Bronze-level articleGeorge W. Bush

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==External links==
 
==External links==
 
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqJiCDElWmo "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" (''Late Show'' with David Letterman)] - In case any of us ever forget.
 
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqJiCDElWmo "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" (''Late Show'' with David Letterman)] - In case any of us ever forget.
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*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O0WUzU-Kxc You're Welcome, America.]
 
*Some news articles and blog posts on how Dubya let his belief in [[God|Gawd]] influence his presidency:
 
*Some news articles and blog posts on how Dubya let his belief in [[God|Gawd]] influence his presidency:
 
**[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa Dubya told Palestinian officials: "God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq"]
 
**[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa Dubya told Palestinian officials: "God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq"]
**[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/10/religion-george-bush Dubya invoked "Gog and Magog" when trying to sell the Afghanistan and Iraq wars to the French, much to their bewilderment]  ([http://www2.unil.ch/unicom/allez_savoir/as39/pages/pdf/4_Gog_Magog.pdf The French take on this])  
+
**[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/10/religion-george-bush Dubya invoked "Gog and Magog" when trying to sell the Afghanistan and Iraq wars to the French, much to their bewilderment]  ([http://www2.unil.ch/unicom/allez_savoir/as39/pages/pdf/4_Gog_Magog.pdf The French take on this])
  
 
==Footnotes==
 
==Footnotes==

Revision as of 04:59, 14 April 2014

I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.
—George W. Bush[1]
January 20, 2009: we waited so long for this moment, we didn't know what to say.

George Walker Bush, aka. "Dubya" or "Shrub," was the 43rd President of the United States, who somehow managed to serve two terms, from 2001 to 2009. He is the son of 41st president George H. W. Bush, and is famous for having the largest number of people ever in history to protest against him.

He is famous for "opposing nation-building"[2] in his 2000 election campaign, then proceeded to take military action in Iraq and Afghanistan and commenced nation-building. He claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. They didn't find them. He "caused the War on Terror."[3]

Contents

Election controversy

See the main article on this topic: 2000 U.S. Presidential Election

Bush was initially elected in 2000, running against then-Vice President Al Gore. The vote was very close, with the election hanging on a very few votes in Florida; due to this, the election eventually had to be resolved in the Supreme Court in the debacle known as Bush v. Gore.

Due to the circumstances surrounding the election, or the first several months of his presidency, some people (Michael Moore, for example)[4] maintained that Bush was not the "legitimate" president, and that it was stolen by Bush, his brother Jeb, the Governor of Florida at the time, and Florida's Secretary of State in charge of the recount, Katherine Harris. The People's Weekly World went so far as to enclose the word "President" in scare quotes when referring to him. Such chatter mostly ceased when 9/11 and its aftermath gave these detractors a ready, large supply of valid reasons (with some exceptions on the validity part) to criticize Bush, such as concerns over civil rights violations.

Presidency

An early assessment of Bush's legacy.

Dubya's presidency was arguably one of the most infamous in history:

  • The economy struggled - while the Dow Jones Industrial Average recovered the "numbers" lost in the post-dot com boom crash, the dollar dropped by a similar amount against the euro - meaning that in euros, the U.S. economy was stagnant for six years.
  • He ignored science on several every major issue, preferring to promote bizarre policies, such as abstinence-only sex education.
  • His end-of term approval ratings were so low they fell down to numbers reminiscent of Richard Nixon after Watergate.
  • His two potentially "useful" contributions, "No Child Left Behind" and the (as yet unpassed) immigration reform thing, failed because of lack of funding and lack of support, respectively.
  • In fact, almost everything his administration touched turned to custard. The American Dream Downpayment Act 2003 was crafted as laudable attempt to create 5.5 million new homeowners by 2010. In reality, it put pressure on private lenders to reduce their lending standards (like, for instance, not being too fussed about documentation of income and assets), thus triggering the boom in so-called "subprime" mortgages in the first decade of the twenty-first century.[5] The result was tens of millions of dollars of debt for people who couldn't be expected to repay them. This debt was taken to ratings agencies, "securitized" (they slapped "AAA" on them) and sold on to businesses, pensioners and even entire countries, also thanks to financial reforms pushed through by Reagan and Dubya's dad. This worked fine, so long as interest rates stayed low (so their debts didn't increase rapidly - something Alan Greenspan was happy to do), people kept their jobs (so what was left of their income stream remained) and real estate prices kept rising (so the long-term value of their property assets increased). As anyone living in America, or the developed world as a whole, will realise, none of these things happened.
  • Bush is also the creator of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, an office of the White House that focuses on tearing down the wall of separation of church and state through the use of so called faith-based initiatives, which include teaching school children that prayer will magically solve all of their problems, and spreading blatant propaganda.
While misspending his youth, he managed to avoid military service by hiding in the National Guard, which he skipped out on early.

The Bush Administration also:

You know what, screw it. Go on his Wikipedia page and you won't make it past the first few paragraphs.

Legacy

A president's "legacy" has become a short-term version of their historical place in the pantheon; short-term, in that actual sitting presidents worry about it.

The whole world now knows that Bush's legacy will be that under his watch (besides allowing being in office when an Al-Qaeda attack killed thousands of Americans, botching the response to Hurricane Katrina, etc.) what many consider to be the Second Great Depression started. Or, perhaps, the world's biggest "no eyes attached" bailout of the financial sector of the economy. Or maybe both? Either way, the first possibility simply sucks, and the second is socialism done really badly.

Dubya finished as the 36th president overall in an early 2009 poll of sixty-five historians conducted by C-SPAN.[7] He beat out luminary presidents such as Warren G. Harding, Millard Fillmore, and James Buchanan. The overall ranking was averaged from scores given in ten areas. Some examples:

  • 40th in economic management. He beat out the father of the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover, but couldn't quite get past the guy who died after only a month in office (William Henry Harrison). This is unfair to Hoover since he came into office seven months before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, while Bush had nearly eight years before his disaster. Hoover simply bungled the management of the Depression, while Bush played an active role in triggering the Great Recession.
  • 41st in international relations. He's dead last here, unless you count his beating W.H. Harrison (see above).
  • 37th in administrative skills. So much for that MBA.

Another curious note about the poll is that the other notable presidential drunkard, Ulysses S. Grant, rocketed from 33rd to 23rd between the 2000 and 2009 polls. So, maybe George has something to look forward to after all.

In general, Bush is widely regarded as the "Douchebag of the Decade" (ie. 2000s), as confirmed in places such as the Google the Internet commentary show Bored on the Corner.[8] He is the first and perhaps only sitting President depicted in cinema wiping his ass.[9]

File:Shoe game.JPG
My best was 17 hits in 30 seconds

"Throw Your Shoe at Bush"

During Bush's surprise visit to Iraq on December 14, 2008, an heroic angry Iraqi journalist, Muntadhar al-Zeidi, hurled his size 10 shoes at him during a news conference, calling him a "dog."[10] Dubya somehow managed to dodge both shoes, but the incident has inspired myriad parodies, as well as an internet game where the player throws a shoe at a moving target of the ex-president.[11]

The Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, who was at the conference, can be seen peeping over a lectern next to Bush. The game and jokes are considered the funny side of an otherwise pathetic ending of the Bush era. The journalist was sentenced to three years in the slammer, later reduced to 1 year.[12]

Heads stuck in the sand

No, really: today's Republicans now deride a POTUS they unanimously supported (or even wanted to make "president for life") as a RINO, having sold out all "true conservative principles."[13][14][15][16] This is yet another fit of wingnut negationism post-recession, spanning from Herbert Hoover's supposed crypto-socialism to Saint Reagan's spectacular efforts at fiscal restraint.

Memoirs

In 2010, Bush published his memoirs, Decision Points, in which he defended using torture as an interrogation method (really pushing it there, are ya!) and described a bizarre moment when his mother showed him the fetus she'd miscarried. Also, of all the low points of his presidency, being called a racist by Kanye West was apparently the absolute worst, because it made him feel really sad inside.

However, in living up to his reputation that he'd never read a book in any depth, let alone written one, claims soon appeared stating that whole passages of his "memoir" were lifted wholesale from other books, especially those written by former aides.[17]

Torture

Since the release of this book, Amnesty International has been calling for his arrest every time he's left or attempted to leave the country, asserting it holds sufficient evidence that he had criminal knowledge of US torture. This caused him to cancel a trip to Geneva, Switzerland in February 2011; they repeated their demands on his trips to Canada in October 2011 and Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zambia in December 2011, but those countries were not so lucky.

Investigations of alleged (and admitted) war crimes unfortunately fail to start due to one crucial factor - it would be political suicide. Interestingly, the lack of evidence, or prima facie existence of a case to be answered for has not been cited as a reason against prosecution, leaving open a window if the US ever changes its mind on "only looking forwards, not backwards." In Malaysia, Bush and Tony Blair have been convicted in absentia partially on the basis of this book; however the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (which found the conviction) is not recognised by any official body as a legitimate court.

Perhaps in an ideal world someone would bring him and his buddies to The Hague before he pops his clogs, but since the US has not ratified the Rome Statute it is almost certain they will not consider any case against him.[18]

Irony, guilt or change-of-heart?

Living under the radar (compared to the constant scrutiny while in office), Bush and spouse have spent time in Africa opening and renovating medical clinics.[19]

He also spends time painting portraits of former White House dog Checkers Barney and other assorted crap.[20] The ones of himself in the shower are especially disturbing.

Mr. Bush is currently engaged in two part-time jobs, one as a paid speaker, and the other as scapegoat for the malfeasance of various elected officials.

See also

Icon fun.svg For those of you in the mood, RationalWiki has a fun article about George W. Bush.

External links

Footnotes

  1. [1] (The context to this quote is that Dubya finished an interview about shutting off a dam to save endangered fish. He didn't want to, surprise. After that, he oddly went back to the podium and said the quote above, and ended on that note. Still makes little sense.)
  2. Here, have a sound bite
  3. Bush's Ten Flip Flops, CBS News
  4. Stupid White Men, Chapter 1.
  5. Ferguson, Niall. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (New York: Allan Lane, 2009), p.267.
  6. See Alberto Gonzales and Regent University.
  7. C-SPAN rankings, from MSNBC
  8. [2]
  9. Review: Oliver Stone's "W." Backfires, Tom Hoopes
  10. Stop insulting dogs, dammit.
  11. Play at www.sockandawe.com
  12. Lawyer: Iraqi shoe-thrower to be released early
  13. Honey, where's my wine?
  14. ...honey, where's my vodka bottle?
  15. ...honey, where's my- *collapses*
  16. "Neo Culpa", David Rose, Vanity Fair. November 5, 2006 (VF's probably regretting this.)
  17. George Bush Book 'Decision Points' Lifted From Advisers' Books
  18. The ICC has considered cases against signatories that have not ratified the Statute in the past (eg. Sudan) however, these countries were and are guilty of outright genocide. They also didn't have an army of killer drones and a demonstrated propensity for illegal invasions.
  19. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78094.html
  20. http://gawker.com/george-w'-bush-paintings/
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