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Our Most Maligned President
Posted by Bigfoot on January 20th, 2009
The day has come for President George W. Bush to hand over the reins of power to his successor. Discussions and debates about his presidency will gradually become the concern of historians. But one thing is already abundantly clear. George W. Bush would have to be the most maligned and unfairly vilified president in my lifetime. This is not to say that there are no legitimate criticisms and complaints about his actions while in office. I have some myself. But I cannot recall any American president who has endured more unjustified blame, wrongful accusations, and outright hate than President Bush.
The unfair blame started even before he took office. While campaigning in 2000, then-Governor Bush and his running mate, former Congressman and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, realized that the economy was headed into a recession. For this, they were accused of “talking down the economy”, as if a mere candidate could cause a recession simply by talking about one. This begged two questions. First, if Bush and Cheney could drag down economy by nothing more than speech, why couldn’t the Democratic ticket of Vice President Al Gore and Senator Joe Lieberman, as well as President Clinton, counter this by speech of their own, attempting to assure Americans that the economy was sound? Second, where was this concern back in 1992, when then-Governor Clinton was decrying the state of the economy, during his candidacy?
The election itself became the most controversial in recent memory due to the narrowly decided vote in Florida and the ensuing court cases. But while every count and recount of the votes, even by the media, showed a narrow victory for Bush and Cheney, numerous detractors denounced President Bush as having been “selected” by the Supreme Court, as if candidates Gore and Lieberman had actually won the state, but the courts had instructed the vote to be ignored. The Supreme Court decision was often said to be “5-4″, as if only one person put Bush in office, but this is a half-truth. The decision was on two matters. While the matter of alternative vote-counting methods within legally-set time limits was decided by a 5-4 margin, the more important question of conducting a recount only in certain counties was found to violate the “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by a 7-2 margin.
Soon after came the famous “sixteen words” in the State Of The Union address, where the new president stated that British intellegence learned that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had sought to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. Because some doubted this assertion, the president was accused of lying, even though the British government has always maintained that Saddam’s government made such an attempt.
When the United States, with a coalition of over 30 nations, invaded Iraq, some who disagreed with the war claimed that the war was “unilateral”, or undertaken “without allies”, leaving me to wonder how these critics define the terms “unilateral” and “ally”. Some asserted that the members of the coalition had been “bribed or coerced”, leaving me to wonder how we could “bribe” and “coerce” Britain and Poland, but not France or Germany. While some correctly pointed out that “Saddam never attacked us”, where was this concern when President Clinton bombed Serbia, a country which likewise never attacked us? For those who wish to point out the Serbian atrocities against the Kosovars, please count the number of Kosovars killed by Milosevic and the number of Kurds killed by Saddam Hussein, and then tell me which pile of dead bodies is bigger.
Soon after the invasion, as the stockpiles of WMDs failed to turn up in Iraq, President Bush was accused of having lied about their presence, even though numerous Democrats had likewise stated that Saddam had them, some back during the presidency of Bill Clinton, and thus before any alleged deception by the Bush administration could have even started. The idea that those who alleged that Saddam had WMDs, including President Bush, had simply been wrong was summarily dismissed, if considered at all. The concept of an honest mistake, so ardently asserted by Democrats during the “Filegate” episode in defense of President Clinton, seemed to have been erased from the very brains of Bush’s accusers.
In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, much of the blame for the inadequate and delayed assistance went to President Bush. While he does indeed bear some responsibility, due to the less-than-stellar performance of FEMA, a federal agency, his critics went as far as blaming him for New Orleans school buses being underwater rather than being used to evacuate people, even those they were property of the city, and thus not under the control of the federal government.
Speaking of hurricanes, President Bush has even been blamed for causing them, as if his refusal to subject the country to the Kyoto Protoctol resulted in the exceptionally active hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005. Never mind that the Senate passed an unanimous resolution against Kyoto, back in 1997. This accusation faded away as the hurricane seasons of 2006 and 2007 turned out to be duds.
During his campaign for re-election in 2004, the president’s military record came under scrutiny, because Bush had not served in combat like his rival, Senator John Kerry, but only in the National Guard. Even that service was disparaged by journalist Dan Rather, with a report alleging that Bush had been AWOL during his time in the Guard. After the underlying evidence turned out to be forged, Rather insisted that the “thrust” of his story was correct.
Other than the Iraq war, nothing done by the Bush administration is more controversial than the terrorist detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, known as Gitmo. While there is legitimate debate of whether the practice of waterboarding consitutes torture, some have unjustifiably likened Gitmo the the Soviet Gulag and even to the Nazi Holocaust, each of which took millions of lives, an outrageous insult to those who survived these horrors and to the memory of those who did not. I can only wonder what criticisms the next president will deal with as he wrestles with the question of what to do with Gitmo and its occupants.
Now that the presidency of George W. Bush is turned over to historians, I believe that in the future, some of them will be able to evaluate his actions and policies without the BDS that effects so many of his critics today, and that like Harry Truman, he will be appreciated in retrospect to a degree that exceeds what he was accorded during his time in office. Farewell, President Bush. Enjoy your ride into the Texas sunset.
(FURTHER READING: Political Pistachio has a post discussing the Bush presidency.)
January 20th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Bush was absent from the TANG without permission. People believed the presence of WMD because the White House pressured the CIA into twisting the evidence. The CIA, however, clearly told Bush not to use those 16 words, he did it anyway, and then outed a CIA agent to deflect from his guilt when he was caught. Torture is a war crime. They brought shame on this country by ordering waterboarding, as well as the horrors of Abu Ghraib and yes they knew what was going on there. And they did it while transferring billions of dollars to their cronies in Halliburton, Blackwater, Carlyles and more. Then they change the banking regulations, create mortgage securities that they irresponsibly sold, and then blame working people for the economic crash. They lied about the surplus being the social security trust fund, gave that money to the rich by creating lower taxes than working people pay.
It goes on and on and on. Bush isn’t being maligned. The entire Republican Party is being maligned, and rightly so, because it is a hateful, selfish, greedy, destructive philosophy.
January 20th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Sandy, thanks for proving my point.
The fact that the evidence for Bush being absent from TANG was forged seems to have gone over your head.
Not only did our CIA honestly believe that Saddam had WMD, as evidenced by Director Tenet’s “slam dunk” remark, but so did other countries, including some who opposed our invading Iraq. Could our president have misled their intelligence agencies?
Valerie Plame was not outed by Bush, but by Richard Armitage, who disagreed with our invasion.
While Abu Ghraib was indeed a disgusting episode, there is no evidence that the higher-ups in the Bush administration knew about it and condoned it, much less ordered it. The perpetrators were rightfully court-martialled and punished. Did you know that, Sandy?
If the “torture” of waterboarding has brought shame on our country, then there are a lot of countries in the world who deserve far more shame than we do.
The deregulation of banks, where commercial and investment banks could go into each other’s type of business, was done in 1999, when Bill Clinton was president. When Fannie and Freddie created and sold irresponsible mortgage-based securities, Republicans such as Bush tried to rein them in, while Democrats prevented them from doing so, while taking large amounts of campaign cash from their workers.
No one in the Bush administration to my knowledge blamed ordinary workers for the economic problems we’re now facing. While the rich enjoyed a mild tax cut (39% down to 35%), they did not get taxed less than the working class, most of whom also saw their taxes reduced under Bush. And a tax cut does not “give” anyone any money, but merely reduces what the government takes from them.
It appears that you have confused the Republican party with a “philosophy”. There is nothing greedy or selfish about letting people keep more of what they’ve earned, or hateful or destructive about the philosophy of conservatism. But false accusations and blaming someone without justification truly are hateful and destructive.
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:00 am
Good grief is that all liberals can do is simply spout talking points? Sandy’s post is almost identical to what I’m reading from other liberals who invade conservative websites.
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Thank you Big Foot, for such an honest and open, and not all glowing, review of President Bush’s term. This is one of the most pointed reads I have seen in the past few days.
I believe history will be better to the President, than most think now. Also better than most hope…
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Sandy,
No where in the US Constitution does it state that people must pay taxes and those taxes must be shared with the poor. Blaming the Republicans is stupid. Take a long hard look at the Democrats, and their record for giving, donating, volunteering…what a difference. I guess liberals don’t feel they should “have” to do all that…it’s what the government is for. Just as why should people get their own health insurances through their work…when the government can provide it??
Remember Sandy, almost 60 million of us did not vote for Obama. That’s not a small amount of people…and it certainly debunks this maligned party chatter. As in the 2004 elections, it is wise to not forget, nor dismiss, the voices of those who voted against.
I learned a lot about the human spirit over the past 8 yrs…and it’s not a good reflection on liberals, who are, the most petty, most bottomed out, depressed, miserable, lazy lot of people on Earth.
What goes around does indeed come around. People like you take away my desire to see unity and peace in this country. Instead of using smart arguments, you use talking points. Instead of checking facts, you chose to believe the hype.
Guess what? I shall do the same.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:19 am
Good riddance to bad rubbish. I tried to respect him for a long time but he was a terrible Commander-in-Chief. He was President for my son’s whole 8 years in the Marines. He couldn’t deliver two sentences of assurance and instilled no confidence in our mission in Iraq. He sold out the military to criminally negligent contractors. Humiliations at Abu-Graib and torture at Gitmo! He tapped our computers and phones and intimidated the press. He sold out the American worker and crashed the economy. He didn’t get Bin Laden.
Barack Obama has done more good in the last two days than Bush in the last two years.
ADMIT IT!
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:49 am
Matericia,
I don’t know your son’s experience in the USMC, but I know from those I served with in the USAF that he was generally liked and well-respected. In fact out of every squadron I was a part of, you might have one or two out of 150 that might have voiced negative opinions of him. In fact, many polls done of service members show that he was liked and respected. And your laundry list of his “grievances” reads like it came from the Huffington Post of DKos.
Your praise of Obama’s two days sounds like a “true believer” as well…
Oh, and let me know when Obama gets Bin Laden, will you?
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:00 am
Really? Have you seen the pictures, especially with the troops, in Raven’s post “Thank You, President Bush”? I’d say he inspired quite a bit more confidence than you give him credit for.
He NEVER tapped “our” phones. We only listened to conversations of FOREIGN-based TERRORISTS. The only computers that were searched were in libraries, and only when a warrant was issued.
NOT ON YOUR LIFE!! If I were to say that, I would be lying. But I realize that for you it’s not a lie, because you are sincerely mistaken. You see, unlike so many who lambaste President Bush, I can tell the difference between a lie and a mistake.