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Hi Dakka,
I'm very curious to know the view of the Americans on their former president George W. Bush.
I wonder if he was as bad as it is said in France or not.
Personally, I appreciate him for the following reasons:
-I think he made the world safer,
-I think his response to the 9/11 was ok, and I don't think 9/11 was his idea,
-He made some great stuff for the environnement (maritime natural reserve ?)
-I prefer the Republican Party
-I don't think he is personally accountable for the economic crise (I mean, he had a whole governement !)
-He is Texan !
I see him as a man who took his responsabilities when he had to, whatever it involved, rather than ignore it.
But I don't have all the informations. For example, I don't know how did he change the average american life (better, or worse ?).
In France, I knew only 1 person, I mean, only 1 since high school (I'm college now), who think the same.
Everyone else see him like:
- an idiot
- an incompetent
- a really, really bad guy who kill and torture innocent people,
-almost everyone in France hate the Republican Party (politicaly correct is very strong in my country, and some Republican's ideas aren't),
-corrupted by the lobby
In France, one day, during an ambush, (maybe in 2012, or 2011) 10 soldiers died in afghanistan (highest casualities in just one operation I can remember since I'm born): Public Opinon was shocked and wanted us to leave afghanistan.
USA took 4,000 casualities in iraqi, if I'm right.
If Bush left iraqi/afghanistan, I think it would have been even shitier, a lot earlier in the middle east.
But when america was there, everyone said you were occupying the country, that you were in iraqi for petrole, and know you are gone, everyone says that you left the country in a mess and that ISIS is your fault.
OMG French are never happy...
So: were Bush's choices bad ?
Are french biased by the media that HATE the Republican (republican = rich racist/nazi who hate the poor exploited people and love to sell guns to US young boys for $$$) ?
Or am I biased ?
I'd argue that in the long run, Bush Junior will come out a little more favorably than he was viewed during his own life time. there were a lot of big struggles in his presidency, and I think many people attribute to him personally actions that would likely have been taken by any president.
He won't be making any 'top president's' lists, but I think he'll wind up a lot like Jimmy Carter, with hindsight views generally being more sympathetic to his terms in office.
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Not our best or our worst president. He did the best in a bad situation and did his job, no matter what detractors might think.
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And you can't really claim he's stupid either - stupid people don't get to fly real fighter jets. His way of speaking, both the dialect and the vocabulary, is what made him seem a bit simple.
Yeah. He was not the most talented orator to ever hold office, but we've had many presidents who were mediocre or outright bad orators. I think it doesn't help his image that Clinton preceded him, and Obama followed him in office. Both were much better public speakers than Bush and just made him look even worse.
Anyone who can say something that banal and keep a straight face, has talent
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/09/21 01:23:35
He currently ranks in the bottom third by most expert rankings. He wasn't evil or any of that gak, he just wasn't a good president by any metric. Like most bad presidents, his image will soften as time goes on.
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Bush did a lot of good for Africa in regards to financial/infrastructure aid, more than almost any other President, which will unfortunately always be overshadowed by the negative crap he did, especially in the ME.
Other then that, he was junk.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/09/21 01:39:20
Worst president in my time by default, I rank Clinton, Obama, then bush.
The ME was a mess, but then I don't think anyone could do any better in significance. I don't mind bush's simplicity, but I did not like some of his staff, mainly the VP Chaney and Condy Rice.
godardc wrote: Hi Dakka,
I'm very curious to know the view of the Americans on their former president George W. Bush.
I wonder if he was as bad as it is said in France or not.
Personally, I appreciate him for the following reasons:
-I think he made the world safer,
This is, well, a highly contentious claim.
-He is Texan !
Hrm, only sort of. He's as much New England blue-blood as he is Texan
So: were Bush's choices bad ?
Are french biased by the media that HATE the Republican (republican = rich racist/nazi who hate the poor exploited people and love to sell guns to US young boys for $$$) ?
Or am I biased ?
Thanks a lot !
Bush wasn't an idiot, nor was he some Big Bad Evil Guy (though one probably could make a legitimate argument that his VP, Cheney, was/is), and does get unfairly blamed for some things, but I don't think his administration will ever be remembered fondly, nor do I think it deserves to be.
There was a lot of willfully ignorant action in the face of opposing evidence that resulted in dramatic harm to the American nation in a variety of foreign and domestic policies and actions, and quite simply astoundingly poor decision making made with very little thought as to the consequences (or had ideas regarding outcomes that were completely divorced from any sort of reality). As an economist by trade and holding an MBA, I see relatively little merit to most of his economic and taxation policies, and the vigorous pursuit of concepts underpinned by the Laffer curve has only resulted in positive returns for Art Laffer and not really for American society as a whole.
That his administration is still basically political poison for GOP candidates, and the redirection of many of Bush's actions onto Obama (such as the Iraq pullout which was negotiated under Bush), speaks volumes methinks.
Was he a good president? I don't think he could be considered so. Was he the worst? Possibly not, but not far from the bottom either.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/09/21 03:58:37
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I think he's pretty alright. I'd rather grab a beer with him than either Clinton or Obama. He's no great president, but he wasn't anywhere near as bad as people like to claim.
Bromsy wrote: I think he's pretty alright. I'd rather grab a beer with him than either Clinton or Obama.
To my dying day, I will never understand this particular political test.
"Yeah, he's not the best neurosurgeon, but I want him to operate on me because I feel like we could sit down and play Mario Kart".
Shirley you see a difference between the two? Politicians are there to talk a bunch of gak.... that goes fairly well with sitting around drinking a beer.
He was a pretty crappy president. One simple way to look at it is to ask what he set about working on pro-actively, that actually got better. I can't think of anything.
He did do good work to dismantle AQ and other terrorist networks around the world, but that was the result of 9/11, and a massive change in focus and funding. Given the resources that were suddenly committed to the effort, the result was inevitable.
But where he did manage to get his policies in place, the results were either mediocrity or failure. He sold his tax cuts on the promise that they would drive economic growth and therefore tax revenue would actually grow - but there was no impact on growth, and the country has a revenue shortfall to this day, even with the partial reversal of the cuts. Meanwhile despite the rhetoric he failed to do anything to control spending, in health especially his only response to double digit spending growth was to expand govt subsidies on medicine.
Meanwhile, in the handful of places where he had decent policy he sold it terribly. His plans to reform social security got less and less popular the more he talked about them. Ending the double taxation on dividends is probably the easiest sell in US politics today, but he couldn't even get it to the floor.
And that's a very dismal record, even before we move on to anything contentious like climate change, or the Iraq war.
I think stuff like asking if he was one of the 'worst' presidents doesn't really work, as it just invites endless historic speculation and no real answer on Bush. I think it's better to ask what one word best describes his presidency, and the word has to be 'dismal'.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
I don't personally think he was a good president, but that is also heavily influenced influenced by my political beliefs, so bias abounds. Certainly not one of our better presidents though.
I certainly don't think he's stupid, although he was a bit of a doofus at times (although I cetainly don't hold it against him, the same could be said for me). His presidency did end up being pretty disastrous, although that was not all his fault. All in all, he left the country worse off then when he got in office. He did some good, but his terms were plagued by scandal, as were the H+S.
I do see quite a bit of over-the-top literal hatred of him though, it's the same thing you see for Obama.
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sebster wrote: He was a pretty crappy president. One simple way to look at it is to ask what he set about working on pro-actively, that actually got better. I can't think of anything.
He did do good work to dismantle AQ and other terrorist networks around the world, but that was the result of 9/11, and a massive change in focus and funding. Given the resources that were suddenly committed to the effort, the result was inevitable.
But where he did manage to get his policies in place, the results were either mediocrity or failure. He sold his tax cuts on the promise that they would drive economic growth and therefore tax revenue would actually grow - but there was no impact on growth, and the country has a revenue shortfall to this day, even with the partial reversal of the cuts. Meanwhile despite the rhetoric he failed to do anything to control spending, in health especially his only response to double digit spending growth was to expand govt subsidies on medicine.
Meanwhile, in the handful of places where he had decent policy he sold it terribly. His plans to reform social security got less and less popular the more he talked about them. Ending the double taxation on dividends is probably the easiest sell in US politics today, but he couldn't even get it to the floor.
And that's a very dismal record, even before we move on to anything contentious like climate change, or the Iraq war.
I think stuff like asking if he was one of the 'worst' presidents doesn't really work, as it just invites endless historic speculation and no real answer on Bush. I think it's better to ask what one word best describes his presidency, and the word has to be 'dismal'.
godardc wrote: Hi Dakka,
I'm very curious to know the view of the Americans on their former president George W. Bush.
I wonder if he was as bad as it is said in France or not.
Personally, I appreciate him for the following reasons:
-I think he made the world safer, -I think his response to the 9/11 was ok, and I don't think 9/11 was his idea,
-He made some great stuff for the environnement (maritime natural reserve ?)
-I prefer the Republican Party
-I don't think he is personally accountable for the economic crise (I mean, he had a whole governement !)
-He is Texan !
You shame our contry !
On behalf the rest of France I'd like to apologize for the above inaccuracies, and will blame the free-falling standards of our education system for it.
godardc wrote: Hi Dakka,
I'm very curious to know the view of the Americans on their former president George W. Bush.
I wonder if he was as bad as it is said in France or not.
Personally, I appreciate him for the following reasons:
-I think he made the world safer,
-I think his response to the 9/11 was ok, and I don't think 9/11 was his idea,
-He made some great stuff for the environnement (maritime natural reserve ?)
-I prefer the Republican Party
-I don't think he is personally accountable for the economic crise (I mean, he had a whole governement !)
-He is Texan ! !
1. He helped to destabilize an region.
2. He gave us the"War on Terror" and Patriot Act, both of which our society is still having to deal with thanks to W. Bush.
We've had worse presidents I'm sure. Andrew Jackson was one of the worse ones. Check out the 'Trail of Tears' and just in general some of the more terrible things he's done. I'm not so sure if that guy was the worst president so much as a pretty terrible person.
I mean, it was talked about in the thread already.
Yeah, it was mentioned before. Did I have to mention everything that had been previously mentioned. I was trying for a pretty brief summary, not a complete historical record. I comment on Iraq was four words. Complaining that I missed mentioning a single foreign aid program is weird.
And if the lead defence of a presidency is one foreign aid program worked well, then we're getting back to that 'dismal' word again.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
I mean, it was talked about in the thread already.
Yeah, it was mentioned before. Did I have to mention everything that had been previously mentioned. I was trying for a pretty brief summary, not a complete historical record. I comment on Iraq was four words. Complaining that I missed mentioning a single foreign aid program is weird.
And if the lead defence of a presidency is one foreign aid program worked well, then we're getting back to that 'dismal' word again.
Well, as quoted you did say "where he did manage to get his policies in place, the results were either mediocrity or failure" and mayhaps I was simply curious which you would consider say the three completely separate programs listed in the article.
godardc wrote: Hi Dakka,
I'm very curious to know the view of the Americans on their former president George W. Bush.
I wonder if he was as bad as it is said in France or not.
Personally, I appreciate him for the following reasons:
-I think he made the world safer,
-I think his response to the 9/11 was ok, and I don't think 9/11 was his idea,
-He made some great stuff for the environnement (maritime natural reserve ?)
-I prefer the Republican Party
-I don't think he is personally accountable for the economic crise (I mean, he had a whole governement !)
-He is Texan !
I see him as a man who took his responsabilities when he had to, whatever it involved, rather than ignore it.
But I don't have all the informations. For example, I don't know how did he change the average american life (better, or worse ?).
In France, I knew only 1 person, I mean, only 1 since high school (I'm college now), who think the same.
Everyone else see him like:
- an idiot
- an incompetent
- a really, really bad guy who kill and torture innocent people,
-almost everyone in France hate the Republican Party (politicaly correct is very strong in my country, and some Republican's ideas aren't),
-corrupted by the lobby
In France, one day, during an ambush, (maybe in 2012, or 2011) 10 soldiers died in afghanistan (highest casualities in just one operation I can remember since I'm born): Public Opinon was shocked and wanted us to leave afghanistan.
USA took 4,000 casualities in iraqi, if I'm right.
If Bush left iraqi/afghanistan, I think it would have been even shitier, a lot earlier in the middle east.
But when america was there, everyone said you were occupying the country, that you were in iraqi for petrole, and know you are gone, everyone says that you left the country in a mess and that ISIS is your fault.
OMG French are never happy...
So: were Bush's choices bad ?
Are french biased by the media that HATE the Republican (republican = rich racist/nazi who hate the poor exploited people and love to sell guns to US young boys for $$$) ?
Or am I biased ?
Thanks a lot !
Only conspiracy theorists think it was a government plot. Bad things happen and by the time we knew that the hijacked planes would be used to destroy the towers we'd have had a fireball in new York city rather than at the buildings. Sad part is if it was just a hijacking how do you justify blowing up a passenger plane. Some people fail to realize that.
To my knowledge Obama hasn't really helped the economy either but that's debatable. Obama also said he wouldn't be big on torture but he still did 'enhanced interrogation techiques' (a BS wording politicians use for mild torture).
You'd be surprised all the crap that we got for Iraq. I remember something on TV where somebody with no expertise theorized it'd be worse than vietnam using no evidence to support their claims. We didn't all want to go there but we didn't want to leave either. Obama had us pull out as some people on the left wanted and that made things worse. The bigger problem though is the left and right un-doing each other and being two halves of a government which doesn't work. Personally it'd be better if it was all one or the other and we had a no party system. If I recall Thomas Jefferson was opposed to having a party system for the usa and I think he was right.
I also hate 'politically correct' people myself. Everybody is offended by everything these days and can't have their feelings hurt. God forbid constructive criticism or things like health concerns end up being considered offensive too. Also it's as if claiming you're offended matters more than noticing there might be something to what's said rather than dismissing it entirely (for instance the Asians are bad drivers or black people are good at sports). You should try to figure out the connections and what it really is than dismissing something people start to notice.
Most shows are politically left to my knowledge. I'm not saying the political right is good but being surrounded by the left tends to annoy me. I wish they'd shut up sometimes but it's all I ever hear being young and all.
I don't know what New York is like but L.A. one of the bigger left capitals in the usa was so much different in real life and deserves far more criticism than it gets. It's segregated, dirty, polluted, filled with graffiti, over-crowded, the people are fake and the shows are faker (audience being forced to clap and laugh like some real version of a laugh track). Basically Los Angeles sucks and I wasn't even in the bad areas which are really bad.
------
Anyway the political left isn't too bad but I feel it doesn't get nearly enough criticism and whenever the political right does something you will hear it endlessly everywhere. Either the left has more media coverage or most of the TV and internet coverage.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/09/21 05:48:02
Bromsy wrote: Well, as quoted you did say "where he did manage to get his policies in place, the results were either mediocrity or failure" and mayhaps I was simply curious which you would consider say the three completely separate programs listed in the article.
Because a president is in charge of more than a dozen departments, with about a dozen agencies each. So there's maybe 150 or more agencies in the US government. In each of those there will be potentially hundreds of programs.
So fairly obviously when talking about a president in broad strokes, it'd be pretty stupid ensure our language sufficiently describes the operation of all his programs. Instead we stick to the major programs and reform initiatives.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Bromsy wrote: Well, as quoted you did say "where he did manage to get his policies in place, the results were either mediocrity or failure" and mayhaps I was simply curious which you would consider say the three completely separate programs listed in the article.
Because a president is in charge of more than a dozen departments, with about a dozen agencies each. So there's maybe 150 or more agencies in the US government. In each of those there will be potentially hundreds of programs.
So fairly obviously when talking about a president in broad strokes, it'd be pretty stupid ensure our language sufficiently describes the operation of all his programs. Instead we stick to the major programs and reform initiatives.
So, to reiterate, you said you could not think of a single thing that improved under the auspices of George W. Bush, despite the fact that you are now claiming to be aware that things did in fact improve under him as mentioned in the thread. You made specific claims which were hyperbole, mistakes, or lies. That is all I am saying. I quoted you... it's right there. You said "One simple way to look at it is to ask what he set about working on pro-actively, that actually got better. I can't think of anything." except that at the time of that statement it had already been brought up in the thread that there are like 1.9 million African folks who are on Aids antivirals that possibly would not be except for his policies. So, are you insinuating that the president at the time was unaware that this was happening? Jesus, just say 'I was being hyperbolic' and we can move on.
Bromsy wrote: So, to reiterate, you said you could not think of a single thing that improved under the auspices of George W. Bush, despite the fact that you are now claiming to be aware that things did in fact improve under him as mentioned in the thread. You made specific claims which were hyperbole, mistakes, or lies. That is all I am saying. I quoted you... it's right there. You said "One simple way to look at it is to ask what he set about working on pro-actively, that actually got better. I can't think of anything." except that at the time of that statement it had already been brought up in the thread that there are like 1.9 million African folks who are on Aids antivirals that possibly would not be except for his policies. So, are you insinuating that the president at the time was unaware that this was happening? Jesus, just say 'I was being hyperbolic' and we can move on.
When I wrote it I wrongly assumed that the people reading it were human beings from the planet earth, with some vague notion of the scale and complexity of the US federal government. As such, it never even occurred to me to qualify my statement with 'major programs' or anything like that. Because it never even occurred to me that someone would use something as marginal as a foreign aid spending program to claim that there was one thing actually worked during his presidency.
I guess I over-estimated dakka once again.
And as for calling it hyperbole, mistakes, or lies, what in the feth are you trying to do? Do I know you? Have we argued before and you're really bitter about it or something? Because you're dragging a lot of emotion in over a really trivial bit of pedantry, and there must be a reason for it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/09/21 07:27:08
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
You'd be surprised all the crap that we got for Iraq. I remember something on TV where somebody with no expertise theorized it'd be worse than vietnam using no evidence to support their claims.
To be fair, while the casualties inflicted on US forces was lower, the monetary and economic costs are estimate to be at least as much, possibly more.
We didn't all want to go there but we didn't want to leave either. Obama had us pull out as some people on the left wanted
A majority of the US people were in favor of a withdrawal by the time the Status of Forces agreement (negotiated under Bush with the Iraqi government) required US forces to leave Iraq.
and that made things worse.
Well, there was, and still is, the fundamental problem that Iraq really has never been a unified state, it's a creation of that wonderful post WW1 Sykes-Picot agreement, hamfisting a diverse array of peoples into a nation arbitrarily drawn on a map by foreign diplomats thousands of miles away, and nobody ever wanted to admit that was a mistake, and now that the pressures that were keeping it operating (at least on the surface) as a unified whole are gone, it's going about partitioning itself. The Kurds have effectively been running their own country for years (and few would believe this could be in Iraq, and in practical terms, it's not) and they're unlikely to ever accept rule from Baghdad again.
I don't know what New York is like but L.A. one of the bigger left capitals in the usa was so much different in real life and deserves far more criticism than it gets. It's segregated, dirty, polluted, filled with graffiti, over-crowded, the people are fake and the shows are faker (audience being forced to clap and laugh like some real version of a laugh track). Basically Los Angeles sucks and I wasn't even in the bad areas which are really bad.
I thought all this was common knowledge. Everyone knows LA is just, in general, a terrible place, regardless of political leanings. I've never known anyone who was like "oh man, I wanna move to LA" past the age of like, 16.
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
