? They didn’t think the name illustrious then either. A small paragraph of lies there.
Few people would have predicted this litany of disasters when Mr Bush ran for the presidency in 2000. True, the 2000 election was likely to be divisive because of the peculiar arithmetic of the outcome (Mr Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore by 500,000 votes, then won a disputed recount in Florida by a few hundred). But for most people Mr Bush was a pretty acceptable choice, and certainly not a crusader-in-waiting.
Hmm. Do you smell the BS? If Bush was acceptable to most people, how did he lose the popular vote?
If he was not a crusader in waiting, why is that Bush, all of Bush’s actions before 2001, and every action taken by Republicans, always ends up with “crusade” in the same sentence when liberals open their mouth? Liberals even accused him of an anti-tax “crusade” in 2000. Is this anything like Obama’s “Change Jihad?”
He came across as an affable chap, particularly when compared with his uptight rival.
Liberals never describe their kind as uptight, until after they lose. Then it’s used to place the blame on, not their bad ideas.
Frank Bruni, who covered his election campaign for the New York Times, wrote in 2002 that “the Bush I knew was part scamp and part bumbler, a timeless fraternity boy and heedless cutup, a weekday gym rat and weekend napster.” And the then governor of Texas presented himself as a centrist—a new kind of “compassionate conservative”, a “uniter rather than a divider”, an advocate of a “humble” and restrained foreign policy. The Economist liked this mixture enough to endorse him in 2000.
That’s because you understood money back then.
How did all this change? How did the uniter become a divider? How did Mr Bush’s governing style shape American politics over the next eight years? And what legacy has the 43rd president left for the 44th?
What does that mean? What “legacy” did Clinton leave Bush? “Cum comes out of the Oval Office Carpet?” “You can commit witness tampering and get away with it?” how about “You think they got us in ‘93, wait ‘till New York sees what I left for them…”
Here is Bush’s legacy to Obama: “I have the Muslim world’s attention and fearful respect, don’t go weak and f**k it all up”
His supporters—the few that remain—point out that this was a presidency knocked sideways by the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, which no one foresaw. The huge expansion of government and executive power under Mr Bush, and the prosecution of a disastrous war, (that we won) all unrolled in the wake of those attacks. The financial crisis, which began with overvalued homes and sloppily underwritten mortgages, was the product of numerous forces and failures in which Mr Bush was not a major contributor; they included low interest rates, bankers’ reckless risk-taking, flawed regulation and consumers’ bubble mentality, all of which spanned borders.
The above paragraph is referring to the CRA, Clinton legacy, and Democrats still serving today. That’s why it says; “in which Mr Bush was not a major contributor” because he wasn’t. He could have fought against it, but then he would have been “too right wing, a free market fundamentalist”
Yet Mr Bush’s presidency was also poisoned by his own ambition. Mr Bruni’s “timeless fraternity boy” wanted to be a great president. He not only wanted to win the second term that Bill Clinton had denied to his father—though that mattered to him enormously. He also wanted to usher in a period of prolonged Republican hegemony, much as William McKinley had done for his party in the late 19th century. After the September 11th attacks he not only itched to destroy al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He also wanted to tackle the root causes of terrorism in the Middle East. Mr Bush frequently spoke about how much he hated anything that was “small ball”. His close advisers repeatedly described him as a “transformative president”.
Yeah those “transformative” guys try to bring a lot of change… they are dangerous…
Mr Bush’s role model throughout his presidency was not his father but the patron saint of the modern conservative movement, Ronald Reagan. He regarded Reagan as a man who had unleashed free-enterprise and defeated the Soviet Empire, and he tried to do the same with his huge tax cuts and his global war on terror. He mimicked Reagan’s Western style, even relaxing on a Texas ranch where Reagan had taken his holidays on a Californian one; and he echoed Reagan’s enthusiastic use of the word “evil”.
To say he is Reganesque because he said evil, is a stupid thing to say. He lives in Texas, it’s western. Reagan rode European style, you should appreciate that. Get out of your Prius once in awhile.
Other facets of Mr Bush’s personality mixed with his vaulting ambition to undermine his presidency. Mr Bush is what the British call an inverted snob. A scion of one of America’s most powerful families, he is a devotee of sunbelt populism; a product of Yale and Harvard Business School, he is a scourge of eggheads. Mr Bush is a convert to an evangelical Christianity that emphasises emotion—particularly the intensely emotional experience of being born again—over ratiocination. He also styled himself, much like Reagan, as a decider rather than a details man; many people who met him were astonished by what they described as his “lack of inquisitiveness” and his general “passivity”.
A scion of a powerful family who did not act the part? Bastard! Ratiocination… what the f*ck? What is that word? (zooming over to dictionary.com) Oh I see… a fifty-cent word upgrade for reason. So Bush is an unthinking, redneck bible thumper. So much different than what liberals normally call those on the right…
This led Mr Bush to distrust the Washington establishment, and even to believe that establishment wisdom was probably wrong simply by virtue of what it was. Fred Barnes, a conservative journalist, entitled his book on Mr Bush “Rebel in Chief”. He quotes one Bush confidante as saying: “One tux a term. That’s our idea of outreach to the Washington community.”
The establishment in Washington is wrong by virtue of what it is. A few paragraphs up, you admit the economic crisis is not his fault, so then the blame falls to… the establishment in Washington.
The Economist also seems to forget Obama lying his butt off the whole campaign about this issue.
Lack of curiosity also led Mr Bush to suspect intellectuals in general and academic experts in particular.
Just like Hitler!
David Frum, who wrote speeches for Mr Bush during his first term, noted that “conspicuous intelligence seemed actively unwelcome in the Bush White House”. The Bush cabinet was “solid and reliable”, but contained no “really high-powered brains”. Karen Hughes, one of his closest advisers, “rarely read books and distrusted people who did”. Ron Suskind, a journalist, has argued that Mr Bush created a “faith-based presidency” in which decisions, precisely because they were based on faith, could not be revised subsequently.
Crazy Christians from Amway are ruling the world! We need to elect the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
For the good of the party
Mr Bush relied heavily on a small inner core of advisers. The most important of these was Dick Cheney, who quickly became the most powerful vice-president in American history.
We know Biden could never, ever become a powerful vice-president, so we are safe there.
Mr Cheney used his mastery of bureaucracy to fill the administration with his protégés and to control the flow of information to the president. He pushed Mr Bush forcefully to the right on everything from global warming to the invasion of Iraq; he also fought ruthlessly to expand the power of the executive branch, which he thought had been dangerously restricted since Watergate.
Oooh yeah Watergate! We got Jesus, free markets, unjust war, Hitler allusions, tax crusading, Global Warming, now we just need the classic Military Industrial complex thingy…
The two other decisive figures were Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s longtime political guru, and Donald Rumsfeld, his defence secretary. Mr Rove was obsessed by pursuing his dream of a rolling Republican realignment, subordinating everything to party politics. Mr Rumsfeld regarded the Iraq war not, like his boss, as an exercise in democracy-building, but as an opportunity to test the model of an “agile military” that he was pioneering at the Pentagon.
There it is. Agile militaries are bad. We need a lumbering conventional turd, because it’s hard to kidnap and torture with a tank.
The fruit of all this can be seen in the three most notable characteristics of the Bush presidency: partisanship, politicisation and incompetence.
Partisanship he avoided. Politicisation he brought to education by letting Kennedy in. Incompetence he demonstrated by reaching out to Democrats time and again.
Mr Bush was the most partisan president in living memory. He was content to be president of half the country—a leader who fused his roles of head of state and leader of his party. He devoted his presidency to feeding the Republican coalition that elected him.
Really? That’s news to conservatives. Here is Michelle Malkin’s series of non-conservo-Bush. She was not alone from the fall of 1999 to this very day. This partisan lie, is simply a lie.
The most important legislation of his first year in office was a $1.35 trillion tax cut that handed an extra $53,000 to the top 1% of earners. At his farewell press conference on January 12th Mr Bush called his tax cuts the “right course of action”, as if they were an unpopular but heroic decision. They weren’t. The budget was in surplus in 2000, and both Mr Bush’s main Republican rival, John McCain, and his Democratic opponent, Mr Gore, also wanted to cut taxes, but by less, so as to pay down more debt and shore up Social Security (public pensions). Mr Bush’s much larger tax cut reflected his, and his party’s, belief that lower taxes restrain the size of government, empower individuals and are good for both growth and Republican prospects.
Cheney, the shadow President… oogy boogy…
Mr Bush sold his first tax cut, in 2001, as recession insurance. He did the same in 2003; and though the budget surplus was gone by then, he upped the ante by also lowering taxes on capital gains and dividends. Lower taxes on capital boost investment, but, as one former senior administration official says, that thought was secondary: “It was a political winner that happened to coincide with good economics.” Lower taxes on capital had the potential to bolster a growing “investor class” that tended to vote Republican.
They “tend” to vote Republican because they don’t like liberal taxes. The budget surplus was largely smoke and mirrors. It is as real as your social security “account.”
Relentless partisanship led to the politicisation of almost everything Mr Bush did. He used his first televised address to justify putting strict limits on federal funding for stem-cell research, and used the first veto of his presidency to prevent the expansion of that funding.
Wrong, and a lie. This is strictly on embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cell research was left alone.
This is an important distinction that liberals always cover up and gloss over. That’s called lying.
He appointed two “strict constructionist” judges to the Supreme Court, John Roberts and Samuel Alito,
They are good, qualified judges.
turned his back on the Kyoto protocol,
Thank God. It excluded China and India. We have to cut back but they don’t? Only in the minds of liberals.
dismissed several international treaties, particularly the anti-ballistic-missile treaty,
Because we are a sovereign nation, and we will possess weapons to defend ourselves.
loosened regulations on firearms
…same as above…
and campaigned against gay marriage.
Obama never campaigned for it. In fact, he said he was against it. Did you forget?
His energy policy was written by Mr Cheney with the help of a handful of cronies from the energy industry.
Energy experts writing energy policy? We should have people who have been handed jobs their whole life and play WoW on their spare time writing that stuff.
His lacklustre attorney-general Alberto Gonzales, who was forced to resign in disgrace, was only the most visible of an army of over-promoted, ideologically vetted homunculi.
Who cares. Gonzo sucked. An open-borders moderate pick. You had to use homunculi to keep people from forgetting that sentence.
Bumbling towards Baghdad
The Iraq war was a case study of what happens when politicisation is mixed with incompetence. A long-standing convention holds that politics stops at the ocean’s edge. But Mr Bush and his inner circle labeled the Democrats “Defeaticrats” whenever they were reluctant to support extending the war from Afghanistan to Iraq. They manipulated intelligence to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had close relations with al-Qaeda. This not only divided a country that had been brought together by September 11th; it also undermined popular support for what Mr Bush regarded as the central theme of his presidency, the war on terror.
The President started with the intent of victory. Democrats did not. Saddam Hussien had huge connections with Islamic terrorists. Notice that no one ever cites what was “manipulated” or “changed”, they just sling mud around.
Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton, remarks how unusual it is for a president to have politicised such a national catastrophe: “No other president—Lincoln in the civil war, FDR in world war two, John F. Kennedy at critical moments of the cold war—faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances, failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle. But Bush shut out and even demonised the Democrats.”
They deserved it, and they still do. The Lincoln comparison is laughable. Lincoln had a much bigger mess, thanks to Democrats. Lincoln insisted we are all Americans, as did Bush. Lincoln also had an army roll in and shoot you if you didn’t behave. Lincoln was the right man, at the right time.
The invasion of Iraq was like much else in the Bush years—an initial triumph that contained the seeds of disaster. Thomas Ricks, the author of “Fiasco”, argues that “the US-led invasion was launched recklessly, with a flawed plan for war and a worse approach to occupation.”
The Iraq war was the fastest invasion that overturned a government, captured, tried and executed it’s President, helped set up a new government, and at the same time, suffered the least casualties of any large scale invasion in American history, and is easily top ten in world history. Also, we were fighting in Afghanistan while that all went on. No Democrat ever did invasions better. Sorry for those annoying facts.
Mr Rumsfeld’s decision to invade with too few troops led inexorably to the breakdown of law and order, which turned the Iraqi population against the Americans,
Not the people committing crimes, but the guys who were supposed to protect everyone were at fault. Sounds like any article about an L.A. shooting.
and to the Abu Ghraib scandal, which solidified world opinion against America.
Thanks to endless liberal rag stories blowing the case out of proportion. 30+ consecutive front page stories? It must be Bush’s fault…
But Mr Bush responded to the unfolding disaster with a mixture of denial and stubbornness, refusing to force Mr Rumsfeld to adjust his plans. He engaged in an absurd photo-op to declare “Mission accomplished”, and he also gave medals to three of the architects of the debacle, George Tenet, Tommy Franks and Paul Bremer.
When you walk into the heart of a country with almost no resistance, it’s a success. Bush’s military took Baghdad, something even Alexander the Great has a hard time doing.
Architects? So we are supposed to believe Tenet, Franks and Bremer sat around thinking up sexual looking poses and techniques to put underwear on peoples heads? Well Oliver Stone had it in that movie…
Mr Bush’s weaknesses were on display again in the second great disaster of his administration, Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in August 2005. The hurricane exposed Mr Bush’s congenital passivity: he did not visit New Orleans until five days later, after first viewing the damage from the safety of Air Force One. It also exposed the consequences of filling your administration with third-rate hacks. The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, a former commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association, made a hash of dealing with the disaster but nevertheless received an encomium from the president—“Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job”—that rang around the country.
This is the single biggest lie. New Orleans had a Democrat Mayor, a Democrat Governor, and a host of liberal leaders, who screwed it up. Ray Nagin is most at fault right up to the Governor. New Orleans got what it voted for. The worst.
The Truman hope
How will Mr Bush be judged in the light of history? “Many historians”, says Princeton’s Mr Wilentz, “are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.” A humbled Mr Bush counters his critics by pointing out that “You never know what your history is going to be like until long after you’re gone.” He frequently invokes the name of Harry Truman as a president who was dismissed at the time, but is now regarded as one of the greats.
All great Presidents are hated by Democrats in their time. Bush may not become seen as great, but he is starting off right by having all Democrats hate him.
Mr Bush’s presidency is not without its merits. He supported sensible immigration reform. He proposed tighter regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the now-nationalised mortagage agencies. Congress stymied him on both points. He promoted more members of minorities than any previous president; and he also stood up to the Dixiecrat wing of his party, edging Trent Lott, a Mississippi senator, out of his job as majority leader for segregation-favouring remarks. He maintained good relations with India, Japan and, particularly, Africa, where he launched a $15 billion anti-AIDS programme.
Dixiecrat wing? I can’t believe we have a hidden KKK reference. Dixecrats are Democrats, by the way.
Bush did more for Africa than any President in history. Drink it down.
On trade, too, Mr Bush’s heart was in the right place, though policy was at first subverted by political or strategic priorities. In 2002 he approved tariffs on imported steel to fulfil a promise Mr Cheney made to steelworkers in West Virginia, a state crucial to his 2000 election. That year he also signed a massive increase in farm subsidies so as not to antagonise farm-state congressmen facing election that autumn. But these early protectionist impulses gave way to a more stalwart defence of trade. Mr Bush resisted intense pressure from Congress to punish China for keeping its currency low. After Congress narrowly granted him streamlined authority to negotiate treaties, he pushed the Doha global free-trade agreement and a free-trade area of the Americas. These efforts failed in part because of other countries’ intransigence, notably India’s in the case of the Doha round. In the absence of a broader framework, his administration pursued bilateral trade deals, although often with countries chosen for strategic rather than economic value: Oman and Bahrain, for example, which host American military bases.
Free trade should not be exercised with slave holding nations. Also, the tariff is a left wing, isolationist item if there ever was one.
His administration’s handling of the financial crisis alternated between shaky and competent. Swallowing his visceral scorn for finance, Mr Bush delegated crisis management to Henry Paulson, his treasury secretary and a former investment banker. Mr Paulson’s remedies were often blunted by complexity, inconsistency and his insistence that lenders and borrowers pay for their mistakes. His decision to let Lehman Brothers fail significantly intensified the crisis. Still, Mr Paulson regrouped by pouring hundreds of billions of government dollars into the tottering financial system, which has bought a measure of stability. Mr Bush backed this, in violation of his own anti-interventionist impulses.
The bailout was a fraud, and Democrats couldn’t wait to get more of them. They are still drooling over them.
Mr Bush showed more ability to learn from his mistakes than his critics realise or than he himself might like to admit. The second Bush administration was very different from the first. He reached out to America’s allies, particularly through his second secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, establishing good relations with France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel; and he also improved his administration’s profile in the world by firing Donald Rumsfeld and sidelining various neoconservatives.
Bush won the respect of the world, contrary to all of the “America is hated more now than ever” lies.
The president’s legendary stubbornness paid off in one area: his decision to ignore Washington’s wise men and increase troop levels in Iraq, rather than preparing for withdrawal, probably averted disaster there and certainly increased stability. There is even a possibility that Mr Bush’s most controversial decision may eventually be vindicated: if Iraq turns into a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, then he will look much better in a decade’s time than he does today. But that is a big “if”.
Here’s hoping we fail in Iraq.
Farewell to restraint
Meanwhile, his policy of cutting taxes while increasing spending—of simultaneously pursuing big government and small government—dramatically swelled the deficit. He inherited a projected ten-year surplus of $5.6 trillion and bequeaths a ten-year deficit of $6 trillion, assuming his tax cuts remain in place. Hardly the makings of a positive judgment from future historians.
Yes, social, big government spending, a liberal hallmark. This from the most “partisan” President ever.
I guess Obama’s big social spending better be stopped…
In pursuit of his fiscal ambitions, Mr Bush helped roll over or sweep aside long-standing rules and conventions designed to keep the deficit in check. Republicans in Congress pushed through his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts under a parliamentary manoeuvre called “reconciliation” previously reserved for measures that reduced, or did not increase, the deficit. Doing so largely stripped Democrats of their ability to raise procedural obstacles in the Senate, but also required the tax cuts to expire after ten years. As the projected surpluses melted away, Mr Bush cut the horizon in his budgets from ten years to five, masking the long-term impact of his policies.
For years the president refused to include the cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in his budget. He also acquiesced in the expiry of 12-year-old budget rules that made it difficult to cut taxes or increase spending if it raised the deficit. In coming years deficit reduction will be hard enough, with the recession-induced collapse in tax collections and the cost of the bail-outs. Jim Horney, a former Democratic congressional staffer now at the liberal Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think-tank, says it has been made even harder by the disappearance of any culture of restraint in Congress.
Gee, does this have anything to do with back to back liberal gains in Congress? Dems had the place since ‘06, they could have “restored” all of those rules if they were so good.
Mr Bush’s biggest failure, however, is on entitlements. The ageing of the population, coupled with rapidly rising health-care costs, means that in coming decades Social Security and Medicare benefits will outstrip workers’ payroll contributions by trillions of dollars. Both programmes presented Mr Bush with a political opportunity. To pry elderly voters away from the Democrats, he promised to add a prescription-drug benefit as part of any Medicare reform. He did so in 2003, winning the support of the AARP, the powerful pensioners’ lobby, which has long been seen as closer to the Democrats. But in the end he achieved few cost savings, while adding a staggering $8 trillion to Medicare’s unfunded liability (see chart).
Social Security, founded in the Depression to provide workers with a secure pension, has defied all recent attempts to make it solvent. Although such an attempt was part of Mr Bush’s first election campaign, it was not solvency that animated him, but the prospect of workers diverting some of their Social Security contributions to private investment accounts. Such accounts were intended as the centrepiece of the Republican Party’s “ownership society”.
The “Ownership Society” was Bush caving into Democratic resistance over homeownership. The social security reform was attacked by Air America and Al Franken, the new Democrat Senator.
Economists are divided on the merit of such accounts, but agree they do nothing to restore solvency: that requires slimmer benefits, higher taxes, or both. Because of the political peril of touching Social Security, broad reform demands bipartisan support.
Which Bush did not receive when he tried to address social security reform. Remember Air America and our newest Senator?
Yet David Walker, the federal government’s chief auditor from 1998 to 2008, says Mr Bush doomed his own effort, launched after his 2004 re-election, by seeking to shape its outcome from the start. He had appointed an advisory commission whose members first had to agree to support private accounts (which many Democrats oppose).
Yes they opposed it. The most honest line in this article.
He issued detailed proposals for private accounts while eschewing, until much later, solvency proposals. His administration staged some 200 “town hall” events attended by pre-screened participants, Mr Walker says, yet at the end of it all support for Mr Bush’s proposal was lower than when it began.
That’s because he was fought tooth and nail by libs, and this was a start, not a complete plan, because a complete plan is BS. The only complete plan Democrats know is to raise taxes again and again.
Between the Medicare drug benefit and the failure to restore solvency to Social Security, the long-term unfunded cost of America’s programmes for the elderly had last year reached a stratospheric $43 trillion, or 5% of future wages, compared with $13 trillion, or 3% of future wages, in 2000. Mr Obama and Congress may still be able to mend entitlements. But they start with a bigger and more imminent danger than Mr Bush did eight years ago, and one made even harder by the deep hole the current recession has created in the budget.
Obama the tax cutter with spending restraint? This is pure fantasy. I hope it isn’t, but I am not six-years old.
The costs of ambition
The neoconservatives who had such influence over Mr Bush argued that unintended consequences were usually more important than the intended ones. The Bush presidency has proved them right in this, if in little else.
What a nothing paragraph. The term was coined by a Marxist/socialist Michael Harrington. The fact that most liberals today are so nakedly informed by Marxist/socialist figures should raise some eyebrows. Of course, you would have to think Marxism/socialism was bad to raise some eyebrows…
A president who laboured to produce Republican hegemony ended up dramatically weakening the Republican Party.
Bull. Weak Republicans weakened the party. Bush does not deserve the blame for this. Republicans constantly crossed the aisle trying to out-liberal liberals. Democrats think Bush is right wing because compared to the Republican Party, he was!
The Democratic Party is now in a more powerful position than it has been at any time since the second world war. In the Senate, the Democrats have a majority of 59 seats to 41 (including two independents who caucus with the Democrats); in the House, they hold 256 seats to the Republicans’ 178. Americans who came of age during the Bush years identify with the Democrats by the largest majority recorded for any age cohort since the second world war.
Absolutely. If you write almost a decade of lies, taught by people raised on those same lies, you eventually fool the majority for a time. Then the majority figures you out, and you have to change what you call yourselves. I can’t wait for the post-progressive names. Will they actually choose honestly and go for the socialist label?
A president who believed that America’s global supremacy was guaranteed by America’s unrivalled military power ended up demonstrating the limits of both.
Yeah by kicking the hell out of two nations at the same time, while fighting skirmishes in Africa.
Many of America’s closest allies in Europe refused to co-operate with the Iraq war.
Because they were getting illegal, unethical oil deals. I guess the Economist doesn’t look at money issues…
Many of America’s rivals used America’s travails in Iraq to extend their power: Iran is more powerful than it was in 2000, and closer to acquiring a nuclear bomb; Russia and China have extended their web of alliances and strengthened their regional influence. Mr Bush’s recalibration of his policies in his second term suggests that even he recognises that America’s loss of soft power has cost it dear.
Iran would have gotten more powerful regardless. This fantasy that Saddam was “holding back” Iran is simply that. They too, could have rolled into Baghdad the way we did. Iraq held back Iran years before because Donald Rumsfeld held Saddam’s hand. Why were we holding his hand back then? Because the Democrats unleashed Iran on us by letting the Shah fall. The Iran today is that very Iran given to us by Jimmy Carter.
The American military machine is under intense strain. The demands of tackling the Iraq insurgency have forced America to short-change Afghanistan. Deployments have grown longer and redeployments more frequent. Recruitment standards are going down. The neoconservative dream of a muscle-bound America knocking down the “axis of evil” and planting democracies from North Korea to Iran looks, more than ever, like an overheated fantasy cooked up in a think-tank.
Well, this is simply because we had to do it alone. I don’t see liberal articles attacking any other nations except for the U.S. and Israel. Even some of our own citizens want to see us defeated.
Finally, Mr Bush also demonstrated the limits of capitalist triumphalism. The Bush administration was as business-friendly as any in American history: Mr Bush was the first president with an MBA (from Harvard) and he appointed four CEOs to his cabinet, more than any previous president. The administration was also wedded to the fundamental tenets of Reaganomics: cut taxes and free the supply side and everything else will take care of itself. Mr Cheney even argued explicitly that “Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter.”
Nice try, but the government grew under Bush and both state and local taxes increased, because of liberal polices.
Mr Bush now leaves behind a tax system in some ways less efficient than the one he inherited, in need of annual patches, and unable to fund the government even in good times. He also leaves behind a broken budget process. Any economic triumphalism is long gone. Many of the CEOs, most notably Donald Rumsfeld and Paul O’Neill, proved to be dismal administrators. Reaganomics helped to produce a giant deficit. The financial crisis has made re-regulation rather than deregulation the mantra in Washington, while government has acquired a much bigger role in the economy through its backing of banks and car companies.
I believe most of the deficit is social spending…
“I inherited a recession, I’m ending on a recession,” he noted at his press conference on January 12th. He wasn’t asking for pity, only to be judged on what happened in between. Unfortunately, that economic legacy is littered with wasted opportunity, bad judgments and politicised policy. The budget surplus he inherited is now a deficit, the fiscal hole in America’s retiree programmes is bigger than ever, the tax system is an unstable, patched-up mess.
It is not all his fault. But for the most part, good policy repeatedly took a back seat to Mr Bush’s overweening political ambition. Both the country and, ultimately, the Republican Party are left the worse for it.
Hmm, if it’s bad for Republicans, it’s bad for the country, and yet the Democrats are now on cloud nine with all the power…. I think I see a connection here….
How long have you been blogging…your good at it.
About as long as you have been spamming…your(sic) good at it.