With most 2-termers, you can point to at least a few accomplishments that benefited Americans & had a an impact that went beyond their tenure.
What has Bush done in his 7+ years? America's focus & energy has primarily been on an untenable situation in Iraq of our own creation. The economy - despite topspin's assurances to the contrary - is a shambles. I know it's not technically a recession, but the middle class has lost so much ground since he took office, which is pretty much what people warned would happen with a reckless across-the-board tax cut, and the fundamentals of this economy are pathetic. We have no real energy policy, no contingency plans, no vision. While the CIC has had tunnel vision on the quagmire that is Iraq, issues like healthcare, social security and poverty had gone almost completely unaddressed (all issues he promised to attack in the 2000 campaign).
In the meantime, his policy on terror has been ass-backward, staking almost everything on a pie-in-the-sky hope that a democratic Iraq will completely transform the Middle East & the face of terrorism as a result. Not surprisingly, Al Qaeda is just as strong & just as poised to attack the West today as they were in 2001, according to intel. I know the truth is hard for some righties, but it's more likely that Iraq has inspired a whole new generation of terrorists than it is that it will help reduce the threat. Bush has taken a proactive role in killing our environment, from opening of millions of previously protected acres via executive order to gutting the EPA & Clean Air Act, and easing all kinds of regulations on pollution. He has held back promising medical research to appeal to a very narrow segment of his base, and the gap between rich & poor has grown steadily wider during his time in office. He f'd up Katrina, stretched our military, blew tons of cash in a variety of unnecessary places & actually made a debate on whether America should be torturing people viable. After promising to run America like a corporation, he had one of the most fiscally irresponsible admins in decades, with one of his top people asserting that deficit spending doesn't matter.
Could he have worked out any worse? When he won in 2000, I - like probably many on the left - hoped we were wrong about this guy, and that there was something there that conservatives clearly saw that somehow we were missing. That didn't really pan out. Sorry, righties - I don't ever want to hear lectures from you again about candidate qualifications, national security, competence, corruption, gaffes...ANYTHING. I was right about this guy, and you were as wrong as you could be.
Vent over.
What has Bush done in his 7+ years? America's focus & energy has primarily been on an untenable situation in Iraq of our own creation. The economy - despite topspin's assurances to the contrary - is a shambles. I know it's not technically a recession, but the middle class has lost so much ground since he took office, which is pretty much what people warned would happen with a reckless across-the-board tax cut, and the fundamentals of this economy are pathetic. We have no real energy policy, no contingency plans, no vision. While the CIC has had tunnel vision on the quagmire that is Iraq, issues like healthcare, social security and poverty had gone almost completely unaddressed (all issues he promised to attack in the 2000 campaign).
In the meantime, his policy on terror has been ass-backward, staking almost everything on a pie-in-the-sky hope that a democratic Iraq will completely transform the Middle East & the face of terrorism as a result. Not surprisingly, Al Qaeda is just as strong & just as poised to attack the West today as they were in 2001, according to intel. I know the truth is hard for some righties, but it's more likely that Iraq has inspired a whole new generation of terrorists than it is that it will help reduce the threat. Bush has taken a proactive role in killing our environment, from opening of millions of previously protected acres via executive order to gutting the EPA & Clean Air Act, and easing all kinds of regulations on pollution. He has held back promising medical research to appeal to a very narrow segment of his base, and the gap between rich & poor has grown steadily wider during his time in office. He f'd up Katrina, stretched our military, blew tons of cash in a variety of unnecessary places & actually made a debate on whether America should be torturing people viable. After promising to run America like a corporation, he had one of the most fiscally irresponsible admins in decades, with one of his top people asserting that deficit spending doesn't matter.
Could he have worked out any worse? When he won in 2000, I - like probably many on the left - hoped we were wrong about this guy, and that there was something there that conservatives clearly saw that somehow we were missing. That didn't really pan out. Sorry, righties - I don't ever want to hear lectures from you again about candidate qualifications, national security, competence, corruption, gaffes...ANYTHING. I was right about this guy, and you were as wrong as you could be.
Vent over.
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