An old friend of mine, Eric Ewing, recently posted this note on Facebook. I can't say that I agree completely with him, but his insight and willingness to cite facts makes for an interesting read.
The worst president ever? Well maybe since James Buchanan.
Does anyone remember the slogan at the 2000 Republican National convention? Reformer with Results? Does that ring a bell to anyone?
Let us see the results of his last eight years.
1) No child left behind.
The act was a well conceived but poorly executed plan, which has made certain that children will never learn anything in school. American students still perform more poorly on average than most in the rest of the industrialized world. Oh, but don't worry, the smart ones have to get held back too since this thing was enacted.
2) The Afghan War
No one has successfully subjugated Afghanistan since Alexander the Great (except maybe the Mongols), and he was only able to do it because in those days, an acceptable way to end a war was to marry into the family of your rival. If only things were so simple these days. Democracies require far too many marriages to have the electoral effect necessary to change policy between feuding nations. Given that context, it would be arrogant to assume we should do any better than the Persians, the Mughals, the Mongols, the British, and the countless other forces witch have wasted their time on this wretched swath of land. Therefore, it is no surprise to me that as many before have had early success preceding failure, we now struggle to hold our previous gains. It seems that President Bush has been content to watch the situation fester over the last seven years. Some explain our failure to close the deal in Afghanistan with the necessity to deal with Iraq. It is a stupid argument. As Hitler would have had better results if he had finished off the UK before invading the USSR, we may have done better without a two front war. President Bush's haste to invade Iraq matches the stupidity of Hitler's decision to invade Russia.
3) Gulf War II
Do I need to even mention this? It should suffice to say that early failure has barely been mitigated in the later years of this war. Essentially we are where we should have been four years ago. Early declaration of victory followed by obstinate denial about a degrading situation destroyed possibilities of keeping the country stable. Secretary Rumsfeld refused to adapt to changing situations, and after all this wasted time, we have worn out our welcome. That time and a few trillion dollars we had to help are lost. The Iraqis rightly want us gone, and now we must leave without confidence that our meager accomplishments as of late may bear fruit in Iraq.
4) Hurricane Ivan and Katrina
People forget that a year before Katrina hit, Hurricane Ivan devastated Pensacola FL, Mobile AL, and other large towns along the Gulf Coast. While it is true that the majority of the responsibility for what happened to New Orleans lies with her idiot mayor and Louisiana's incompetent governor, it must be noted that the President had ample warning to streamline FEMA into a useful organization. He did not heed any warnings presented by this earlier disaster. In fact, when I left Pensacola four years after Hurricane Ivan, there were still plenty of places that looked like a bad day in Bosnia, and there were still a lot of FEMA trailers and people living in squalor.
5) Immigration reform
There was no immigration reform, and the President failed to lead his retarded party's members to compromise their illogical policy of xenophobia, which was founded on fear and stupidity of the voting populace. Being that the President had no leadership skills at all, he was unable to get his own immigration reform passed.
6) The Financial Crisis
President Bush was presented with an unprecedented opportunity. He had a real chance to set precedent. He could have showed everyone that it is not the responsibility of the Federal government to pick up the slack of private citizens. However, he showed no leadership. He allowed the bailout of AIG unnecessarily. The final nail in his legacy's coffin was his failure to veto the Detroit bailout. He allowed Congress to postpone our problems for the next generation. I could spout out all the economic theory that supports this assertion, but the bottom line is this. The bad debt that out government bought in these bailouts will have to be purged eventually, another financial crisis of equal or greater magnitude is in the mail already.
What I've outlined here are only the highlights. There are plenty more reasons to be irritated about George W. Bush's presidency, global warming, torture, etc. In 2000, I was excited to vote in my first election, but the stupid Republican televangelists thought it made the most sense to have an inexperienced governor with no leadership experience lead the US. Needless to say my excitement vanished, and subsequently, I have been unimpressed with the results. I thought maybe we learned a lesson, but as usual I have overestimated the intelligence of the voting populace. John McCain was unable to win the votes of as many stupid people as Barack Obama. They decided to replace the inexperienced governor with an inexperienced Senator with no leadership experience, and after he fucks up, they will probably pick an inexperienced Congressman.
In a way, we deserve the last eight years. We deserve the economic crisis, the wars, the patriot act and all the other disasters of this last eight years. We got lucky for a while with the Clinton years. We picked a draft dodger over a true leader, and it worked out for a bit, but our mistake showed on Sept 11 when it became apparent President Clinton and his successor were sleeping at the wheel. They just decided to ignore that the World Trade Center had already been targeted. We've picked shitty leaders for a long time now but are undaunted by shitty results. In that regard, our President's obstinacy mirrors our own. We're going for 20 straight years of incapable Presidents. Maybe we'll get lucky again with Obama, but I'm not counting on it. I bet we'll deserve what we get.
In our history, there have been only 11 presidents who have not served in the armed forces. Six of those were the presidents that lead the country into the Great Depression. What does it say about our country when we choose the flashy and the trendy over the proven and the austere? What does it say to me when our president elect holds the most opulent, most expensive (by over 4 fold) inauguration party in history during a period of financial crisis and overwhelming deficits? What does it say to me when the captains of industry take private jets to Washington to ask for a bailout, and then get it? What does it say about our country when the people who really care about our country enough to risk their lives for it are ignored? What is says to me is that America no longer deserves men like Bob Dole, and John McCain. It says to me that we are heading to the same place (a world war and a depression) where we were when the voters last chose to ignore such people. It tells me that no one actually gives a shit about myself and the men and women who serve with me. They feign respect and admiration because they're just glad it isn't they who are in our shoes. They're happy someone else pulls their weight. They feign respect just as GW Bush and Obama feigned respect for John McCain, a better man than they.
When Comrade Obama takes office tomorrow, much of the hope I had for this country when I took my first oath of office in June of 2001 will be dead. Instead I will only have the resignation that we are most likely beyond our zenith, and if we hold or lumber forward, it will be by luck and not by the merits of our people. All you who voted for GW and/or Obama should be ashamed of yourselves.
