The Obama and Clinton presidential campaigns didn’t get the memo that the war is not the issue that will elevate them to the highest office in the land.
The guy looked at me mystified after I said George W. Bush will be judged one of the best presidents in US history. After all, his opinions are arranged by the mass media, particularly tilted during this national election year as they push with all their hearts for Obama’s ascension to the White House – a task that requires battering poor Bush and every move he makes. Hillary is out, the pundits say (which I doubt), but either way, the thinking goes McCain can’t win if the current regime is discredited.
But consider the facts of the matter. The War in Iraq is not at the top of the problems Americans are worried about. Despite a dozen or more efforts by Harry Reid in the US Senate and Nancy Pelosi in the House – including pulling an all-nighter – the country’s elected national officials cannot pull the plug on the Bush war policy. The hapless anti-war coalition just can’t coalesce – mainly because the people deep down understand we have to do something to answer the challenges of the Islamic terrorists. Iraq is as good a place as any to draw a line in the sand, figuratively and literally.
The Obama and Clinton presidential campaigns didn’t get the memo that the war is not the issue that will elevate them to the highest office in the land. They also blather on about the poor economy and the recession that just won’t arrive, forgetting the valiant success Bush achieved to lead us out of the mortgage-backed securities scandal that rocked Wall Street and Main Street only a few weeks ago. Going to war once again, the Bush White House and the Federal Reserve saved the economy – and for most people their IRAs – by acting immediately and decisively.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Bush team first pumped $30 billion into the credit markets to maintain liquidity as the crisis unfolded. Simultaneously, interest rates were knocked down, the first of three reductions in less than a month. It paid off handsomely that under previous Fed chairman Allan Greenspan – and continuing under his replacement Bernanke and the Bush White House – low interest rates helped keep the equity markets somewhat stable by preventing a rush to cash when stocks declined during the crisis.
But as Bush and Bernanke lifted their field glasses there was smoke still billowing over the markets, so another $200 billion was airlifted into the heat of the battle to keep confidence in the markets – and to keep up morale among the less than courageous soldiers who man our frontline economic weapons. Actually, coward is a more accurate term, the sort that will only stick it out if they think they can save their own portfolios.
The coup d’guerre was the operation to save the investment bank Bear Stearns, the one firm that wasn’t going to make it as their previous bad decisions overwhelmed their resources. The Bush/Bernanke team locked their officers up in a room over a weekend with the JP Morgan boys and told them no one was leaving until Morgan agreed to buy Bear – albeit with financing from the Federal Reserve. The trading floors would open Monday morning with this deal done, thus averting another excuse for traders to run down the market.
In the aftermath, unappreciated by the mass media, new plans were announced to engage the securities and credit regulatory entities into a unified body that will act this fast from now on, perhaps avoiding the cyclical financial collapses caused by greedy Wall Street hoods every ten years or so.
Bush has been blamed for just about anything bad that has happened in the world since he took office: 9-11; Hurricane Katrina; a shortage of flu vaccine; spending too much and not spending enough, problems at Veteran’s hospitals etc. ad nasuem and he has responded stoically and rationally each time. Under the microscope of history, cleansed of the smokescreen of media bias, the facts will be clear. He was one great president.
No Chasm. I’ve actually participated in polling activities with Jody Powell and Bob Beckel, as I described earlier. And at the University of Chicago I studied under Norman Nie, who founded NORC. I actually know something about the subject (how polls are constructed, how they are skewed depending upon the objective of the poll, etc.)
I base my observations on reality. You posit a bunch of hypotheticals about making national policy (another thing I happen to have some first hand experience in, in addition to my educational background), and ignore the deficiencies I point out about polls.
There’s nothing vague or hypothetical about my objections. And there’s nothing humorous about persistent ignorance.
Sure, polling data CAN be skewed, perverted and used to support any idea we want to support… but then we’re left with nothing but personal observations and faith… leaving us with no way to bridge gaps in perceived reality. I didn’t pose any hypotheticals, I said the election of right-leaning governments by our allies was not a good indication of whether Bush would be judged by history to be “Great.” You, in the highlighted paragraph, said essentially the same thing – that Bush will be judged by whether his policies help or hurt the United States in the long term, not on his world-wide polling numbers.
Perhaps my very first comment about fascists was unnecessarily inflammatory and wholly irrelevant (and I’ve admitted as much), but my in my very next comment (#34) I said, “I hardly think that the citizens of Italy show either their support or rejection of Bush policies by whom they votes PM or mayor of Rome” – how is that substantially different than, “Whether Bush is universally hated, or loved, is irrelevant to any evaluation of whether the policy choices he has made are the correct ones or not, and therefore whether his policies have been good or bad for the nation?”
I think we both agree that the success or failure of Bush will be determined by the American people, not Italy, not France, not Germany, not China. Again, what issue do you have with me personally that you can’t even agree that we agree?
CORRECTION: your an my statements ARE substantially different, in that I’m arguing the POV of the Italian electorate and you’re arguing from the US perspective, but the statements AREN’T contradictory, and do, in fact, form the same conclusion.
Repeating Comment 37
The proposition that we’ve all been commenting on is that the “world” hates Bush because of his foreign policy. [“The president leaves a terrible foreign policy legacy …” Comments 9 and 13]. I’ve shown you that this is patently not the case. The reasons for French and German opposition to the Iraq war (not to mention Russia and China) had to do with venal self-interest, not political philosophy.
Your tentativeness today about the relationship of Berlusconi’s defeat in 2006 to the claim that this shows that Italy rejected Bush’s war in Iraq is revisionist history. That WAS the reason for his defeat, as reported by the Western press. Now that he’s won office again, Berlusconi’s return says nothing (even anecdotally) about Bush’s foreign policy. If we are supposed to accept the dubious cause-effect relationship in 2006, then we must apply the same logic to 2008. Otherwise, it’s propaganda, not analysis.
I happen to agree that Berlusconi’s defeat in 2006 was not a referendum on Iraq, but rather a response to domestic Italian politics, which tends to change governments about every 25 days (I think they’ve had about 1000 governments since WWII). Unfortunately, the Left has stated its premise that the world hates us because of Bush’s foreign policy, and has used France, Germany, Italy etc. to “prove” its point. So, I’ll “prove” you guys wrong by pointing to pro-American governments being elected in France, Germany and Italy to replace the anti-American ones.
It’s a phony way to argue a point, but it goes to the crux of this debate. The Left is only willing to accept “other influences” in 2008 to explain Berlusconi’s defeat in 2006. In 2006 the issue was a clear-cut repudiation of Bush. But that line of argument is no longer convenient, since the 2008 election reverses the 2006 election. So now 2006 is no longer clear-cut. The Left chose the analysis in 2006 for Italy (and in 2003 for France and Germany). And this is the one we’re now going to argue, applying the standards they used then to the situation as it is today. Anti-American governments mean the world hates Bush. Pro-American governments mean the world loves Bush.
Again, it’s a stupid way to analyze a complex issue, but it serves its purpose. It illustrates the utter vacuity of the Left’s charge that “The president leaves a terrible foreign policy legacy …”.
Bush is the Greatest… let us count the ways:
After going through every comment by every person on this page, here is every positive reason given for Bush’s Greatness:
1) The War in Iraq is not at the top of the problems Americans are worried about (Reeves)
2) The country’s elected national officials cannot pull the plug on the Bush war policy (Reeves)
3) People deep down understand we have to do something to answer the challenges of the Islamic terrorists. Iraq is as good a place as any to draw a line in the sand. (Reeves)
4) by acting immediately and decisively, Bush lead us out of the mortgage-backed securities scandal that rocked Wall Street and Main Street only a few weeks ago. The Bush White House and the Federal Reserve saved the economy. (Reeves)
5) Another $200 billion was airlifted into the heat of the battle to keep confidence in the markets (Reeves)
6) The operation to save the investment bank Bear Stearns (Reeves)
7) He has better approval ratings than Truman! (23% to 29%) (PEJ)
8) France has elected a pro-US president. Germany has elected a pro-US president. (PEJ) and Italy! (MM)
9) There hasn’t been another attack on the US mainland since 2001 (PEJ)
10) Al Queda in Iraq is collapsing thanks to our “foreign policy”. (PEJ)
11) Enlightened effort against Malaria and HIV in Africa (yonkel)
12) A good man (Stapler)
13) His gutsy response to 9/11 made his legacy (Stapler)
14) His response to Katrina was just as bad as some of the other presidents responses to disaster (TMI is the only one cited) (Stapler)
15) Libya voluntarily surrendered their WMD following the invasion of Iraq.
16) He’s not going to let the bad guys do to us what they repeatedly did during Clinton’s 8 years, and which culminated in the 9/11 attack on the US
Now, #1 may be true (it’s the #2 problem, according to polls Phillip distrusts), but it’s not a statistic that’s going in the history books, unless the book reads something like, “Although hated by the electorate, the war in Iraq was not not as much on the minds of voters in the 2008 election as the collapsing economy and recession.”
#2 says more about Dems ability to get something going in congress, more than Bush’s ability to lead.
The first part of #3 may be true, but it doesn’t say anything about Bush. The second part claims too, but is refuted by the 83% of Americans who believe the war was a mistake. Bzzzt.
It’s way too early to determine whether Bush’s actions have “saved the economy,” so we’ll have to put that in the ‘undetermined’ column.
Number’s 5 & 6, again may be true depending on how things work out, but it is a little wierd that right-wing free marketeers get such hard-ons when the Fed’s bail out failing markets. We’ll give you those, just in case history books are written by former Bear Stearns analysts.
#7 shows no casual relationship between final poll numbers and inverse historical rehabilitation. It’s a good thought to hold in hope in your hearts, but no go.
The logical inconsistencies of #8 have been thoroughly hashed out – suffice to say – the election of Merkel, Sarkozy and Berlusconi will not be mentioned in our grandchildren’s history books as evidence of Bush’s wonderfulness.
#9 is true.
#10 ignores that AQI didn’t exist before our ‘foreign policy.’
#11 is, happily, also true.
#12 is an opinion, and #13, while true, doesn’t really explain how that ‘legacy’ will be of service to his reputation.
#14, again, is nothing to brag about. #15 is sort-of true, although Clinton is the President that got Kadaffi to the table in the first place.
#16 is made relevant merely by the inclusion of the word, “repeatedly,” as if ignoring warnings about AQ and plans to hit us hard weren’t enough.
So, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, after days of debate from the leading Intellectual Conservatives, we have THE GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE GREAT PRESIDENT BUSH:
He lead a taxpayer bailout of some of his Wall St buddies, he lead a high profile campaign against AIDS and malaria, and he didn’t let anyone attack us after that first attack!
Those are some true achievements, which someday, will fill all of one paragraph in the history that is the Bush Legacy! Hail Bush!
In closing, I’d just like to point out that Felix, in the very first comment, said exactly the same thing (except the AIDS).
Hopeless