George W. Bush

From RationalWiki
(Difference between revisions)
Jump to: navigation, search
m
Line 36: Line 36:
 
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.
 
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 an [[Al-Qaeda]] attack that killed thousands of Americans, allowing New Orleans to be drowned and ruined, etc.) 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.
+
The whole world now knows that Bush's legacy will be that under his watch (besides allowing an [[Al-Qaeda]] attack that killed thousands of Americans, allowing New Orleans to be drowned and ruined, etc.) 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.  He was also the most heavily critizised president in US history.  I'd like to see the people that critisize him do a better job.
  
 
W finished 36th in an early 2009 poll of sixty-five historians conducted by C-SPAN.<ref>[http://www.c-span.org/PresidentialSurvey/Overall-Ranking.aspx C-SPAN rankings]</ref>  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:
 
W finished 36th in an early 2009 poll of sixty-five historians conducted by C-SPAN.<ref>[http://www.c-span.org/PresidentialSurvey/Overall-Ranking.aspx C-SPAN rankings]</ref>  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:

Revision as of 23:46, 17 May 2011

January 20, 2009: we waited so long for this moment, we didn't know what to say.

George Walker Bush, a.k.a "Dubya" or "Shrub", was the 43rd President of the United States, serving two terms, from 2001 to 2009.

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 case of Bush v. Gore.

Due to the circumstances surrounding the election, or the first several months of his presidency, some people (Michael Moore, for example[1]) maintained that Bush was not the "legitimate" president. 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 supply of more (and less) valid criticisms against Bush, such as concerns over civil rights violations.

Presidency

This list of miscellaneous information is endorsed by the RationalWiki Pub Quiz Team!

  • Dubya's presidency was one of the most infamous in American history.
  • The economy struggled - while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has 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 currency used by the European Union), the U.S. economy was stagnant for six years.
  • He ignored science on several major issues, preferring to promote bizarre policies, such 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.
  • 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.

Accusations

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:

  • Outed an undercover CIA operative
  • Lied to Congress and the American people to get into a war
  • Disregarded intelligence estimates, and instead manufactured its own intelligence to support political goals
  • Exerted political pressure to hide facts about climate change.
  • Fired U.S. Attorneys who wouldn't prosecute bogus voter fraud charges against Democrats, or who would prosecute voter fraud charges against Republicans[2]
  • Tried to create a fourth branch of government, answerable to no one
  • Defied Congressional subpoenas
  • Destroyed documents that should not, by law, be destroyed
  • Violated its own rules on document declassification
  • Authorized torture--or, as they like to call being bitten by dogs, being nearly drowned, and being sodomized and forced into homosexual acts, "aggressive interrogation"--in violation of both the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions.

Legacy

Early report on Bush's 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 an Al-Qaeda attack that killed thousands of Americans, allowing New Orleans to be drowned and ruined, etc.) 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. He was also the most heavily critizised president in US history. I'd like to see the people that critisize him do a better job.

W finished 36th in an early 2009 poll of sixty-five historians conducted by C-SPAN.[3] 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).
  • 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 Internet commentary show "Bored on the Corner". [4]

"Throw Your Shoe At Bush"

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

During Bush's surprise visit to Iraq on December 14, 2008, an angry Iraqi journalist, Muntadhar al-Zeidi, hurled his size 10 shoes at him during a news conference, calling him a "dog". Bush 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.[5]

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 the 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.[6]

Memoirs

In 2010, Bush published his memoirs, "Decision Points," in which he defended using torture as an interrogation method 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 Kayne 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, 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.[7]

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. Stupid White Men, chapter 1
  2. See Regent University
  3. C-SPAN rankings
  4. [1]
  5. Play at www.sockandawe.com.
  6. Federal Appeals Court result.
  7. George Bush Book 'Decision Points' Lifted From Advisers' Books
Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support