This should be a good place to start!
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...odern-history/
- Guest040616
- 05-25-2014, 11:24 AM
- IIFFOFRDB
- 05-25-2014, 11:32 AM
- Guest040616
- 05-25-2014, 11:41 AM
How about this op/ed from the pages of The Washington Post:
Bush the Incompetent
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Incompetence is not one of the seven deadly sins, and it's hardly the worst attribute that can be ascribed to George W. Bush. But it is this president's defining attribute. Historians, looking back at the hash that his administration has made of his war in Iraq, his response to Hurricane Katrina and his Medicare drug plan, will have to grapple with how one president could so cosmically botch so many big things -- particularly when most of them were the president's own initiatives.
In numbing profusion, the newspapers are filled with litanies of screw-ups. Yesterday's New York Times brought news of the first official assessment of our reconstruction efforts in Iraq, in which the government's special inspector general depicted a policy beset, as Times reporter James Glanz put it, "by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting [and] secrecy." At one point, rebuilding efforts were divided, bewilderingly and counterproductively, between the Army Corps of Engineers and, for projects involving water, the Navy. That's when you'd think a president would make clear in no uncertain terms that bureaucratic turf battles would not be allowed to impede Iraq's reconstruction. But then, the president had no guiding vision for how to rebuild Iraq -- indeed, he went to war believing that such an undertaking really wouldn't require much in the way of American treasure and American lives.
It's the president's prescription drug plan (Medicare Part D), though, that is his most mind-boggling failure. As was not the case in Iraq or with Katrina, it hasn't had to overcome the opposition of man or nature. Pharmacists are not resisting the program; seniors are not planting car bombs to impede it (not yet, anyway). But in what must be an unforeseen development, people are trying to get their medications covered under the program. Apparently, this is a contingency for which the administration was not prepared, as it has been singularly unable to get its own program up and running.
Initially, Part D's biggest glitch seemed to be the difficulty that seniors encountered in selecting a plan. But since Part D took effect on Jan. 1, the most acute problem has been the plan's failure to cover the 6.2 million low-income seniors whose medications had been covered by Medicaid. On New Year's Day, the new law shifted these people's coverage to private insurers. And all hell broke loose.
Pharmacists found that the insurers didn't have the seniors' names in their systems, or charged them far in excess of what the new law stipulated -- and what the seniors could afford. In California fully 20 percent of the state's 1.1 million elderly Medicaid recipients had their coverage denied. The state had to step in to pick up the tab for their medications. California has appropriated $150 million for the medications, and estimates that it will be out of pocket more than $900 million by 2008-09. Before Jan. 1 the Bush administration had told California that it would save roughly $120 million a year once Part D was in effect.
California's experience is hardly unique. To date at least 25 states and the District have had to defray the costs to seniors that Part D was supposed to cover. What's truly stunning about this tale is that, while officials may not have known how many non-indigent seniors would sign up of their own accord, they always knew that these 6.2 million seniors would be shifted into the plan on the first day of the year. There were absolutely no surprises, and yet administration officials weren't even remotely prepared.
No such problems attended the creation of Medicare itself in the mid-1960s. Then, a governmental agency simply assumed responsibility for seniors' doctor and hospital visits. But, financially beholden to both the drug and insurance industries, the Bush administration and the Repsublican Congress mandated that millions of Americans have their coverage shifted to these most byzantine of bureaucracies.
This is, remember, the president's signature domestic initiative, just as the Iraq war is his signature foreign initiative.
How could a president get these things so wrong? Incompetence may describe this presidency, but it doesn't explain it. For that, historians may need to turn to the seven deadly sins: to greed, in understanding why Bush entrusted his new drug entitlement to a financial mainstay of modern Republicanism. To sloth, in understanding why Incurious George has repeatedly ignored the work of experts whose advice runs counter to his desires.
More and more, the key question for this administration is that of the great American sage, Casey Stengel: Can't anybody here play this game?
meyersonh@washpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...012401163.html
Bush the Incompetent
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Incompetence is not one of the seven deadly sins, and it's hardly the worst attribute that can be ascribed to George W. Bush. But it is this president's defining attribute. Historians, looking back at the hash that his administration has made of his war in Iraq, his response to Hurricane Katrina and his Medicare drug plan, will have to grapple with how one president could so cosmically botch so many big things -- particularly when most of them were the president's own initiatives.
In numbing profusion, the newspapers are filled with litanies of screw-ups. Yesterday's New York Times brought news of the first official assessment of our reconstruction efforts in Iraq, in which the government's special inspector general depicted a policy beset, as Times reporter James Glanz put it, "by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting [and] secrecy." At one point, rebuilding efforts were divided, bewilderingly and counterproductively, between the Army Corps of Engineers and, for projects involving water, the Navy. That's when you'd think a president would make clear in no uncertain terms that bureaucratic turf battles would not be allowed to impede Iraq's reconstruction. But then, the president had no guiding vision for how to rebuild Iraq -- indeed, he went to war believing that such an undertaking really wouldn't require much in the way of American treasure and American lives.
It's the president's prescription drug plan (Medicare Part D), though, that is his most mind-boggling failure. As was not the case in Iraq or with Katrina, it hasn't had to overcome the opposition of man or nature. Pharmacists are not resisting the program; seniors are not planting car bombs to impede it (not yet, anyway). But in what must be an unforeseen development, people are trying to get their medications covered under the program. Apparently, this is a contingency for which the administration was not prepared, as it has been singularly unable to get its own program up and running.
Initially, Part D's biggest glitch seemed to be the difficulty that seniors encountered in selecting a plan. But since Part D took effect on Jan. 1, the most acute problem has been the plan's failure to cover the 6.2 million low-income seniors whose medications had been covered by Medicaid. On New Year's Day, the new law shifted these people's coverage to private insurers. And all hell broke loose.
Pharmacists found that the insurers didn't have the seniors' names in their systems, or charged them far in excess of what the new law stipulated -- and what the seniors could afford. In California fully 20 percent of the state's 1.1 million elderly Medicaid recipients had their coverage denied. The state had to step in to pick up the tab for their medications. California has appropriated $150 million for the medications, and estimates that it will be out of pocket more than $900 million by 2008-09. Before Jan. 1 the Bush administration had told California that it would save roughly $120 million a year once Part D was in effect.
California's experience is hardly unique. To date at least 25 states and the District have had to defray the costs to seniors that Part D was supposed to cover. What's truly stunning about this tale is that, while officials may not have known how many non-indigent seniors would sign up of their own accord, they always knew that these 6.2 million seniors would be shifted into the plan on the first day of the year. There were absolutely no surprises, and yet administration officials weren't even remotely prepared.
No such problems attended the creation of Medicare itself in the mid-1960s. Then, a governmental agency simply assumed responsibility for seniors' doctor and hospital visits. But, financially beholden to both the drug and insurance industries, the Bush administration and the Repsublican Congress mandated that millions of Americans have their coverage shifted to these most byzantine of bureaucracies.
This is, remember, the president's signature domestic initiative, just as the Iraq war is his signature foreign initiative.
How could a president get these things so wrong? Incompetence may describe this presidency, but it doesn't explain it. For that, historians may need to turn to the seven deadly sins: to greed, in understanding why Bush entrusted his new drug entitlement to a financial mainstay of modern Republicanism. To sloth, in understanding why Incurious George has repeatedly ignored the work of experts whose advice runs counter to his desires.
More and more, the key question for this administration is that of the great American sage, Casey Stengel: Can't anybody here play this game?
meyersonh@washpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...012401163.html
- IIFFOFRDB
- 05-25-2014, 11:50 AM
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2...47J/story.html
Obama fails to show his vaunted ‘competence’
By Jeff Jacoby | GLOBE COLUMNIST MAY 25, 2014
AS A CANDIDATE for president in 1988, Michael Dukakis famously proclaimed: “This election is not about ideology; it’s about competence.”
It wasn’t a winning argument. Dukakis ran as the architect of the so-called “Massachusetts Miracle,” the state’s mid-1980s economic boom. But the miracle was turning into a fiscal meltdown, and, as it did, Dukakis’s once-commanding lead went down the drain. On Election Day, he lost to George H. W. Bush in a 40-state landslide.
Dukakis played down ideology because he didn’t want to be tagged as a liberal, and he played up competence because that’s what all candidates do. Twenty years later, Barack Obama did the same thing, but with far greater success. Running to succeed the deeply polarizing George W. Bush, Obama held himself out not just as a leader who would never “pit red America against blue America,” but as a natural-born manager whose hallmark was smarts and competence.
Voters — encouraged by newspaper endorsements that saw in Obama’s campaign “a marvel of sound management” (The Boston Globe) and backed him because he “offered more competence than drama” (Los Angeles Times) — ate it up. An astonishing 76 percent of respondents in a CNN/ORC poll shortly after the 2008 election agreed that Obama could “manage the government effectively.”
Five years of Obama’s presidency have certainly shattered that delusion.
The scandal now boiling over at the Veterans Administration, where at least 40 patients have died while numerous VA hospitals reportedly falsified data to hide unconscionable delays in medical care, is only the latest in a long series of government shambles under a president whose managerial prowess turned out to be a mirage.
Abuses at the VA have been a problem for years. As a candidate in 2007, Obama claimed that 400,000 veterans were “stuck on a waiting list,” and he promised “a new sense of urgency” to “make sure that our disabled vets receive the benefits they deserve.” But that urgency never materialized. In a letter to Obama a year ago, the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee detailed some of the “serious and significant patient care issues” in the VA system, imploring him to address the worsening problems before more veterans died. Yet nothing happened. The president showed no interest in the matter, and seemed to have no grasp of the scandal’s magnitude, until he learned about it on the news.
Obama came to the White House with a carefully cultivated image for almost preternatural competence — an image no one esteemed more highly than he did. “I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” he had told his campaign staff. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that . . . I’m a better political director than my political director.”
He may still believe it, but most Americans no longer do. When respondents in a CNN/ORC poll this spring were asked once again about the president’s ability to “manage the government effectively,” a solid majority — 57 percent — said that description does not apply to Obama. Other surveys get similar results. In four Quinnipiac University polls taken since November 2013, respondents have been asked: “Do you think that in general the Obama administration has been competent in running the government?” Each time, a majority has said no. Asked whether the president is “paying attention to what his administration is doing,” only 45 percent say he is. None of those polls reflects recent coverage of the VA; presumably the numbers would be even harsher if they did.
Every presidency has its scandals and messes. George W. Bush’s included the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, the calamitous post-Saddam administration of Iraq, and the misbegotten policies that stoked the subprime mortgage crisis. But Obama went out of his way to contrast himself with the supposedly bumbling and hapless Bush. He deliberately put effectiveness and smart governance at the very core of what Americans could expect if they elected him.
It hasn’t worked out that way, or even come close. The Obama administration hasn’t been distinguished by cool, cerebral, sure-footed professionalism, but by something closer to amateur hour. From the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act to the bloody aftermath of the intervention in Libya, from enabling political witch-hunts at the IRS to being repeatedly outmaneuvered by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, from swelling the debt he was going to reduce to embittering the politics he promised to detoxify, Obama’s performance has been a lurching series of screw-ups and disappointments.
The 44th president — who once said that his accomplishments could compare favorably with those of any of his predecessors with the “possible exceptions” of Lyndon Johnson, FDR, and Abraham Lincoln — has always had a huge opinion of his executive gifts. The American people no longer share it. As a political creature, Obama’s talents are undeniable. When it comes to competent governance, they turned out to be anything but.
Obama fails to show his vaunted ‘competence’
By Jeff Jacoby | GLOBE COLUMNIST MAY 25, 2014
AS A CANDIDATE for president in 1988, Michael Dukakis famously proclaimed: “This election is not about ideology; it’s about competence.”
It wasn’t a winning argument. Dukakis ran as the architect of the so-called “Massachusetts Miracle,” the state’s mid-1980s economic boom. But the miracle was turning into a fiscal meltdown, and, as it did, Dukakis’s once-commanding lead went down the drain. On Election Day, he lost to George H. W. Bush in a 40-state landslide.
Dukakis played down ideology because he didn’t want to be tagged as a liberal, and he played up competence because that’s what all candidates do. Twenty years later, Barack Obama did the same thing, but with far greater success. Running to succeed the deeply polarizing George W. Bush, Obama held himself out not just as a leader who would never “pit red America against blue America,” but as a natural-born manager whose hallmark was smarts and competence.
Voters — encouraged by newspaper endorsements that saw in Obama’s campaign “a marvel of sound management” (The Boston Globe) and backed him because he “offered more competence than drama” (Los Angeles Times) — ate it up. An astonishing 76 percent of respondents in a CNN/ORC poll shortly after the 2008 election agreed that Obama could “manage the government effectively.”
Five years of Obama’s presidency have certainly shattered that delusion.
The scandal now boiling over at the Veterans Administration, where at least 40 patients have died while numerous VA hospitals reportedly falsified data to hide unconscionable delays in medical care, is only the latest in a long series of government shambles under a president whose managerial prowess turned out to be a mirage.
Abuses at the VA have been a problem for years. As a candidate in 2007, Obama claimed that 400,000 veterans were “stuck on a waiting list,” and he promised “a new sense of urgency” to “make sure that our disabled vets receive the benefits they deserve.” But that urgency never materialized. In a letter to Obama a year ago, the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee detailed some of the “serious and significant patient care issues” in the VA system, imploring him to address the worsening problems before more veterans died. Yet nothing happened. The president showed no interest in the matter, and seemed to have no grasp of the scandal’s magnitude, until he learned about it on the news.
Obama came to the White House with a carefully cultivated image for almost preternatural competence — an image no one esteemed more highly than he did. “I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” he had told his campaign staff. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that . . . I’m a better political director than my political director.”
He may still believe it, but most Americans no longer do. When respondents in a CNN/ORC poll this spring were asked once again about the president’s ability to “manage the government effectively,” a solid majority — 57 percent — said that description does not apply to Obama. Other surveys get similar results. In four Quinnipiac University polls taken since November 2013, respondents have been asked: “Do you think that in general the Obama administration has been competent in running the government?” Each time, a majority has said no. Asked whether the president is “paying attention to what his administration is doing,” only 45 percent say he is. None of those polls reflects recent coverage of the VA; presumably the numbers would be even harsher if they did.
Every presidency has its scandals and messes. George W. Bush’s included the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, the calamitous post-Saddam administration of Iraq, and the misbegotten policies that stoked the subprime mortgage crisis. But Obama went out of his way to contrast himself with the supposedly bumbling and hapless Bush. He deliberately put effectiveness and smart governance at the very core of what Americans could expect if they elected him.
It hasn’t worked out that way, or even come close. The Obama administration hasn’t been distinguished by cool, cerebral, sure-footed professionalism, but by something closer to amateur hour. From the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act to the bloody aftermath of the intervention in Libya, from enabling political witch-hunts at the IRS to being repeatedly outmaneuvered by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, from swelling the debt he was going to reduce to embittering the politics he promised to detoxify, Obama’s performance has been a lurching series of screw-ups and disappointments.
The 44th president — who once said that his accomplishments could compare favorably with those of any of his predecessors with the “possible exceptions” of Lyndon Johnson, FDR, and Abraham Lincoln — has always had a huge opinion of his executive gifts. The American people no longer share it. As a political creature, Obama’s talents are undeniable. When it comes to competent governance, they turned out to be anything but.
- Guest040616
- 05-25-2014, 11:52 AM
A great source of information on Shrub's incompetence:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...d_incompetence
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...d_incompetence
- IIFFOFRDB
- 05-25-2014, 12:19 PM
Thanks Obaabaa...
http://sharylattkisson.com/thousands...sing-in-libya/
THOUSANDS OF QADDAFI-ERA MISSILES MISSING IN LIBYA
by Sharyl Attkisson on May 24, 2014 in Benghazi, News
Some of you missed this article that I wrote a year ago about the fate of MANPADS left over from the Qaddafi regime in Libya. According to a well-placed source, hundreds of the missiles had already been tracked as having gone to Al Qaeda Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and thousands are unaccounted for.
Before his overthrow and death in the fall of 2011, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi was believed to have purchased 15,000-20,000 Soviet MANPADS. Concern over the whereabouts of the missiles – and the possibility that terrorists could buy them on the black market and even use them to shoot down American passenger jets – drove a U.S. effort to recover as many as possible. But only about 2,000 were accounted for prior to the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on Benghazi, Libya, according to the source. He describes those working to locate the missiles as “beside themselves” and “frustrated.”
The program to recover MANPADS in Libya was funded by the U.S. and said to have been run by South African contractors. The contractors attempted to appeal to Libyans, many of them ex-Qaddafi loyalists, to turn over or destroy the MANPADS as a matter of patriotism and pride.
“We told them that ‘if planes start dropping out of the sky, it will trace back to you and you’ll have the international reputation for terrorism,’” says the source. “We offered them money, we tried talking them out of it … The only successes they had were in western Libya, the Tripoli area. In the eastern half toward Benghazi, they were getting nowhere.”
“This is one of those scenarios that we have dreaded,” says Zarate, a former Bush National Security Advisor. “You have stockpiles and availability of these weapons in an environment where a terrorist can readily get access to them… It’s a serious concern.”
http://sharylattkisson.com/thousands...sing-in-libya/
THOUSANDS OF QADDAFI-ERA MISSILES MISSING IN LIBYA
by Sharyl Attkisson on May 24, 2014 in Benghazi, News
Some of you missed this article that I wrote a year ago about the fate of MANPADS left over from the Qaddafi regime in Libya. According to a well-placed source, hundreds of the missiles had already been tracked as having gone to Al Qaeda Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and thousands are unaccounted for.
Before his overthrow and death in the fall of 2011, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi was believed to have purchased 15,000-20,000 Soviet MANPADS. Concern over the whereabouts of the missiles – and the possibility that terrorists could buy them on the black market and even use them to shoot down American passenger jets – drove a U.S. effort to recover as many as possible. But only about 2,000 were accounted for prior to the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on Benghazi, Libya, according to the source. He describes those working to locate the missiles as “beside themselves” and “frustrated.”
The program to recover MANPADS in Libya was funded by the U.S. and said to have been run by South African contractors. The contractors attempted to appeal to Libyans, many of them ex-Qaddafi loyalists, to turn over or destroy the MANPADS as a matter of patriotism and pride.
“We told them that ‘if planes start dropping out of the sky, it will trace back to you and you’ll have the international reputation for terrorism,’” says the source. “We offered them money, we tried talking them out of it … The only successes they had were in western Libya, the Tripoli area. In the eastern half toward Benghazi, they were getting nowhere.”
“This is one of those scenarios that we have dreaded,” says Zarate, a former Bush National Security Advisor. “You have stockpiles and availability of these weapons in an environment where a terrorist can readily get access to them… It’s a serious concern.”
- gnadfly
- 05-25-2014, 12:42 PM
When TheDaliLama opened a similar thread for you on aspd about 8 years ago, it was funny. Now, it's outright pathetic.
Enjoy your new "rubber room" bigkotex! I won't bother you anymore here.
Enjoy your new "rubber room" bigkotex! I won't bother you anymore here.
- Guest040616
- 05-25-2014, 01:24 PM
- Chica Chaser
- 05-25-2014, 04:09 PM
That decides it....I'll never vote for dubya ever again!
- i'va biggen
- 05-25-2014, 04:11 PM
I'm not voting for either one again...
- Mr MojoRisin
- 05-25-2014, 07:42 PM
To bad he couldn't be impeached. If we could impeach these idiots on the grounds of incompetence we would have a new president every six months instead of every eight years.
Jim
Jim
- Guest040616
- 05-25-2014, 08:01 PM
(CNN) -- With record low approval ratings and intense criticism for his handling of the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina and the economy, the word most used to label George W. Bush's presidency will be "incompetent," historians say.
"Right now there is not a lot of good will among historians. Most see him as a combination of many negative factors," said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School.
"He is seen as incompetent in terms of how he handled domestic and foreign policy. He is seen as pushing for an agenda to the right of the nation and doing so through executive power that ignored the popular will," he added.
But like so many presidents before him, Bush's reputation could change with time.
Harvard University political history scholar Barbara Kellerman said when President-elect Barack Obama takes over in January, people may view Bush in a new light. Watch Bush address staff about transition of power »
"I think it's possible when people have stopped being as angry at the Bush administration as they are now ... that they will realize that some of this is just ... the luck of the draw."
Kellerman, author of the book "Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters," noted that Bush has not had luck on his side for the past eight years.
"He [Bush] has been a quite unlucky president. Certain things happened on his watch that most people don't have to deal with -- a 9/11, a [Hurricane] Katrina, the financial crisis, being three obvious examples," she said.
"And yet they happened on his watch. He is being blamed," she said.
And that fact -- coupled with approval ratings around 27 percent, according to CNN's poll released October 21 -- is in large part why Obama and Democrats won big on November 4.
Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian and professor at Rice University, said the country is dealing with a "lame duck president" who will most likely face an uphill battle in getting anything passed through Congress before he leaves office.
"We're dealing with an economic meltdown ... We're dealing with two wars. So everything Obama does now is going to be seen as he is the de facto president," Brinkley said Thursday. Read Zelizer's take on what Obama should avoid
Historians, beginning to examine Bush's legacy, note that the 43rd president could end up with a better reputation down the road -- something that happened to Harry Truman.
At different points in his presidency, Truman earned some of the highest and the lowest public approval ratings in history: 87 percent approval in June 1945 vs. 23 percent approval in January 1952, according to a CNN analysis of polling at the time.
Truman, who is often noted for his upset victory over Thomas Dewey in 1948, faced several domestic and foreign policy problems throughout his term in office, which lasted from 1945-1953. Most notably: The Korean War, World War II and later, Cold War relations with an aggressive Soviet Union.
"One of the things that has been conventionally done is to compare George W. Bush to Harry Truman, both of whom had upon leaving office dismal approval ratings and of course as it is well known by now, Harry Truman's reputation has, by virtually every account, not only improved, but I would say escalated nearly to the top of the list of greater American presidents," Kellerman added.
Another president Bush may be compared to down the road? Ronald Reagan.
Prior to leaving office, Reagan faced strong backlash from Republicans and Democrats on opening negotiations with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev during the Cold War era as well as the handling of the Iran-Contra Affair.
"He was seen as bumbling; he was seen as unintelligent; he was seen as a guy driven by his advisers," Zelizer added. "And now he's being talked about like FDR, one of the great presidents in American history and we have a new look at who he was."
Reagan is often invoked by Republicans in presidential races -- most recently with the campaign of Sen. John McCain -- looking to shore up the conservative base.
Bush, meanwhile, who has long defended his decision to invade Iraq as a way to spread democracy, could also see criticism dissipate over time if Iraq becomes a thriving, stable country.
"If you imagine that an Iraq in 10,15 years is actually a vibrant, stable democracy and other countries neighboring it move in that direction ... I think you'd have a strong Bush revisionism," Zelizer said. "How things unfold in coming decades can help repair a battered presidency," he added.
Kellerman said that while many will credit Bush for taking charge of democracy-spreading, his "incompetence" will still be noted.
"The level of incompetence after the initial 'mission accomplished' was so acute that my guess is, even if the decision to invade might be historically justified, the incompetence that succeeded it ... I think that's going to be very difficult to ever alter our negative perception of that."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/...acy/index.html
"Right now there is not a lot of good will among historians. Most see him as a combination of many negative factors," said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School.
"He is seen as incompetent in terms of how he handled domestic and foreign policy. He is seen as pushing for an agenda to the right of the nation and doing so through executive power that ignored the popular will," he added.
But like so many presidents before him, Bush's reputation could change with time.
Harvard University political history scholar Barbara Kellerman said when President-elect Barack Obama takes over in January, people may view Bush in a new light. Watch Bush address staff about transition of power »
"I think it's possible when people have stopped being as angry at the Bush administration as they are now ... that they will realize that some of this is just ... the luck of the draw."
Kellerman, author of the book "Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters," noted that Bush has not had luck on his side for the past eight years.
"He [Bush] has been a quite unlucky president. Certain things happened on his watch that most people don't have to deal with -- a 9/11, a [Hurricane] Katrina, the financial crisis, being three obvious examples," she said.
"And yet they happened on his watch. He is being blamed," she said.
And that fact -- coupled with approval ratings around 27 percent, according to CNN's poll released October 21 -- is in large part why Obama and Democrats won big on November 4.
Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian and professor at Rice University, said the country is dealing with a "lame duck president" who will most likely face an uphill battle in getting anything passed through Congress before he leaves office.
"We're dealing with an economic meltdown ... We're dealing with two wars. So everything Obama does now is going to be seen as he is the de facto president," Brinkley said Thursday. Read Zelizer's take on what Obama should avoid
Historians, beginning to examine Bush's legacy, note that the 43rd president could end up with a better reputation down the road -- something that happened to Harry Truman.
At different points in his presidency, Truman earned some of the highest and the lowest public approval ratings in history: 87 percent approval in June 1945 vs. 23 percent approval in January 1952, according to a CNN analysis of polling at the time.
Truman, who is often noted for his upset victory over Thomas Dewey in 1948, faced several domestic and foreign policy problems throughout his term in office, which lasted from 1945-1953. Most notably: The Korean War, World War II and later, Cold War relations with an aggressive Soviet Union.
"One of the things that has been conventionally done is to compare George W. Bush to Harry Truman, both of whom had upon leaving office dismal approval ratings and of course as it is well known by now, Harry Truman's reputation has, by virtually every account, not only improved, but I would say escalated nearly to the top of the list of greater American presidents," Kellerman added.
Another president Bush may be compared to down the road? Ronald Reagan.
Prior to leaving office, Reagan faced strong backlash from Republicans and Democrats on opening negotiations with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev during the Cold War era as well as the handling of the Iran-Contra Affair.
"He was seen as bumbling; he was seen as unintelligent; he was seen as a guy driven by his advisers," Zelizer added. "And now he's being talked about like FDR, one of the great presidents in American history and we have a new look at who he was."
Reagan is often invoked by Republicans in presidential races -- most recently with the campaign of Sen. John McCain -- looking to shore up the conservative base.
Bush, meanwhile, who has long defended his decision to invade Iraq as a way to spread democracy, could also see criticism dissipate over time if Iraq becomes a thriving, stable country.
"If you imagine that an Iraq in 10,15 years is actually a vibrant, stable democracy and other countries neighboring it move in that direction ... I think you'd have a strong Bush revisionism," Zelizer said. "How things unfold in coming decades can help repair a battered presidency," he added.
Kellerman said that while many will credit Bush for taking charge of democracy-spreading, his "incompetence" will still be noted.
"The level of incompetence after the initial 'mission accomplished' was so acute that my guess is, even if the decision to invade might be historically justified, the incompetence that succeeded it ... I think that's going to be very difficult to ever alter our negative perception of that."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/...acy/index.html
- satexasguy
- 05-25-2014, 08:12 PM
Bigkotex, you do realize CNN is dropping off the map as a reliable news source. Their ratings keep getting lower and lower. I wouldn't place too much confidence in what they have to say.
- Guest040616
- 05-25-2014, 09:48 PM
Bigkotex, you do realize CNN is dropping off the map as a reliable news source. Their ratings keep getting lower and lower. I wouldn't place too much confidence in what they have to say. Originally Posted by satexasguyThe Idiot clan does not seem to worry too much about the reliability of Rush Slimebaugh, FAUX non-news network or Breitbart. Why the sudden interest in CNN?
If you don't like what CNN has to say, do what I do with when one of the IDIOT's post something from the 3 non news sources I listed above.
I don't read it. Problem solved! DUH!
One would think you would have been smart enough to figure that simple concept out on your own.
Apparently not!
Perhaps you should consider repeating 3rd grade!
- Jackie S
- 05-25-2014, 09:55 PM
So, after 5+ years of Obama, all they have is, "it's still Bush's fault".
I guess CNN got their memo and marching orders from the DNC to go back to their old stand-by bull shit.
Pathetic.
I guess CNN got their memo and marching orders from the DNC to go back to their old stand-by bull shit.
Pathetic.