OK, what did George W. Bush do right?

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George W. Bush's presidency is marked by a mix of controversial decisions and notable actions. Key achievements include increased support for African programs, funding for alternative energy research, and military actions in Afghanistan post-9/11. Critics argue that his foreign policy led to significant long-term consequences, including the destabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite these criticisms, some acknowledge his later decisions to shift military strategy and listen to more experienced advisors as positive steps.

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  • #31
Ivan Seeking said:
I think Bush did a few things right near the end of his term.

1). Quit listening to Cheney et. al. and instead listened to his dad's old buddies.

2). Dumped Rummy and brought in Bob Gates as Sec of Defense

3). Changed the war plan as per 1) and 2).

Yes, YES!, yes.

Ivan Seeking said:
4). Signed the bailout plan

I'm not really sure that was a good thing. Of course it wasn't quite in its hideous current form then, but having the plan "I'll come up with a plan later" still doesn't qualify.

russ_watters said:
And the number of dictatorial regimes by two.

He prevented multiple terrorist attacks on the US via his actions following 9/11.

Yes and perhaps. It's very hard to tell what otherwise might have been. It seems likely to me that he did reduce the number of terrorist actions that would otherwise have happened in the country, but only at a high cost to civil liberties. This was in some ways a sensible response to Sept. 11 (though I didn't favor it), but I think the PATRIOT Act should have been allowed to expire. Also, it seems likely to me that although some terrorist actions were thwarted the major effect was shifting multinational terrorism to Europe -- anyone want to comment on that supposition?I'm surprised to see no mention of the tax cuts or his support of Clinton's NAFTA. Did no one support those?
 
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  • #32
Let's not forget the government handouts for BIG SUVS!

That was a real winner idea.
 
  • #33
Hey! Another Bush-bashing thread! Surprise, surprise!

Is Iraq better off now than before? If not, then we shouldn't have gone in. If so, it ended up a good thing. Even if the premise was bogus.
 
  • #34
drankin said:
Is Iraq better off now than before? If not, then we shouldn't have gone in. If so, it ended up a good thing. Even if the premise was bogus.

Which side are you taking? Are you going to represent that flushing a trillion dollars and 5,000 American lives, and abandoning Constitutional principles is worth what? A country invaded without cause, on trumped up evidence and now 6 years later still in chaos and the US saddled with a stumbling economy?

As you look at increased gas prices, and withered prospects for employment, and mounting debt, diminished housing values, I trust you will keep telling yourself what a great thing it was that Bush and Cheney wasted our resources on, dissipated the flower of our military on.
 
  • #36
George W not signing the Kyoto protocol was a good move, with the UN estimating the outcome as a 0.1 degree decrease in global mean tempeature by 2050 at a total cost of $1Trillion to the global economy. That is just not a reasonable bang for the buck by any measure, no matter how you feel about anthropic climate change.
 
  • #37
Civilized said:
George W not signing the Kyoto protocol was a good move, with the UN estimating the outcome as a 0.1 degree decrease in global mean tempeature by 2050 at a total cost of $1Trillion to the global economy. That is just not a reasonable bang for the buck by any measure, no matter how you feel about anthropic climate change.

How many degrees change would be worth it in your opinion? (Just curious)
 
  • #38
How many degrees change would be worth it in your opinion? (Just curious)

I think that we should be able to solve the whole thing for much less than a trillion dollars! I think the plan of reducing emissions is too costly to be practical in general, and offsetting carbon emissions and researching new ways to do so would be a more sensible solution.
 
  • #39
Civilized said:
I think that we should be able to solve the whole thing for much less than a trillion dollars! I think the plan of reducing emissions is too costly to be practical in general, and offsetting carbon emissions and researching new ways to do so would be a more sensible solution.

A trillion dollars for us, or the entire world? Again, you didn't answer my question about how much.
 
  • #41
Civilized said:
George W not signing the Kyoto protocol was a good move, with the UN estimating the outcome as a 0.1 degree decrease in global mean tempeature by 2050 at a total cost of $1Trillion to the global economy. That is just not a reasonable bang for the buck by any measure, no matter how you feel about anthropic climate change.

I'm not sure how that's measured. That's a yearly cost of about $200 billion per degree. For comparison, the current world GDP is around $70 billion. For each 1% of GDP, this would represent about 0.0035 degrees.

Do you have a source for that number, by the way? Does anyone else? Also, for those more knowledgeable than I: to what extent does this represent a reduction in nonrenewable resource use vs. cleaner ways to use them? I see the economic hit of running low on nonrenewables as inevitable, so in a sense I don't want to double-count.
 
  • #42
I don't think Bush managed a scandle a week as Clinton and Shrew were scoring in their last year of office, reminding us of the fundamental nature of the Democrat party. I guess that's something.
 
  • #43
Phrak said:
I don't think Bush managed a scandle a week as Clinton and Shrew were scoring in their last year of office, reminding us of the fundamental nature of the Democrat party. I guess that's something.

Looks like things have flip-flopped then. The Democrats have a wholesome American family in the White House and ...
Ensign resigns from GOP leadership after affair
By David Espo

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former campaign aide to Sen. John Ensign confirmed her involvement Wednesday in an extramarital affair with the conservative Republican, lamented his decision to "air this very personal matter" and said she eventually would tell her side of the story.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gAKHK5xBT5NdBleTXH5_-Htc2p4QD98SS6JG0

And here Ensign was part of the morally outraged mob going after Clinton. How the worm turns.
 
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  • #44
turbo-1 said:
Control a city or two (in which US surrogates are still not truly safe) and cede control of the rest of the country to local warlords, Taliban, and other groups that support opium production, oppress women, burn schools dedicated to the education of girls, and generally enforce their own religious dictates? (The recent attack on musicians playing at a wedding, shaving and humiliating the musicians, etc, shows how open-minded these despotic groups are.) Does that equate to military/administrative "control" of a country in anybody's world (outside of la-la land)? Neighboring Pakistan cannot adequately exert control over areas of their country just 10s of miles from the country's capitol. How was the war in Afghanistan any more successful?

Actually, if the US stuck to the policy you outlined, I would consider the Afghanistan operation a nearly complete success (it did disrupt al-Qaeda, but it didn't cause total collapse).

However bad the Taliban might be, their main crime was standing between us and al-Qaeda. The alternative to the Taliban is some other group headed by local warloads that would probably be better than the Taliban, but would probably still be considered pretty bad by international standards.

Who runs Afghanistan and their living conditions shouldn't be a big enough concern to justify US involvement. Our main concern in both Afghanistan and Pakistan should be to cause the collapse of al-Qaeda (although Pakistan having nuclear weapons make us more concerned about their stability than Afghanistan's stability).


russ_watters said:
And the number of dictatorial regimes by two.

He prevented multiple terrorist attacks on the US via his actions following 9/11.

Eliminating Hussein should be put into perspective. How long would he have lasted and what were the chances he'd pass rule on to his sons? How long will war in Iraq last?

Chances are, war in Iraq will last a lot longer than Hussein's rule would have lasted. On the other hand, war in Iraq would probably have broken out a few years after Hussein's death. The long term affect on Iraq of the US invading Iraq is pretty small.

The net affect on the US is hard to judge. The way things played out have definitely been bad for the US. The way things could have played out for the US sometime in some future where the crisis was pushed off to Hussein's death is unknown.
 
  • #45
Health Savings Accounts! Roughly 5-6 million people have them now, but I suspect they're impact on restraining health costs extends much further, restraining health costs that otherwise might have been much greater. They were first instituted as http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/public-affairs/hsa/pdf/all-about-HSAs_072208.pdf" Bush pushed them as part of large health care policy and addressed them in his state of the union; the 2006 Heath Care Act extended them further.
 
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  • #46
CRGreathouse said:
Do you have a source for that number, by the way? Does anyone else?

It comes from http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=85, although the site is obviously biased towards the skeptical position on climate science, of course this doesn't mean they are just making things up (notice I also round up there numbers, they also cite studies for which the cooling is as little as 0.01 degrees).
 
  • #47
CRGreathouse said:
For comparison, the current world GDP is around $70 billion.
I really didn't want to post in this thread, but I know of a certain Democratic Party supporter that is personally worth more than $70 billion. Typo?
 
  • #48
Loren Booda said:
OK, what did George W. Bush do right?
I won't get into details, but a clear sign to me that he must have done something right was whenever Democrats screamed bloody murder. And that was a lot, so he must have done a lot right.
 
  • #49
Al68 said:
I won't get into details, but a clear sign to me that he must have done something right was whenever Democrats screamed bloody murder. And that was a lot, so he must have done a lot right.

This then is your defense of the Party of No fundamental operating principles? Just say no to anything that Democrats would be for?

That's a rather pouty way to be isn't it?
 
  • #50
Al68 said:
I really didn't want to post in this thread, but I know of a certain Democratic Party supporter that is personally worth more than $70 billion. Typo?

That's $70 trillion. ~14 trillion for the US alone.
 
  • #51
LowlyPion said:
This then is your defense of the Party of No fundamental operating principles? Just say no to anything that Democrats would be for?

That's a rather pouty way to be isn't it?
Why would I defend Democrats? And is it that big a deal to omit the smiley face?

Seriously, show me someone who will say no to everything that Democrats try to do, and I'll show you someone who represents my interests 90% of the time. 90% is enough to get my vote.

Dems scream bloody murder every time any politician even remotely tries to represent my interests (economic/classical liberal). Can you say that isn't true? When has any National politician ever suggested any substantial libertarian changes in economic policy without Dems screaming bloody murder? Can you give a single example?
 
  • #52
Al68 said:
Seriously, show me someone who will say no to everything that Democrats try to do, and I'll show you someone who represents my interests 90% of the time. 90% is enough to get my vote.

You just had 8 years of George Bush looking out for your interests 90% of the time.

Instead of Government surplus, we have deficit as far as the eye can see. We find the country mired in foreign adventure.

The question at this point is can the country recover from looking after your interests 90% of the time.
 
  • #53
LowlyPion said:
You just had 8 years of George Bush looking out for your interests 90% of the time.

Instead of Government surplus, we have deficit as far as the eye can see. We find the country mired in foreign adventure.

The question at this point is can the country recover from looking after your interests 90% of the time.
I wasn't debating what my interests should be. That's pointless on this board with faulty logic taking the place of sound logic.

Government as a whole certainly did not operate in my interest 90% of the time in the last 8 yrs, obviously. If they had, Fannie and Freddie would never have been demanding bad mortgages from banks, banks would not have been stuck with them when Fannie and Freddie went under, government spending would have been a fraction of what it was, GDP would have been much higher due to lower taxes and regulatory burdens, etc. This mess was caused by government doing the very things I don't want government to have anything to do with at all.

There is no evidence that any of this mess was caused by me getting my way, quite the contrary. And if you don't know by now, the idea that I knew Bush was doing something right because Dems were screaming bloody murder was a joke! On the contrary, I think Bush failed miserably on keeping Dems from getting their way.
 
  • #54
Fannie and Freddie are not what took down the system. It was primarily the credit default swaps and other derivatives, due to a lack of regulation. The Republicans pushed through deregulation of the derivatives markets in 2000.
 
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  • #55
It was also due to insane lending practices that had nothing to do with Fannie or Freddie.

...PAUL SOLMAN: Andrews applied for, and got, a no-ratio loan, in which his $2,500 monthly payments would consume nearly all his take-home pay.

No-ratio?

EDMUND ANDREWS: A no-ratio mortgage in which literally I left the income space blank.

PAUL SOLMAN: Therefore, there would be no ratio.

EDMUND ANDREWS: Correct, yes, because there was an issue of my debt-to-income ratio. But if you don't have any income that you're declaring, you have no debt-to-income ratio. Problem solved. Even at the time, I'm going, "I can't believe this. Is this a great country or what?"...
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june09/andrews_05-21.html

The ability to bundle loans removed any and all incentives to adhere to responsible lending practices.
 
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  • #56
LowlyPion said:
You just had 8 years of George Bush looking out for your interests 90% of the time.

Instead of Government surplus, we have deficit as far as the eye can see. We find the country mired in foreign adventure.

The question at this point is can the country recover from looking after your interests 90% of the time.
Assigning all that to President Bush is misleading nonsense LP. We have a deficit as far as the eye can see per the CBO based yes on economic decline, but also on the recent $trillion stimulus, and the large increases in spending in the current President's budget. Obama and the Pelosi/Reid Congress did that budget, not Bush. The deficit for 2009 will be $1.6 trillion and has already exceeded anything under Bush (.5 trillion) and is projected to continue in deficit by CBO projections for a decade. That's given a recovered economy in CBO's estimate, so the reason is the budgeted spending. Also, If one want's to assign the economic downturn to Bush's watch, then the 2000/2001 dot com collapse and its resulting deficit goes under Clinton's watch. The '99 surplus evaporated under Clinton's last budget.
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/03/budget-deficit-as-percent-of-gdp.html

The US is involved in regular combat operations only in Afghanistan. The current President endorsed the initial 2001 action there, and since gaining office has redoubled US efforts there as you must know.
 
  • #57
mheslep said:
Obama and the Pelosi/Reid Congress did that budget, not Bush. The deficit for 2009 will be $1.6 trillion and has already exceeded anything under Bush (.5 trillion) and is projected to continue in deficit by CBO projections for a decade.

... Also, If one want's to assign the economic downturn to Bush's watch, then the 2000/2001 dot com collapse and its resulting deficit goes under Clinton's watch. The '99 surplus evaporated under Clinton's last budget.

You can't have it both ways. The 2009 budget deficit is left over from Bush, just as much as you would want Bush to be able to say his first year was Clinton.

The Obama budget, no longer hides the cost of the Iraq war the way Bush was, so it's not clear what can actually be compared between Bush and Obama.

Meanwhile the economy is in the toilet, and there's a stimulus to be thrown into the breach. Saying that the breach is not of Bush's making is simply dissembling as far as I am concerned. Who else was it? It sure wasn't the Democrats running the Executive Branch.
 
  • #58
Ivan Seeking said:
Fannie and Freddie are not what took down the system. It was primarily the credit default swaps and other derivatives, due to a lack of regulation.
This is total nonsense. Any evidence?

It was also due to insane lending practices that had nothing to do with Fannie or Freddie.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/busin...ews_05-21.html

The ability to bundle loans removed any and all incentives to adhere to responsible lending practices.
You offer an example that had everything to do with Fannie/Freddie. Fannie and Freddie originated the idea to forego debt to income ratio requirements, and demanded that a portion of the mortgages sold to them would have insanely lenient requirements. Their stated goal was to make it easier to get a mortgage by creating demand for the kinds of notes ("bad") that had no private demand. And they were the ones demanding that bad mortgages be bundled with the good ones they bought. Bundling was their idea to compensate for the money they knew they would lose on the bad ones.

You're right about the practices being insane, but I'll bet you can't give a single example of a bank bundling or issuing bad mortgages, or issuing mortgages with the other insanely relaxed requirements that were not for Fannie/Freddie. Fannie/Freddie was the sole source of demand for them. Why would a bank purposely try to lose money? Their only reason for making the loans was to sell the notes to Fannie/Freddie. There was never any private demand for these bad mortgages. This lack of private demand was the reason Fannie/Freddie were created. And since I can't prove a negative, I'll challenge anyone to show an example of any private demand for such mortgage notes.

Challenge: an example of a bank practicing these insane lending practices without the reason being to sell to Fannie/Freddie. A single example of a bank with the practice of lending 125% home value, nothing down, poor credit, high debt to income ratio, etc., to keep the note in house, or to sell to another finance company to keep in house.
 
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  • #59
Opening diplomatic relations with Muammar al-Gaddafi.
 
  • #60
Ivan Seeking said:
It was also due to insane lending practices that had nothing to do with Fannie or Freddie.


http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june09/andrews_05-21.html

The ability to bundle loans removed any and all incentives to adhere to responsible lending practices.
The GSEs mostly invented mortgage bundling themselves.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2129788&postcount=467
 
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