Did Bush do anything right?

[supermaster1337]

Oh, I admire him. Truly. No other man could possibly have done such a fine job to ensure that Obama got elected in the last election. It was a superb performance.

NICE. That is probably the best thing he ever did. i applause your answer. lol

 

[elemenetal150]

During his administration..

No Child Left Behind.
Texas' Standardized Testing System. (Partly in No Child Left Behind)
Patriot Act.

Edit: Those are some of the screw ups to those who asked.

You thought the patriot act was a good thing? Dont let the fact that it has the word "patriot" in it fool you. It was possibly one of the most un-american things any president could have done, in the sense of almost making it legal to violate legal rights.

Check the edit.

By my reasoning I noticed that you have no problem with no child left behind, care to explain?

Actually i feel stronger about no child left behind. From its narrow curriculum standards to making it easier for military recruitment, its a good idea in theory but the loopholes are enourmos and leave too many options for exploitation or exclusion. Due to its incentive driven base schools could very easily manipulate test scores, schools basically were rewarded for their failures how did that make any sense? Also schools that threatend to cut or completely illiminate military recruiters were in danger of losing government funding under no child left behind. So in short, that policy sucked also, i just hate typing this much.

school weren't rewarded for failures, they are penalized. The lower the test scores the less money the school gets....now that doesn't make sense

 

[supermaster1337]

ive seen that alot, what is a flame war?

 

[dnnydllr]

Did bush really do anything wrong?

Sure, plenty of people are against him on policy, but I can't think of that many things he objectivly did wrong.

And it isn't like this is a monarchy, the president has way less power than people tend to think.

There was a topic back in December called Why does everyone hate George Bush Jr? This was my response. It's a long list.

Spoiler

hese are the first things off the top of my head. Sorry I don't have enough time to go look up all the sources. Sorry for any typos. Yes, I hated him when he was still governor. Note these are not exclusive to Bush or even Republicans alone. Also this ignores deeper problems of hegemony but that would take entire books to explain.

9-11 (whether he caused it or just screwed up is irrelevant)

Illegal and immoral war in which thousands of civilians were killed.

Downing street memo
The funds from those wars weren't spent on education or infrastructure, like say, levees.

Abysmal "with us or against us" policies that pissed of the rest of world.

The only world leader in all of recorded history to raise taxes and go to war at the same time.

This lead to record debt. I lost count once we reached a few trillion.

Fired scientists when they came up with results that would be politically bad for him

Advocated torturing innocent people

Blackwater

John Poindexter

Karl Rove

Best friends with Ken "Kenny boy" Lay

Spying and other civil rights abuses including spending $600-million dollars spying of quakers. Infiltrating peaceful anti-war groups but ignoring KKK and actual domestic terrorists.

A new level double speak and Machiavellian phrasing (clean air act, healthy forest initiative)

A new level of secrecy.

Classified millions of unclassified documents

Color coded systems that tell terrorists when we are most prepared.

Push polling

Homophobia

K-street

Tax cuts that benefit the wealthiest fraction of a percent

Environmental deregulation

Supporting dictators

Poor treatment of troops and veterans.

Pandering to the religious right (he announced his run for president at Bob Jones university)

Favored candidates for office based of loyalty. (Heck of a job Micheal Brown!)

Played guitar while people drowned.

Leaking CIA agents WHILE they were on duty.

Stopping innocent people from voting/having their votes counted.

Deregulation, which lead to abusing workers, environment, ect.

Favored gas industry.

Lost 363 tons of money in Iraq.

When he was governor of Texas executed record number of people and did infamous mocking of the people he executed.

Racist anti-drug laws.

He stopped crazy people from getting medicine and when they were arrested he claimed he was saving money and being "tough on crime". (That happened to my uncle)

Drunk driving (4 times for Cheyney)

Got out of having to go to Vietnam yet is still a hawk.

Took a record number of days off.

Lied to SEC

Tricked Texas into paying for his new baseball stadium.

Bankrupted everything he's ever run.

Could not find oil in Texas

Could not have been as "successful" if it were not for his parents.

As for things he did right, giving money to Africa is the only thing that comes to mind.

Half of the things you said were rumors spread by Bush-hate groups. The other half were mostly untrue....for christ's sake just because he was president whenever 9/11 happened did not make it his fault, and more or less the entire government approved the war...you guys really need to get your facts straight...

 

[Kpt._Rob]

Bush didn't do anything right or wrong, he's too plain stupid, and he was just Cheney's puppet. And if you're asking if Cheney did anything right? The answer would be "not on purpose."

 

[quack35]

Bush made a lot of mistakes.

But much of the time he was just a scapegoat.

 

[supermaster1337]

Aid for Africa. That was nice of him.

Africa doesn't need any more AIDS.

Racist.

nice.

 

[twistedshadows]

Oh, I admire him. Truly. No other man could possibly have done such a fine job to ensure that Obama got elected in the last election. It was a superb performance.

So true.

 

[dnnydllr]

He didn't really do as much wrong as people make it out to be. The main point people bring up is that he got us into the war in Iraq. What people should realize is that it was immediately after 9/11, and nearly everyone supported the invasion. Looking back, it was foolish, but if we're gonna sacrifice the lives of our soldier we might as well do something good for the world. And then there's his IQ level...yeah he was pretty stupid. Let's face it, he wasn't the worst president ever, or even near it, and people should look at the facts before the accuse him. I'm not saying I supported him, but honestly, he's better than Kerry, and he's definitely better than Gore...He'd spend all our money on massive ice cubes to cool the ocean down or something...

Actually, I don't personally view him worse for the Iraq invasion (though I have never agreed with it). My point of contention with the man is the PATRIOT Act and the way he ran his campaigns as nothing short of a mud-fest.

The Patriot Act did not take away the right's of the people as much as people make it out to be. If you were a suspected terrorist, they could tap your phone, etc. Otherwise, it had no effect on you and no one who is innocent needs to worry about it. I'm all for the right to privacy and everything, but when it comes to saving thousands of lives from another 9/11, or suspending a suspects rights, I'd go with the latter. And, in case you hadn't noticed, there is no such thing as a clean campaign anymore, and his wasn't particularly worse than anyone other politician for the last 50 years.

 

[Glerken]

His initial response to 9/11 was good.

His initial response was to sit there for, what was it, seven minutes? Reading a book after he was told our nation was under attack.
Not to sure that's a good initial response.


On the plus side, he gave a lot of material for comedians and inspired plenty of musicians.

 

[DarkDoor11]

Did bush really do anything wrong?

Sure, plenty of people are against him on policy, but I can't think of that many things he objectivly did wrong.

And it isn't like this is a monarchy, the president has way less power than people tend to think.

fucked up on Katrina, invaded Iraq(the country that had nothing to do with 9/11), expanded the power of the executive branch, politicized the judicial branch, allowed his vice president to operate a shadow government, ect.

On the plus side he was the number one president for African aid.

Hmm, really? Do you know anybody who actually watched surveillance video of bush working his ass off as soon as news of Katrina reached him, no I bet you didn't. Oh and Iraq was due for a good ass whoopin', a dictator who wants death to America is not someone we should allow to live, plue we provided freedom for the people and despite what you may think they are actually very greatful. Oh and if he expanded the power of the executive branch, then why the hell did he not have any power? Have you ever noticed that Bush's proposals kept getting shotdown by congress? No you didn't, you're quick to criticize, but when someone with an IQ above 70 takes a look at we can understand. Do I love Bush? No, but alot of what you've heard that's bad about him was first spoken by DEMOCRATS who hate him more than they hate terrorists. He is a placeholder really, there were no good options in the election, except for Ralph Nader, but nobody really looks at third partys eh?

 

[TheFacelessOne]

TO THE FLAME VAULTS!

I don't think he did anything right...I dunno...

 

[ButtonedDownParadox]

Removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan

Perhaps we shouldn't go this route...

 

[Internet Kraken]

You know this was a thread about what he did right. However everyone only seems to be talking about what he did wrong.

So, start listing things he did right.

I can't, because I do not think Bush had ANY policies I agree with.
He _did_ fail at privatizing the Social Security system, that was probably a win for old folks nationwide, but it hardly counts as a "success" for him.

Well if you can't think of anything he did right that doesn't mean you have to list everything he did wrong. The thread isn't about that.

 

[demotivational fail]

Gave people like Jon Stewart material to write with.

This /thread
But for real I disagree with a lot of his policies, he hated gays... a lot. Well the most important thing for me was how bad he made our country look. We need isolationism, he was the oppisite.