I believe we had incompetence worse than Obama when we had Bush Jr.
There might have been dumber people as president than Bush Jr. but not since Harding.
Bush Jr. took a surplus and turned it into a 100% increase in the national debt. After that he left the country in an economic DITCH.
I understand you feel that way but you're wrong. Bush was a far better president than Obama and would never have bungled things the way Obama has. It is clear that Obama is the worst president in the nation's history, which is a pretty low hurdle.
Bush is also a smarter individual. While he obviously wasn't a great public speaker, as it has turned out, neither is Obama when he doesn't have a script written by a 20-something year old kid who has the idealism of a 20-something year old kid.
There are essentially about four items most people attribute to Bush's failure --
9/11
The ensuing wars
Katrina
2008 Economic collapse
This is probably the worst hand to be dealt to a president, certainly since WWII. But it is not reasonable to dump it all on him as president. 9/11 was inherited. The resultant wars were necessary, although some would argue that Iraq wasn't, and others would argue Afg. was not handled well. But he recognized the threat at the earliest time ANY president would have (i.e., after 9/11) and his approach to dealing with it was reasonable in the circumstances.
Katrina was largely a state/local government problem. The Federal government did an excellent job of dealing with the biggest catastrophe of modern times in an American city. IF you do your homework on Katrina, and I have, it is pretty clear the source of the problem was the Blanco/Nagin combination, both who were utterly incompetent. The Federal government saved thousands of lives during Katrina. You can't say that about Blanco or Nagin.
The economic collapse was largely a result of idiotic policy, predominantly that created by Democrats, that had been in place for years. There is little doubt had Bush been president during the last five years we would be in far better shape today than we are in. You could argue he should have seen the danger, and I'm sure he would take a degree of responsibility for it. OTOH, he saved the economy with TARP. Had it not been for that swift action Obama would have inherited a truly bad economy rather than one that was staged for a quick recovery. The recovery has not happened because of incompetent economic policy of the Obama administration. |
