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Politics : View from the Center and Left

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To: Lane3 who wrote (12306)2/16/2006 4:13:42 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) of 541937
 
Maybe he'll engage.

OK

Positive
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Tax cuts. Strong leadership in response to 9/11. Judicial appointments

Possibly or partially positive
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Reduction in the speed of regulatory growth. (I would put this as a straight positive except 1 - I'm not sure how much the growth really has slowed much, and 2 - Some of the particular changes may not have been positive.)

Neutral, uncertain and/or not yet determined
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Iraq.

Entitlement reform - No real accomplishment but at least he did push the idea. Other presidents would be unlikely to have achieve much either.

Questionable
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Expansive view of presidential powers

Overly secretive nature of this administration.

Mixed record at best on trade.

Negative but probably not as negative as many would maintain.
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Weak response to Katrina. I don't put this purely in the negative because because I think that people over estimate how much things would have been different had Bush acted differently or had someone else been president. Bush did appoint Brown who apparently didn't do a good job so he has to get some blame.

Abuse of prisoners - I put that in this area because I don't think that Bush is responsible for a lot of the abuse that happened (except in the sense that some of these people wouldn't be prisoners without Bush's actions and decisions.)

Clearly Negative
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Spending increases.

Note: Once you pass "Neutral, uncertain and/or not yet determined" you get more certainly negative as you move down the list but not necessarily more negative. For example if it turns out that Iraq gets worse and worse from here than the invasion of Iraq will be a bigger negative than the spending increases, but IMO that probably isn't going to happen while the overall spending increase is IMO clearly negative.
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