i’m wondering,as it comes to an end to his highly controversial presidency,what exactly did he improve/made better
(keep sarcasm to a separate thread,i really want to see the true positives on this thread)
another question:
who’s the last president that was loved by both public and media,in a “david palmer” out of 24 type of way,someone that everyone looked up to…did that ever happen?
Positive: neo-con movement has been discredited.
Not every American is dissatisfied with his performance as President.
His foreign policy has given a hand to many political careers both in countries outside the US and within it.
In 2006, President George W. Bush was polled to be both the top villain and hero of the year, something that should go into the Guinness Book of World Records.
More job security for lawyers, due to the necessity for oversight hearings and related legislation.
Very good question. I’m trying to think of some concrete answers (nothing like “He damaged the credibility of the GOP” or anything like that). I’ve had tho think about it, and so far only these have come to my mind:
Yeah, Hawaii’s a good one.
His stance on immigration is pretty decent too, although nothing’s come of it and he didn’t pull out his veto pen for the wall, so it’s hard to call it an accomplishment.
What else? He’s in very good shape for a man his age, far better than any other recent occupants of the office. Maybe he’s inspired a few people to drink less and get in shape.
what was wrong with clinton?
what was wrong with clinton?[/quote]Too many cheeseburgers and not enough exercise, I’m thinking. Not real heavy, not nearly as badly off as Cheney, but overweight and out of shape: high cholesterol levels, mildly high blood pressure, and quadrual-bypass surgery doesn’t suggest anything good.
Bush Sr. did pretty well, but was older and had better things to do with his time than running the treadmill. Reagan was in great shape, for an old man. But I’d put lil’Bush up against the pair of them in the gym.
That said, I’d put even a pre-nap Reagan up against Shrub when it comes to doing any sort of mental lifting.
[quote=“twocs”]Not every American is dissatisfied with his performance as President.
[/quote]
of course not,his mom and dad must have a little pride left.
and there’s a couple of forumosans who seem to hail him as the best thing since sliced bread,so he’s not UNIVERSALLY unpopular…true
that’s what happen when any president gets elected anywhere in the world,but was there any positive outcome in this case,which ones?
voted by whom?
[quote=“twocs”]
More job security for lawyers, due to the necessity for oversight hearings and related legislation.[/quote]
ah yeah,because lawyers are at the very front of those that you might think would have troubles falling asleep due to job precariousness… :loco:
of course not,his mom and dad must have a little pride left.[/quote]Well, his mom, anyways.
I thought his record on trade issues was pretty good, though with a couple notable exceptions.
He at least tried something with education. We don’t really know what the long term result will be. I’m still hopeful, though.
Exposure of several scandals – Enron, Worldcom, etc. Probably not attributable to Bush really, but they happened under his watch.
The economy seems to have recovered from post 9-11 and Enron recession, most likely partially attributable to Bush tax cuts.
I thought he took the best of a number of difficult options on illegal immigration. Unfortunately he seems to have lost that battle, at least so far.
I also thought he took the right stance on Dubai Ports, though again he was defeated. We did however see that selective paranoia isn’t just a Republican trait.
Post 9-11 I thought Bush initially did an excellent job in rallying the country. Furthermore he took appropriate action in Afghanistan.
Iraq – obviously things haven’t worked out that well so far, which is well documented on other threads. However, there’s still some appreciable chance that things could end up better than what they were with Saddam, and the next generation will have an example to look back on.
Appointment of 2 Supreme court justices. Split recored. Roberts appears to have been an excellent choice. The Miers thing was a debacle, but turned out so-so with the appointment of Alito.
Whatever you think of Bush, you have to admit that he got hit early on with probably the toughest circumstances any president has faced since at least FDR.
Just thought of another one, Libya has been nice and cooperative the last few years, which is more than you can say of them for the previous 20.
One more: minorities holding high offices including national security advisor, secretary of state, and attorney general, plus having reached the point where the top two candidates for president are a woman and a minority. Granted, just a continuation of a bigger movement, but Bush played his part by not being discriminatory in his appointments.
I wouldn’t call the appointment of these far-right judges an “accomplishment”.
Almost nobody had a problem with Roberts, so I don’t see how there can really be an issue there. With Alito, yeah he’s strongly conservative, which I know about half the country really disagrees with, that’s why I called him so-so.
I consider John Roberts and Samuel Alito to be first-class legal minds and appointing them Supreme Court justices were real accomplishments of the Bush administration. If they stay true to conservative notions of jurisprudence liberals need have no fear of them failing to follow the law faithfully – unless that’s not what liberals fear.
Another strong accomplishment of the Bush administration is in setting a benchmark for a presidency which follows its principles rather than its calculations. While I don’t agree with those principles, I admire a principled stand as opposed to a purely opportunistic route such as practiced by the Clintons.
[quote=“spook”]
Another strong accomplishment of the Bush administration is in setting a benchmark for a presidency which follows its principles rather than its calculations. While I don’t agree with those principles, I admire a principled stand as opposed to a purely opportunistic route such as practiced by the Clintons.[/quote]
so,making a huge mistake and juggernauting thru that very same hopeless path because you can’t be man enough to put your hands up and say “sorry folks,i had a brain fart back then” holds a lot more respect in your eyes than a mea culpa…spook indeed
[quote=“dablindfrog”][quote=“spook”]
Another strong accomplishment of the Bush administration is in setting a benchmark for a presidency which follows its principles rather than its calculations. While I don’t agree with those principles, I admire a principled stand as opposed to a purely opportunistic route such as practiced by the Clintons.[/quote]
so,making a huge mistake and juggernauting thru that very same hopeless path because you can’t be man enough to put your hands up and say “sorry folks,i had a brain fart back then” holds a lot more respect in your eyes than a mea culpa…spook indeed[/quote]
Can someone be honestly, sincerely wrong? I think so. Believe me, it wasn’t easy for me to say anything positive about the Bush administration.
Certainly stands the “politics is the art of the possible” adage on its head.
“It’s impossible!”
“I know, but I want it to be true, and if it costs a few lives… well, this great leap forward for our society, securing our homeland… it’s worth the sacrifice.”
Actually, I see both a role and a need (maybe) for political vision. Not the kind of political vision that comes at 3 a.m. and is viewed through the bottom of a bottle of Mezcal after you’ve eaten the worm… but a reasonable vision of the good life.
Seriously, I think the best that can be said of this administration is that having run the experiment and so spectacularly failed, we’re guaranteed a generation or two free of such nonsense.
That, and fortunately, the price of failure hasn’t been higher. It could be ever so much more costly.
Fair enough, but I often wonder whether any of the presidential candidates we’ve had in recent years would have done better, given all that happened in Bush’s first year of the presidency. I’d like to think they would, but I’m not sure that we wouldn’t be left with a different, but equally bad set of problems. That’s one reason why I’m not exactly jumping to criticize him more than is necessary.
Interesting. I think there’s a sizable mountain of evidence that this mess is due to a the neo-cons having a bug up their collective asses, a lack of oversight, shock and fear. Now, there’s little reason to believe that the second and third conditions would have been any different with any other Joe in office, but the first? You’d have to go back to Johnson and Nixon to find that kind of nuttiness.
And while nations do stumble into massive mounds of manure from time to time, the chances of simply stumbling into one this nasty… well, it could happen. But I don’t see any reason to think that anyone else would have worked so hard to dig themselves into such a hole.