What Will Be Dubya's Ultimate Legacy

How will history best remember George W. Bush's Presidency:

- As the President who destabilized an entire region who's resource is currently our life's blood.

- He single-handedly turned the entire world, including our best Allies, against us.

- As the man who increased the size of government ten-fold, and has brought us closer towards a police-state than any other president before him.

- Destroyed the economy with his senseless war and made the dollar as worthless as toilet paper.

- That after eight years on the job, he still can't pronounce the word "nuclear".

It depends on the slant. Some will spin him positive, some negative, just like with any president. Even Carter has fans somewhere (other than Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, etc.)

Hm. I'm guessing Dayton's belief that he'll be carved into Mt. Rushmore won't come true

It was like that long before Bush was in office. If you want to blame any recent president, look no farther than Jimmy Carter.

Countries have no permanent friend, only permanent interests.

FDR and LBJ did the same thing and yet, they're loved.

Abe Lincoln did far more drastic things in the name of national security. Bush hasn't suspended Habeas Corpus and hasn't actually kicked opposition congressmen out of the country like Lincoln did to Vallandingham.

Yes, it's the war that wrecked the economy and not people buying what they couldn't afford coupled with China and India actually buying oil and precious metals on the open market and driving the prices of good up.

Most people can't pronounce route correctly, instead pronouncing it as if it was rout. So what?

Me thinks that a few decades from now, when the terrorist towlie scourge has been beaten back, W will be remembered as another Truman who helped to keep the world safe for peace loving people.

^

In a few decades from now, even the dumbest right wing fuck will have realized that one school does more to beat back those evil terrorists than 15 billion in bombs do.

Looks like BD and Den have hooked up.

Not following you here....do you mean if the Islamofascists educated their people they wouldn't act like terrorists, or that if America educated their people we wouldn't invade the ME?

Despite being no better or worse than any other president over the past thirty years, he'll continue to be vilified for the single-handedly bringing about the demise of the American economy and soiling the country's reputation worldwide as though there was no house or senate abating the whole process.

His tenure should also be known for bringing to light the fact that Liberals, despite years of wishing to be known as embracing the ideology of tolerance, compassion and cooperation, are every bit as hateful, intolerant and vitriolic as they've accused the worst elements of the Right of being.

The W Years have certainly illuminated the fact that the the two major parties have turned our political system into a cesspool.

Or removed two big sources of instability (Saddam Hussein and the Taliban) and pounded on another (Al-Qaida).

Turned against us? Hardly. Britain is with us in Iraq. Old Europe is with us in Afghanistan. No one's recalled their ambassadors as far as I can see.

Ten-fold? That's a fantasy. And the "police state" nonsense is hyperbole from his critics.

Despite claims to the contrary, the economy has been pretty good during the Bush years (especially considering he inherited a recession and the corporate scandals of the 1990s) and is not in particularly bad shape now.

Bush's legacy--like all Presidents'--won't be clear for years to come. And it will be something that will be objectively explored; it won't be the recycled venom of his critics.

That would be a first.

Bush's legacy will be:

1) roughly as many civilians killed for the aggrandizement of his own power as by Pol Pot;

2) torture;

3) the establishment of militaristic imperialism as the primary foreign policy tool of the United States and the concurrent destruction of U.S. diplomatic power for at least a generation;

4) the anticonstitutional rejection of any checks or balances on the President;

5) the overt politicization of the Justice Department and the Pentagon, and, more generally, turning the entire federal policy and administrative apparatuses into hactackular messes staffed by incompetent and completely unqualified party loyalists;

6) $6,000,000,000,000+ of debt, not counting as yet unquantified and unbudgeted costs incurred by Bush such as continuing Iraq war costs, the costs of lifetime medical benefits for war veterans injured in Bush's Folly, the costs of bailouts-to-come due to the housing and credit market crises that never would have happened with even minimally competent regulation, etc.;

7) the crushing of Jeb's dreams of one day becoming President

It's been tried but the ayatolahs and mullahs keep threatening teachers with death sentances and or imprisonment for teaching ideas not approved by Islam.

He'll be remembered as the stupidest POTUS ever.

Well he's knocked Nixon's head out of the spot of the Republican president most likely to make liberals go rabid.

And Nixon's head isn't happy about that!!!

I wouldn't blame President Bush for the WTC attacks but the other two are spot on. For me it's the following:

"Mission Accomplished"
It illustrates how completely unprepared the administration was to deal with reality in Iraq. They were so intent on being right that they let the situation spiral completely out of control. They oversold the war and under-delivered.

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
Nothing quite shows the cronyism, ineptitude and complete disregard for the wellbeing of millions of Americans as well as Bush's assessment of Michael Brown's work as FEMA head following hurricane Katrina.

Abu Ghraib/GITMO/Extraordinary rendition
There's been nothing more shameful than the Bush administration's love affair with torture and the way it's duped millions of Americans into believing what was once viewed as abhorrent is now necessary for their security.

I suspect the comedic elements will live on...

"Strategery", actually coined by an SNL writer but attributed commonly to Bush, and the ever popular "Nuc-yuh-lar."

Just used the latter myself today, talking to my copilot as we fly past 3 mile island.

Bush's legacy to me will be the news reports over the next couple decades of horrible abuses of power by the executive branch with nearly all of them containing the phrase, "a policy first implemented under President Bush."

Canada?

Hm, dunno? The guy who's in charge of lightbulbs for the Pentagon has more budget than carpeting the whole Middle East with schools from 4 to 18 would cost. Throw in the postage stamps and you can build colleges too

Having a presidency so bad that it makes the prospect of Obamccainlery look good to a lot of people.

In four years, Dubya might look pretty good.

....wait, he really said this?!

The problem isn't the school, it's who runs them.

Look up 'TALIBAN'.

It started as a school.

But even the dumbest left wing fuck surely realizes that?

Or not, as the case may be.

He'll be remembered as a below average President, that did some good things, some bad.

The Gulf War will be a blip on history two hundred years from now, for the simple reason we'll either have gotten off fossil fuels by then or civilization will have collapsed.

People really have no historical perspective at all.

Well, after four years of failed efforts to clean up Bush's messes we might well be worse off than we are now, but it's not fair to place primary blame for that on whoever follows Bush.

In four years the next President will almost certainly look pretty bad, but Bush will look even worse than he does today.

Especially not the dead. Those who had to die so corrupt businessmen can make money - and people like you can feel better about themselves.

There's your perspective. The future ends when a bomb falls on you.

Less people died in the war and the insurgency than did during the sanctions.

Look it up.

Unless you don't like the WHO report on it.

Yeah, because the UN always spins for the Bush administration.

Oh, and Liet, stop being a fucking hypocrit - you posted in another thread what Iraq needs is a good blood letting to give legitimacy to the government and resolve the sectarian conflict.

Cass's post before the edit was 'People dying in a war so YOU can feel better about yourself' and you posrepped it.

You guys REALLY, REALLY don't want this to work, so you can say you were right.

That's the reality of people dying so YOU can feel better about yourself.

The Dendroica Gambit.