All Posts Tagged With: "presidency"

From Politico’s Joel Kotkin:

Like the 1944 pop standard says, President George W. Bush has hurt the most all those he professed to love the most — from the conservative ideologues and born-again Christians to the free-market enthusiasts, energy producers and red state political class. Perhaps no politician in recent memory has done more damage to his political base.

The most obvious recent equivalent, Richard Nixon, did cause harm to the conservative cause, but that damage was short-lived. It reflected his deviousness more than his policies. Similarly, Bill Clinton’s many personality flaws weakened the Democrats’ hold on the White House, but inflicted no permanent harm to liberalism.

In contrast, the Katrina-scale disaster that has been the Bush presidency may leave his ideological backers in the wilderness for years to come. Over the past eight years, Bush has done more to undermine conservatism than all of the country’s college faculties, elite media and Hollywood studios put together.

The late Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater — whose memory remains far more cherished than that of either President Bush — nurtured the modern brand of conservatism. Nixon employed some of these tenets, but they flourished most fully under Ronald Reagan.

Conservatism’s core values rested on notions of a strong national defense and free market economics. Bush has punctured these ideas in a way that transcends the effects of historically anomalous scandals such as Watergate or Clinton’s extramarital affairs. Bush has not only dinged the conservative car, he has totaled it.

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I would be interested to know how many previously registered Republicans fled the party under the tenure of Bush the Second. You can add my name to that list. But I’m actually grateful. His disastrous presidency jolted me out of my partisan comfort zone and freed me from blind allegiance to a failing ideology.

From CNN:

Seventy-five percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Friday said they’re glad Bush is going; 23 percent indicated they’ll miss him.

Highlights from the poll:

• 72 percent disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job as president; 27 percent approve
• 31 percent say Bush has been a good president; 40 percent call his presidency “poor”
• 28 percent rate Bush the worst president ever
• 66% want Bush to get out of public life, with 33% saying he should remain active
• 82 percent say he did not unite the country; 17 percent say he did

TPM reports on another noteworthy part of the survey that asked respondents whether various positive attribute applied to President Bush.

Thinking about the following characteristics and qualities, please say whether you think it applies or doesn’t apply to George W. Bush:
Is a strong and decisive leader: Yes 45%, No 55%

Cares about people like you: Yes 37%, No 62%

Brought the kind of change the country needed: Yes 13%, No 86%

Is honest and trustworthy: Yes 37%, No 62%

Managed the government effectively: Yes 25%, No 75%

Is a person you admire: Yes 27%, No 72%

Shares your values: Yes 34%, No 65%

Generally agrees with you on issues you care about: Yes 34%, No 66%

Inspires confidence: Yes 20%, No 80%

Has united the country and not divide it: Yes 17%, No 82%

Was tough enough for the job: Yes 49%, No 51%

Can get things done: Yes 31%, No 69%

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The Electoral College has formally elected Barack Obama as the next president of the United States, the Associated Press (via MSNBC) is reporting.

Steve Young says there are too many lingering questions about Barack Obama’s eligibility for the presidency.

If Obama continues to ignore these questions, lawsuits over his eligibility threaten to tie up the courts for years, leaving us leaderless — which, as the past eight years have shown, can be very messy.

Here are just a few potential legal challenges to Obama’s presidential legitimacy:

Electoral College accreditation. Obama cannot be elected because no nationally recognized accrediting agency has determined the Electoral College to be reliably accredited under the Higher Education Act of 1965.

Age requirement. Even if Obama was born in the United States, with no legitimate birth certificate, how do we know for sure that he is not 28 years old? I mean, just look at him. 46? Yeah, right.

Traffic hazard. With predictions of record turnout for his inauguration, which would hamper emergency vehicles and equipment in the greater Washington area, the Obama presidency constitutes a public-safety hazard.

Jobs program: Hundreds of crazed ideologues who have been working diligently to keep a duly elected president out of the White House could be forced to seek gainful employment if Obama is inaugurated, further swelling the ranks of the unemployed.

Electoral quid pro quo. Obama entered into a tacit arrangement with a co-conspiratorial segment of the public whereby, if they were to contribute sufficient votes to his candidacy, Obama agreed to become their president.

Chicago taint. Rod Blagojevich, William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, the ‘68 Democratic convention, Al Capone, the Black Sox Scandal, Mrs. O’Leary’s cow - and we’ll close with “25 or 6 to 4.” Come on, there’s got to be something there!

Court of final appeal. In the absence of Supreme Court certification, review and relief sought from TV’s Judge Judy.

Pro Publica’s Kristin Jones measures the impact of George W. Bush’s policies across American life:

Bush campaigned on a promise of smaller government, a pledge he kept only in part. He stripped staff members and resources from areas like environmental, health and corporate regulatory enforcement. But the extended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the worst financial crisis in decades swelled the national debt to its highest level in absolute terms, and its highest since the 1950s relative to GDP.

See Bush’s legacy by the numbers here.

“George W. Bush hopes history will see him as a president who liberated millions of Iraqis and Afghans, who worked towards peace and who never sold his soul for political ends,” reports AFP (via Breitbart.com).

“I’d like to be a president (known) as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace,” Bush said in excerpts of a recent interview released by the White House Friday.

“I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process. I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values.”

He may get his wish, but not necessarily exactly as he hopes for. He will certainly be remembered, but I doubt it will be a a great liberator or one he “helped achieve piece.” He may be right that his values haven’t changed since coming to Washington; unfortunately for the rest of us, those values should have been left at his home in Texas. Those values brought us arguably the worst presidency ever.

In a survey of 109 professional historians conducted last spring by George Mason University’s History News Network, 107 rated George W. Bush’s presidency a failure. Sixty-one percent concluded that his presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Here are a few of the specific comments by some of these historians Continued

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This satirical piece might just hit a little too close to home.

I’m still coming to grips with my profound disappointment in Democratic voters yesterday. In surprising fashion, a clear majority of Democratic voters in three of the four contests voted for the politics of the past rather than for the most viable candidate they’ve had on their side since Bill Clinton in 1992 and the most inspirational candidate on the Democratic side since Robert F. Kennedy.

For weeks, Barack Obama has consistently matched significantly better against John McCain than Hillary Clinton has. Clinton’s negatives are much higher than either Obama or McCain and her nomination would mobilize the conservative and Republican base like nothing else. A great number of Independents and moderates, including myself and several others I personally know, will enthusiastically vote for Obama over McCain, but will just as quickly (although not as enthusiastically) vote for McCain over Clinton. Continued