Miss Him Yet?
Via Memorandum, NPR has a story about a George W. Bush “Miss Me Yet?” billboard in Minnesota. According to John Hindraker at Powerline, it is a view “more widely shared by Americans every day”; while Another Black Conservative suggests a Tea Party connection and asks “wouldn’t it be a hoot if this billboard started cropping up everywhere. . .?”
Since I have a memory longer than, say, a goldfish, I don’t miss George W. Bush. I also remember when right-wingers practically worshiped Bush. John Hindraker said of the former president, after the infamous carrier landing, “Yeah, we’ve had better leaders. Their names were Washington and Lincoln.”
I am still looking for evidence that right-wingers have owned up to their role as cheerleaders for the disastrous Bush years, but haven’t seen it yet.
Sadly, he’s right. It is more widely shared by Americans every day. And perhaps Americans have a memory of a goldfish. Scott Brown is in large part a Bush style Republican. He won.
A lot of the Bush nostalgia is being aided by the left’s assertion that he was the worst ever, which was an overreach.
There’s no question that Bush was a terrible president, but was his civil liberties record really worse than that of John Adams? He was a fearmonger, but did he ever run a campaign ad as filthy as LBJ’s daisy?
By all accounts, he was not a closet racist like Wilson, he self-moderated his Nixonian tendencies after he won his second term, the two wars he started were far lower on the bodycount scale than those of some other presidents I could name, and the assertions about him being a stupid man appear to have been somewhat overblown.
GWB is certainly in the bottom ten (perhaps five?), but saying he’s the worst ever weakens the case, since it alienates a lot of people who have lived through worse.
You have to wonder if these are individuals loosely affiliated with the Democratic Party who are trying to indirectly prop up Obama.
It’s the only way it makes any sense.
Hey if Bush II can make Bill Clinton a popular figure, I can’t see why Obama can help reconstruct Bush II’s image
I should have said I can see why Obama can help reconstruct Bush II’s image.
W is the worst president ever as judged by the state of the nation as he took over after Clinton and how he left it at the end of his term. Generally, historians have tapped the pre-civil war presidents such as Buchanan and Pierce as the worst ever. I’d argue that given the nature of the times in which they lived they were simply men who were not up to the challenge presented by those times. Bush is another matter. Beyond the war of choice in Iraq, his fiscal policies of tax cuts combined with unrestrained spending were beyond irresponsible. His cabinet appointments were awful, and staff below cabinet level were worse. W’s many policy disasters were disasters of choice, not bad choices forced by circumstances beyond his control.
W left us a weaker nation. Trends that were weakening the US started before his terms, but he greatly accelerated them.
W is only the second worst president, at this time. Name another president who left office with our nation in two wars and on the verge of a depression. No one can argue that his lack of leadership set the conditions for the election of the worst president ever, Barack Obama. What good was it to “win” in Iraq setting the conditions for the McCain surge to the Republican nomination and lose our nation to the radical Left’s election victory?
From Hindraker’s mini-paean: The ultimate test, I guess, will be what he does about Saudi Arabia–a test no postwar leader has chosen to tackle
Maybe we should cut him some slack; he’d had a “long flight” that day. Jet-lag always brings the maniacal bloodlust out in me too. Imagine how far things could have gone, had Iraq indeed been a “cakewalk.” The only thing that stops such self-perpetuating madness is failure.
Thank you Mr. Stooksbury. I saw the links on several neo-con web sites and thought that anyone who missed Shrub was obviously not paying attention during the last 8 years. I don’t have any use for Obama, since he is just Shrub 3rd term, only in a different skin color and more brazen.
What we have had for the last 8 years was the Repug’s version of a Stalinist personality cult of the Great Leader. Now we have the Dim version. (Vide Jon Stewart hemming and hawing in the opening moments of his interview on O’Reilly’s show. This is partisanship with a passion.) It makes no difference in the descent to the maelstrom to look over our shoulders and say the previous Unitary Executive Figurehead/Puppet was not as bad. So what?
Bush and the Repugs only set the table for Geo. W. Obama and the Dims and now the first is mad because they didn’t get to sit down at the banquet and partake of the political spoils like they were planning on.
The finger pointing and name calling misses the whole point – which is the Hegelian dialectical point. It’s just more boo bait for the bubbas to keep them from realizing that the choice between Ying and Yang is pointless, because both parties essentially represent the More Big Govt. Party, albeit neo-con or progressive. Leviathan continues to march on to the same tune, different drummer or tempo, paleface or blackface not withstanding.
Say what you want about Bush. But at least he was a patriotic american who didn’t feel the need to bow and scrape to every foreign leader he met. BTW, I personally thought Jimmy Carter really bit the big one but Buchanan certainly brings up the rear. Although to the neoconfederate crew that operates here maybe it isn’t that obvious.
Thanks Pearlman, for writing a comment that has nothing to do with the article.
Nothing in this article praises Carter or Obama.
It simply notes that this billboard doesn’t help the Republican Party. If anything it indirectly helps Obama.
And you don’t need to be a “neoconfederate” to recognize Bush was a disaster for the Republican Party — just someone who actually understands conservative principles.
George W. Bush did NOT pursue Conservative policies in the domestic OR foreign policy arena — which is why he was a failure.
The sooner the Party comes to grips with this, the sooner it can begin repairing the damage.
The only president more tragic than Bush was fellow Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson, whose similar Guns AND Butter policies led to the collapse of the Gold Standard. Hell its right in the name “Baines” man was more than one plauge he was a damned pandora’s box!!!
The individual embodiment of the Presidency stopped being relevant decades ago.