My Opinion of the Presidency of George W. Bush

[jordan179]

(originally posted by me into the blog of mosinging1986My opinion of George W. Bush was that he was a good, though not great, President. He successfully waged war against America's enemies and overthrew two hostile regimes, those of Afghanistan and Iraq. This needed to be done, and it needed to be done because George H. W. Bush (the 41st President) failed to

Comments

[mosinging1986]

I agree that he didn't do a good job of communicating several things, especially the nature of the battle we're in. He also should have spoken out more often against the things said about him in the media, which then trickled down to the culture at large. The nonsense about him lying to get us into Iraq for oil (or whatever other reason) is now assumed to be fact. It's just about impossible to change minds when an idea gets into the culture like that.

Maybe he was too busy doing his job. Maybe he thought it was only a small minority and it wasn't worth the trouble. He was very wrong about that.

[starblade_enkai]

War isn't the only basis by which to judge a president. Otherwise presidents like, say, FDR would actually be considered good.

[jordan179]

War (and foreign policy in general) is the main duty of the President. He has tremendous power over the military and over foreign relations; by contrast, Congress has the main power over domestic policy.

I do think FDR was a good, even a great President, based solely on his prosecution of World War II. I agree that if the gauge of his Presidency was economic policy, FDR's Presidency would have to be rated a disaster.

[starblade_enkai]

So, basically, it doesn't matter what kind of rights violations occur at home, as long as the nation is well defended against enemies? If rights at home don't matter then what do YOU think makes America better than other countries? Because it can win wars against them?

[jordan179]

So, basically, it doesn't matter what kind of rights violations occur at home, as long as the nation is well defended against enemies?

Of course it would matter. But Bush's war measures were actually quite mild by the standards of American history.

Put it this way: you never had as many rights, in wartime, as you thought you did. Unless you studied American military history, with some attention toward the history of the Home Front.

Blame the Founders: it's right there in the Constitution. The President gets wartime emergency powers just short of making him a Roman "dictator" -- and that, mostly because he still has to be re-elected.

[aadler]

In Bush we see ample illustration of the notion that strengths and weaknesses tend to be opposite sides of the same coin. This President seems to have had the invaluable characteristic (also present in Reagan) of not particularly caring what nasty things were said about him, so long as he was sure he was doing the right thing; the same equanimity and self-assurance, however, enabled him to be almost unforgivably lax in forcefully responding to slanders (rather than merely criticisms) that wound up damaging not only his reputation and the future of his party, but eventually his own power and effectiveness as well

[spiffystuff]

My opinion of Bush would be a lot different if he had shown ANY foresight in the energy area; we need alternative energy and energy efficiency, not more oil sources. It's been stupidly obvious for a long time and then we wouldn't be paying our enemies tons of money.
So, I'm afraid Bush gets no love from me.

[jordan179]

Bush tried to streamline the nuclear-power licensing process. It got shot down. He could have tried harder, but then he had a good-sized war on his hands at the same time.

Um

[zornhau]

From where I'm standing, the occupation phase of the Iraq war was an utter ballsup.

Go on, convince me otherwise?

Re: Um

[jordan179]

Actually, I agree that we screwed up the occupation, which was why, after winning the 2003-04 war against the Ba'athists, we had to fight the 2005-08 war against the insurgents. If we hadn't screwed up the occupation, we would have already finished with Iraq and taken out Iran by now.

Re: Um

[zornhau]

Oh good.
But who is responsible for screwing up the occupation, and how might it have been done better?

Re: Um

[jordan179]

But who is responsible for screwing up the occupation, and how might it have been done better?

Ultimately George W. Bush, as President. Below him, whichever advisors and commanders set up the details. In general, he should have raised a larger army both before going in and after going in, and both designated units to round up and process (separate into harmless/non-harmless categories) the remaining Ba'athists and find replacements for them in their civil positions.

OTOH, we ultimately won that second war against the insurgents. Bush gets points for realizing that it still was winnable in 2005-06, when so many people were urging him to cut his losses and run. Would Obama have stayed the course?