George W. Bush

"Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again."^[1]

God, guns, and freedom U.S. Politics

Starting arguments over Thanksgiving dinner

Blue Dog Democrats Rick Perry NDAA Joni Ernst Goldman Sachs John Poindexter Mexican-American War

Persons of interest

Greg Abbott Liz Cheney Barney Frank Ulysses S. Grant Robert F. Kennedy Marco Rubio v - t - e

George Walker Bush (a.k.a. Bush 43, "Dubya", "Bush II", or "Junior" to distinguish from his father) (1946–) is a war criminal^[4][5][6] who held the office of the President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 despite being completely unworthy of it. Basing his agenda on the oxymoronic concept of "compassionate conservatism",^[7] Bush presided over eight years of failed policies such as No Child Left Behind (an underfunded initiative meant to improve schools by sanctioning them for failures),^[8][9] a disastrous series of tax cuts for the wealthy that added trillions to the national debt and worsened income inequality,^[10] and an accelerated program of deregulation that allowed banks to sell millions of subprime mortgages and place bets on people going bankrupt.^[11] Bush ignored warnings from economists that his policies would cause a subprime mortgage crisis and instigate the Great Recession, instead maintaining that small government was worth it all and the free market would find a way.^[12] Bush also botched the federal response to Hurricane Katrina,^[13] launched a failed attempt to undermine Social Security through privatization,^[14] and divisively campaigned for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage while refusing to support international efforts against violent homophobia.^[15]

All the while, Bush tried to maintain the image that he cared, while his only goal was to enable his wealthy supporters in leeching as much as they could from the United States as it shambled its way into a slow collapse. In 2005, he said to a divorced mother of three, "You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it?" while taking a record-breaking number of vacations.^[16][17]

His presidency was only saved from miserable obscurity by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which gave him and his neoconservative toadies an excuse to plunge the United States into the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War on the pretense that this was all somehow part of a unified War on Terror. Instead, the invasion of Iraq had been justified entirely on lies,^[18] and the Afghanistan effort devolved into an aimless attempt at "nation building".^[19] Bush then signed off on various bills establishing a mass unwarranted surveillance apparatus^[20] and established the TSA as a pointless waste of time and money.^[21] By the time Bush left office, the United States was a demoralized nation trapped in multiple endless wars and mired in one of the worst financial meltdowns in modern history.

A candidate of the party which detests growing the government or the national debt, Bush did better than any US president in history to do both. "It's funny," wrote Al Franken back when he was a comedian, "During the 2000 campaign, when Bush said he was against nation building, I didn't realize he meant only this nation."^[22]:381 His father, George H. W. Bush did far more for his country despite serving half the time. What a failure. What a disappointment.

On the other hand, Bush was the first President to win the endorsement of God,^[23] and the first to be depicted in cinema wiping his ass.^[24] Bush is also famous for having the largest number of people worldwide ever in history to protest against him (~10–15 million);^[25] (not even Trump beat that; he only got 4.2 million).^[26] Bush's miserable failure of a presidency left the Republican Party a hollow, purposeless shadow of itself, and the incompetent joke known as Donald Trump was able to assume control of with ease. A surge of Libertarianism occurred at around the same time.^[27]

The Boy King[edit]

Bush Sr. introduces his son to former president Gerald Ford, 1984.

Bush's lackluster resume speaks not just to ineptitude, but also hubris. He knew his resume, and yet he still thought himself capable of running the world's most powerful nation. An honest evaluation of his life leading up to the presidency is remarkably devoid of accomplishments for a future president.^[29][30] There is a very consistent narrative of someone who was just given one free pass after another for far too long based on the strength of his daddy's name.^{[31][32][33][34][35]}

Junior's early life pales in comparison to that of his father's. Bush Senior was one of America's youngest naval aviators during World War II, and he flew 58 sorties from the USS San Jacinto, a light aircraft carrier.^[36] Senior almost died after being shot down by Japan, luckily being saved by a US submarine before Japanese patrols found him in the ocean.^[37] Junior, on the other hand, used his name to escape service in the Vietnam War by having himself placed in the National Guard instead (he then spent much of that posting AWOL).^[38] Senior then rode his GI Bill into the prestigious Yale University, earning good grades and captaining its baseball team.^[39] Junior was admitted to Yale as a legacy student (again coasting on his daddy's name)^[40] and only received mediocre grades.^[41] During his time on the board of Harken Energy, a Texas oil company, Junior sold his shares of the company's stock right before it crashed, an illegal act of insider trading.^[42] Bush only avoided prison because the Securities and Exchange Commission couldn't find enough evidence to nail him in court, and they needed an ironclad case since Senior was the president at the time.^[43] Once again, Junior had benefited from the name of his father.

Early political aspirations[edit]

Bush's 1994 election victory: 53.5% to 45.9%.

Having rarely had to work for anything based on his own merit, Bush was unsurprisingly out of his depth in the political world. Bush tried to run for a seat in the House of Representatives in 1978, but he lost after his opponent (truthfully) presented him as an elitist who was out of touch with the needs of rural Texans.^[44] After this defeat, Bush slunk off to Washington DC to help his father run for president; it was during this time he reinvented himself as a God-fearing politician of the Religious Right.^[45]

He decided to run for the governorship of Texas in 1994, facing the popular incumbent Ann Richards. Bush had absolutely no experience to run on, and the main example of his leadership ability at the time was the time he had rallied a team of investors to help him buy the Texas Rangers.^[46] The gubernatorial debates further exposed him as an airhead who knew nothing about how the state's government worked, and he stated that the most important issue facing the state was "the post–Vietnam War syndrome that blames others for society’s ills".^[46] Bush's only real advantage was the assistance of his daddy's pet political strategist, Karl Rove, who ran Bush's campaign for him.^[47]

During this campaign, Bush vowed that he would veto and subvert any effort to repeal Texas' ban on sodomy (which only applied to same-sex sodomy, not opposite-sex sodomy), calling it, "a symbolic gesture of traditional values."^[48]

Despite his numerous shortcomings, Bush handily won the election due to Texas' growing rightward shift, the hugely Republican-leaning national environment during the 1994 midterm elections,^[49] Rove's control over his campaign strategy, and the fact that his daddy had been the president.

Governor of Texas[edit]

Governor Bush shows his parents around the newly-constructed George Bush Presidential Library, 1997.

In most ways, Bush was an unexceptional governor, as he embarked on few legislative initiatives and mostly let the state run itself.^[46] One major legacy of his is capital punishment: during his 5 years in office, 152 people were executed in Texas — more than 30 per year.^[50] This is the fastest rate of executions of any state in US history. Bush signed off on orders and legislation reducing the amount of time taken for death-row appeals and eliminating procedural safeguards meant to ensure the state didn't execute innocent people.^[51] Bush rarely commuted sentences, and most of those instances were in the early years of his term before his views apparently hardened.^[52]

Texas also suffered from other problem's during Bush's term. It had more children without healthcare (1.4 million) than any state save Arizona, it was the fifth worst state for toxic chemicals released into the environment, and had by far the largest prison population of any state.^[53] With more than 25% of the Texas population uninsured, the state ranked near the top of the nation in terms of AIDS, diabetes, tuberculosis and teenage pregnancy.^[54] A great start for the "compassionate conservatism" guy, eh?

While serious, these problems weren't impressive enough to catch headlines and be labeled "crises", so Bush handily won a landslide reelection in 1998.^[55] In 1999, Bush signed a bill deregulating Texas' power grid, but it contained a provision requiring 2,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2009.^[56] This paved the way for Texas' renewable energy boom, especially in wind power, one of Bush's relatively few major positive legacies as governor. On the other hand, Bush just couldn't help being silly even in his second term. He signed a legal proclamation that 10 June 2000 would be "Jesus Day".^[57]

Election controversy[edit]

Cartoon mocking the partisan outcome of the decision.^[58]:198

Bush was initially elected in 2000, running against then-Vice President Al Gore. Even his primary campaign was filthy, as John McCain can testify.^[62] Bush's victories can be partly attributed to the GOP's willingness to tarnish the service record of veterans. Ironically, he killed McCain's presidential hopes twice. (McCain represented a third term of Bush in 2008, and eight years beforehand he was a moderate choice who was disliked by the religious right Bush would become the spokesman for in the White House.)

The general election vote was very close, with the election hanging on a very few votes in Florida; due to this, the election eventually had to be resolved in the Supreme Court in the debacle known as Bush v. Gore, a decision made purely on ideological lines.^[63]

Even if one accepts the notion that Bush was the legitimate winner, this election was still filled with controversy. Bush was entering office as the first president since Benjamin Harrison to not win the popular vote back in 1888,^[64] and was the third closest election in United States history.^[65] Bush was entering office after barely winning the election in question, with around a fifth of Americans not even viewing him as a legitimate President.^[66] So much for being "a uniter, not a divider."^[67]

Annus horribilis[edit]

US federal deficit and debt from 2001 to 2009.

There was a significant "wait and see" and "the parties are the same" sentiment, combined with a hefty "tax refund checks for everyone!" deal he'd arranged. Certainly, it was peanuts for working-class families. Americans had always sold themselves cheaply when it came to that.^[69] In '04, Bush was re-elected based on some stupid phrase about horses. Hunter S. Thompson checked out after that. His friends low-key believe that this election result is what drove him to suicide.^[70]

The fundamental difference between Bush and just about any Republican president, except perhaps Coolidge, was that Bush liked being President, but he really didn't like doing the job of being president. By that, we mean he wasn't steering the ship.^{[71][72][73][74]} Sure, he went to all the correspondents' dinners and reacted to everyone piling on him with a dopey smile.^[75][76] But if you really look at the conversations reported to have occurred during the financial crisis, he was more or less oblivious to what was happening while Hank Paulson was left in the driver's seat.^[77][78] He actually showed some self-awareness by taking experienced people like Cheney and Rumsfeld and handing them unprecedented power, and yet that turned out to be the biggest mistake of his presidency. Like Rove himself in effect once said, they're doers, not thinkers.^[79]

Signing the Bush tax cuts.

• The economy struggled:^[80] while the Dow Jones Industrial Average recovered the "numbers" lost in the post-dot-com crash, the dollar dropped by a similar amount against the euro — meaning that in euros, the U.S. economy was stagnant for six years.^[81] The U.S. as a whole experienced zero net job creation.^[82]
• He ignored science on every major issue, exerting political pressure to hide facts about climate change(a term his administration coined because the already popular phrase "global warming" was seen as too scary by the administration^[83]),^[84] or pushing abstinence-only sex education.^[85] This even hampered what may objectively be his only positive legacy to the world, a spike in AIDS funding to Africa.^[86]

When Bush got elected, he needed to throw anti-abortion advocates who supported him a bone. He didn't want to start a knockdown drag-out fight with Congress and the courts he couldn't win, so he issued an executive order freezing human embryonic stem cell research with government funds. The pro-choice side wasn't happy with it, but since it didn't stop women from getting abortions, they didn't fight it too hard. Also, the political points he scored off of the ban was worth more to him politically than the benefits of stem cell research.^[87] The ban was lifted once Bush left office, but railing against stem cell research is still a cheap way to curry favor with anti-abortion supporters.

Signing "No Child Left Behind", which left many children behind.

• Two potentially useful contributions, "No Child Left Behind" and immigration reform, failed because of lack of funding and lack of support, respectively.

NCLB required schools to improve all student test scores by 2014. Let's face it, there is no way to accomplish this except by setting incredibly low standards. Even the GAO noted in a 2009 report that multiple-choice tests have limited what goes on in schools.^[88] Under so much pressure to "teach to the test", schools retooled their curriculum to maximize the amount of time spent on testing, which mostly profited the testing companies.^[89] And who does this law blame for any problems? Why, the teachers.^[90]

• The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act. From the Wikipedia page: "It prohibits the federal government from negotiating discounts with drug companies." In countries with universal health care, drug companies are not allowed to make a huge profit margin. This keeps the cost of health care down. However, in the US, we don't restrict how much money companies can make off you, so they fuck you up. This law's lead architect left the government right after this bill passed and took a job with the pharmaceutical lobby for $2m/year.^[91] And which small-government advocate was the champion of this? Dennis Hastert and George W. Bush.^[92]
• At the time, there was a lot of talk of replacing Sandra Day O'Connor with a woman. Harriet Miers was the Bush administration's middle finger to that idea. The most important thing in a SCOTUS nominee is expertise on Constitutional Law; even the Republican Senate members that interviewed her agreed that she lacked this.^[93] There was no shortage of conservative judicial candidates. He could have just nominated Alito or Sutton or Kavanaugh or Pryor or whoever else. He nominated Miers because he thought he could get away with putting his family lawyer on the Supreme Court.

The whole affair stank of Karl Rove's greasy BO.^[94] Also, why isn't she in jail?^[95] The nomination even got opposition from conservative media figures like Ann Coulter^[96][97][98] and Rush Limbaugh^[99] thought it was a horrible choice.

• Bush is also the creator of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, an office of the White House that focuses on tearing down the wall of separation of church and state through the use of so-called faith-based initiatives,^[100] which include teaching school children that prayer will magically solve all of their problems, and spreading blatant propaganda.^[101] In many ways, the New Atheist resurgence in the United States can be seen as a backlash against his rhetoric and focus at the time.
• Both sides banned earmarks towards the end of Bush's/beginning of Obama's term.^[102] Pork-barrel spending was pretty common in Congress since, unfortunately, it's often the only way to get bills to pass.^[103][104] It was really a fart in the wind from a federal budget standpoint. Moreover, states like Mississippi and Rhode Island would have even fewer infrastructure projects than they do. Perhaps most importantly, getting funding for local projects important to the community was a great way for incumbent Congressmen to show their worth.^[105] Now they have no way of doing that except for pushing racism, culture war crap, and mindless warmongering.
• He looked for all the world like an arrogant moron. Oddly enough, that hurts your image on the global stage.^[106][107] So now, instead of Americans being those "interesting but kinda large people who go to all the museums and talk loudly", we're "those obnoxious fuckholes who think they're better than everybody." How the hell did we steal that title from the French? (What’s great about that is that we accepted that role years ago, and really lean into it now.) In the end, the U.S. lost its moral authority to—wait for it—Germany.^[108]
• Also, he made being stupid fashionable. Because hey, learning isn't that important, I mean look at our president, he can't pronounce "nuclear", but he does everything by instinct and faith.^[109] (Quayle was universally ridiculed for such gaffes.) Reagan made being selfish and greedy fashionable so that, a generation later, we had the resurgence of Ayn Rand, the Enron scandal (courtesy of Bush's friend "Kenny Boy"),^[110] the failure of the financial system, and the rise of the Tea Party.

A generation from now, it will be the rise of the Idiocracy. It started with the Bush administration's attack on education: Dumbing-down everything, firing teachers, advocating intelligent design, rewriting textbooks, and the like. Levels of discourse have plummeted everywhere, from Reddit to Congress. Reagan made Bush possible. Bush made Trump inevitable.

• All in all, his end-of-term approval ratings were so low they fell down to numbers reminiscent of Richard Nixon after Watergate.^{[note 1]}

Housing crash[edit]

Subprime mortgage lending increased dramatically between 2003 and the start of the economic crisis.

In fact, almost everything his administration touched turned to dust. The American Dream Downpayment Act 2003 was crafted as a laudable attempt to create 5.5 million new homeowners by 2010. In reality, it encouraged private lenders to reduce their lending standards (like, for instance, not being too fussed about the documentation of income and assets), thus triggering the boom in so-called "subprime" mortgages in the first decade of the 21st century.^[112] The result was tens of millions of dollars of debt for people who couldn't be expected to repay them. "Ownership Society" is a buzzphrase that deserves a place alongside "The Great Moderation" and "Iraqi Freedom" as the pinnacle of Bush-era delusion.^[113]

This debt was taken to rating agencies, slapped "AAA" ratings on them, and sold on to businesses, pensioners and even entire countries, also thanks to financial reforms pushed through by Reagan and Bush I. This worked fine, so long as interest rates stayed low (so their debts didn't increase), everyone kept their jobs, and house prices kept rising. As everyone knows, none of these things happened. It was clear the Bush administration (with some allies in the Fed) were trying to keep the economy propped up until after the election, as though they knew they were going to lose and wanted to be able to pin it on the Democrats. Of course, it all blew up too soon.^[114][115] Not that Obama was able to exploit it to any lasting effect.^[116]

The housing bust in the US (2006) contributed to a global recession (2008), which is an underlying cause of these phenomena: stagnant or declining standards of living, unrest and forced migration on Europe's borders, unease at bailing out Greece and Spain, the economic crisis in Ukraine and Crimea, and economic anxiety in the U.S. giving us President Trump, who is acting belligerent towards Rocket Man. It'll be fine, just lock up all the failing Austrian artists so the plot can't continue.

Disaster response[edit]

Bush with the mayor of New Orleans.

The Bush family's indifference to the plight of Louisiana is a shameful moment in American history.^[117][118] Europeans were appalled at the casualness with which the government went about saving those clinging to life on top of buildings.^[119] It was the same agency that co-ordinated the 9/11 response. They laid the blame on FEMA to make people forget that he chose to go fundraise for other Republicans at private events after Katrina had already begun.^[120]

The "Brownie" debacle was the point at which Bush realized the fence he'd built around himself was made of rotten wood. Michael Brown was a family friend, by all accounts, who had almost zero experience. It also seemed like he got no coaching on how to be in front of cameras or deal with the pressure of a large-scale disaster.^[121] GWB went on national TV to say "heckuva job, Brownie"—before throwing him to the wolves.^[122] A lot of the worst shit FEMA did took months and years to be felt, like massively delaying payments and sticking people who lost their homes in trailers made of carcinogens.^[123] Oh, and that standoff at the bridge into Gretna when all those wet and starving refugees got turned away at gunpoint.^[124]

Brown, who resigned in disgrace over his handling of the cleanup, later admitted that the White House only wanted to federalize Louisiana's response, where the governor was a Democrat, and not in Republican-led Mississippi to embarrass Louisiana officials. Brown added that the White House saw a chance to “rub [Kathleen Blanco’s] nose in it.”^[125] Blanco declined to seek re-election and was replaced with Bobby Singer Jindal, who defeated then-Democrat contender Walter Boasso.^[126][127]

Much like Detroit/Flint and their "emergency management", the clearing of New Orleans and dismantling of its public education system should be understood as experimentation of new policies to deal with the crises of American society and may be applied closer to home in the not-so-far future.^{[128][129][130][131]}

War on Terror[edit]

While misspending his youth, he managed to avoid military service by hiding in the National Guard, which he skipped out on early.^[32]

When Bush became President, he read history books and biographies voraciously. His studies led him to believe that it was important to focus on history's judgment rather than on contemporary criticism.^[135][136] The specific example was how Lincoln took all sorts of extreme measures to safeguard the Homeland (like suspending Habeus Corpus). The problem, of course, with this analogy is that Lincoln was facing the greatest threat America has ever faced to its existence, and Bush was facing Al-Qaeda.

9/11[edit]

His administration disregarded intelligence estimates, and instead manufactured its own intelligence to support political goals.^[137][138] CIA case officer Michael Scheuer, former head of the Bin Laden unit, had warned the Clinton administration about a need to take action. This was in 1999. It was hardly classified intelligence:^[139] GWB received a briefing memo compiled by all the US intelligence agencies, which stated Bin Laden determined to strike in the US.^[140][141] The Bush team began referring to Richard Clarke, the anti-terrorism czar, as "chicken little" because he wouldn't shut up about an impending attack.^[142] They all had a good laugh.

A month before, Bush had been given what has been called he Phoenix Memo, which warned of "the possibility of a coordinated effort by Osama bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation universities and colleges."^[143]

To give everybody an idea of how obvious it was to others that a terrorist attack was going to happen and that Osama was going to be behind it, former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham "identified twelve instances when the 9/11 plot could have been potentially discovered and foiled" in his book Intelligence Matters.^[144]:40

In any event, we were off to war. Bin Laden was reportedly stunned by the initial US incursion into Afghanistan. Before long, the American military had managed to kill or capture some two-thirds of the al-Qaida leadership, and Bin Laden was reportedly seriously wounded. The US could have ended it right then and there, but instead...they stopped. The focus of the military and CIA turned to Iraq, and Afghanistan was quietly forgotten. That gave al-Qaida time to disappear into Pakistan (where they were essentially invulnerable), where they regrouped and spread out like a franchise.^{[145][146][147][148]}

As for us, we're still waiting for the boats, planes, public transportation, taxis, jitneys, mules, goats, and all the other conveyances that the GWB repeatedly warned us that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban would use to reach us if we didn't eradicate them...in Iraq?^[149]

It must be noted that Bush was famously slow to investigate the attack, not signing legislation that created the commission until November 27, 2002^[150] and Bush had only agreed to do such a thing after "intense pressure from families of Sept. 11 victims."^[151] Bush also infamously attempted to make Henry Kissinger the head of said investigation, although he was forced to resign less than a month later.^[152] Bush later chose Philip Zelikow as Executive Director, who some on the commission went so far to call a "mole" due to his close ties with the Bush White House.^[153] Both of the co-chairs later said it felt like they were "set up to fail" by the administration.^[154] It was also found that the White House had classified twenty-eight pages of the 9/11 Commission's Report, specifically relating to the ties with Saudi Arabi those behind 9/11 had.^[155]

Iraq[edit]

US military patrol in Baghdad, 2003.

Bush's first Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, admitted that 10 days after taking office, Bush was looking for ways to topple Saddam.^[158] A family friend, Mickey Herskowitz, told Russ Baker that they were planning on invading as far back in 1999, before he was even elected.^[159] There was the Manning Memo,^{[note 2]} which showed that Bush planned to invade Iraq in March 2003, overriding the U.N. inspectors, and more shockingly, that he proposed sending a U-2 over Iraq to get shot down and provoke a war.^[160]

John Bolton set up a rogue operation within the State Department when he was undersecretary.^[161] The planners were feeding manipulated intel to the press,^[162] citing that press in interviews/press conferences and trying to sneak in as much cherry-picked raw intelligence (sent over from Bolton's crew)^[163] into NSA meetings with Bush to confuse him into ceding decision-making to them on security issues. Cheney would leak the intel to NYT (via Judith Miller) and then use her reporting to drum up public support to further pressure Bush admin into war.

"Freedom fries".

In his book, Rumsfeld tries to make it look like he wasn't in on this, but five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.^[164] Rumsfeld was a member of "The Crazies",^[165] a term Bush Sr. coined for Rumsfeld, Cheney, and other advisers who recommended he take over all of Iraq after the liberation of Kuwait. Additionally Rumsfeld added Bible verses to his memos pitching the invasions to Bush, because he knew Bush would be more receptive to them.^[166] Rumsfeld was also a signatory (along with Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Libby) to the statement of principles of Project for the New American Century, a Billy Kristol "think tank" which advocated for the military overthrow of Saddam before Bush became President. This group opined that transforming America's defenses would require a "new Pearl Harbor" to justify those increased expenditures to the public. That was in 2000. Note also that all three of these men were gone by the 2nd term when Poppy came to the rescue and sent his man Robert Gates to try and salvage the fiasco.^[167]

US Navy personnel guard the Al Basrah Oil Terminal. Priorities!

Alleged Iraqi mobile weapons laboratories

Those of us old enough to remember the invasion know that the Bush administration was desperately clutching at any straw they could find to confirm the existence of WMDs. Every few days, they'd raid some high school or veterinarian's office and proudly display the test tubes and Erlenmeyer flasks they found as proof they'd busted a bio-warfare lab, only to withdraw the claim a few days later.^[168] You even had the Secretary of State going in front of the UN with artist's impressions of what a mobile germ warfare factory would look like (should they ever bump into one) backed up by dissidents with barely-concealed agendas of their own who hadn't lived in Iraq for over a decade.^[169] Granted, they did find some useless warheads that the US government gave Saddam in the eighties.^[170]

Anybody would have seen right through Bush's clumsy justifications. It honestly wasn't difficult. Indeed, the French and Germans did; both got vilified by America for their efforts.^[171] The Congressional cafeteria renamed French fries to "freedom fries" because a sitting congressman couldn't even handle seeing the name of a country which was mildly critical of the war.^[172] Ollie North (yes, that one) suggested on Fox News that France helped provide Hussein with chemical and biological agents and that the French consulate was "destroying records" of their involvement.^{[173][note 3]} In 2004, Republicans were still saying, ridiculously, that "John Kerry looks French" as part of the serious campaign commentary.^[175] Al Gore did briefly raise objections in 2004,^[176] but was quickly drowned in the popular public opinion which was still high on cordite.

Bush himself has said there were no WMDs and that Iraq was a mistake, why is Fox still trying to insist otherwise?^[177] Because it's the only way to maintain the narrative that the Democrats are big spenders. By pretending the huge deficit created by that war during a period of massive tax cuts was worth it.^[178]

Torture[edit]

Comment from Rumsfeld: "I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing [by prisoners] limited to four hours?"

In blatant violation of both the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, Bush authorized torture—or as they like to call it, systematic sleep deprivation and controlled drowning, "enhanced interrogation." The more optimistic take is that the torture program was accompanied by a massive campaign of disinformation,^[180] propaganda (with the complicity of pop culture),^[181] and information suppression.^[182] If the people writ large were as ghoulish as the political elite, they never would have destroyed the tapes.

Since the release of his book, Amnesty International has been calling for his arrest every time he's left or attempted to leave the country,^[183] asserting it holds sufficient evidence that he had criminal knowledge of US torture. This caused him to cancel a trip to Geneva, Switzerland in February 2011; they repeated their demands on his trips to Canada in October 2011 and Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zambia in December 2011, but those countries were not so lucky.

Perhaps in an ideal world, someone would drag him and his buddies to The Hague before he pops his clogs. Sorry, mate, we already thought of that and passed the "Hague Invasion Act" (introduced by Jesse Helms), which effectively allows the invasion of the Netherlands to ensure “the release of any U.S. or Allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court".^[184] Both Ron Paul and Paul Ryan voted against this, which is a bit of a surprise.

And since the US has not ratified the Rome Statute, it is almost certain they will not consider any case against him. The ICC has considered cases against signatories that have not ratified the Statute in the past (e.g. Sudan); however, they were all guilty of ethnic genocide. We'll probably get some truth commission decades after the fact.

Interestingly, the lack of evidence or prima facie existence of a case to be answered for has not been cited as a reason against prosecution, leaving open a window if the US ever changes its mind on "only looking forwards, not backwards." In Malaysia, Bush and Tony Blair have been convicted in absentia partially based on this book; however, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (which found the conviction) is not recognized by any official body as a legitimate court.^[185]

The sheer length some had to go in order to defend Bush against accusations of torture led Bob Altemeyer to write:

If some day George W. Bush is indicted for authorizing torture, you can bet your bottom dollar the high RWAs will howl to the heavens in protest. It won’t matter how extensive the torture was, how cruel and sickening it was, how many years it went on, how many prisoners died, how devious Bush was in trying to evade America’s laws and traditional stand against torture, or how many treaties the U.S. broke. Such an indictment would grind right up against the core of authoritarian followers, and they won’t have it. Maybe they’ll even say, “The president was busy running the war. He didn’t really know. It was all done by Rumsfeld and others.”^[186]:20

Sock and Awe[edit]

The sole of Iraq.

During a surprise visit to Iraq in 2008, an angry Iraqi journalist, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, hurled his size 10 shoes at him during a news conference, shouting, "This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog!" Bush ducked twice (like it was '68 and those shoes were the draft for Vietnam), but it inspired similar attacks.

Right after he did this, Maliki's men caught and tortured him with steel pipes and electric cables.^[190] He was paroled after 1 year, and the shoes were destroyed, never to be hurled again.^[191] The shoes were destroyed by US and Iraqi security forces. That's right, it took a coalition to defeat the shoes.^{[No, not The Onion]} Probably one of our finest victories in the war.

The Bush Administration also:[edit]

Origin of US public debt in 2019.

• Responded to a recession by passing tax cuts,^[WTF?!][193] along with a bailout for banks.^[194]
• Inherited the biggest projected surplus in American history^[195] and turned it into the biggest deficit ever, doubling US debt.^{[196][note 4]} Bush occasionally joked that he had "hit the trifecta" of a recession, an emergency, and a war, all of which stopped him from balancing the budget.^[198] However, the fact that he made no attempt to adjust his economic policies accordingly made it clear he had no interest in keeping the debt under control one way or another. As Stephen Colbert famously put it "The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday — no matter what happened Tuesday."^[199]
• Borrowed a trillion dollars from China,^[200][201] more than all the previous presidents combined.
• Spent a billion dollars on a "virtual fence", which does not work.^[202]
• Wiped out half of black wealth in America.^[203]
• Misplaced $12 billion that was air-delivered to Iraq on shrinkwrapped pallets of $100 bills. "Many of the funds appear to have been lost to corruption and waste.... Some of the funds could have enriched both criminals and insurgents...."^[204][205]
• Killed the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gases.^[206]
• Exempted oil and gas companies from the Clean Water Act.^[207]
• Shut down the anti-trust case against Microsoft.^[208]
• Withheld information that the 9/11 site contained life-threatening amounts of carcinogenic substances in the air.^[209] Years later, not only responders but also people who just happened to live nearby are diagnosed with cancer due to asbestos exposure.^[210] The death count of 9/11 is still rising, and we can't blame the Arabs for it anymore.
• Personally paraded Terri Schiavo around to show his anti-abortion bona fides,^[211] even attempting to override the judicial branch.^[212]
• Made gays the replacement scapegoat after he left the Southern Strategy behind.^[213] Karl Rove used gay marriage as a wedge issue in 2004 by encouraging states with Republican legislatures to hold referenda on it to coincide with the election and increase voter turnout.^[214][215] Bush went so far as trying to amend the Constitution in order to ban same-sex marriage,^[216] a total flip-flop of his views in 2000, when he claimed he was fine with states legalizing gay marriage is they so choose.^[217]
• Deliberately hid the facts of Pat Tillman's death to score re-election. Not only was Tillman killed by friendly fire, but he was also likely murdered by some dipshit grunt from the flyovers whom he had just criticized.^[218] Tillman was also a leftist who despised the war and his family was shocked at the idea of being used as a martyr or a hero figure for it.^[219]
• Won more votes in Ohio than there were registered voters in those counties. For more, see John Conyers' report on election fraud, which everyone forgot about.^[220] Ballot boxes in the back of a pickup truck.
• Used the NYT and a ton of other publications to push Iraq war propaganda.^{[221][222][223][224]} Just in case you think you changed, rather than NPR, when you listen to it now, and it's shit.^[225]
• Called the NYT executive editor into the Oval Office and told him he'd personally have the blood of Americans on his hands to squash a damning story about NSA illegal wiretapping.^[226]
• Intentionally outed an undercover CIA operative because her husband the White House was lying about a plan from Iraq to buy uranium from Niger.^[227]
• Lied about the government of Iraq attempting to get uranium from Niger.^[228]
• Brought an Iranian spy into his administration as an advisor (Ahmed Chalabi).^[169]
• Added James Guckert a.k.a. "Jeff Gannon" to the White House visitor's list.
• Praised Berlusconi as a model of honesty and stability.^[229]

This Vlad guy seems like he'll be a great friend to the United States!

• Saw into the eyes of Putin to find a great man.^[230] (Didn't he also urge Bush to invade Iraq?)^[231]
• Played a role in creating Erdoğan.^[232][233] In the eyes of the US/EU, Erdo was 'soft' Islam. And in the aftermath of 9/11, that was what they wanted to promote. They gave them every type of help.
• Imprisoned a guy for reading a satirical article about how to build a nuclear weapon in your kitchen.^[234] Others were held for owning a particular type of Casio watch.^{[235][note 5]}
• Sabotaged a deal North Korea made with Clinton,^[236] which is why they restarted their nuclear program. In the past, Bolton has pushed/cheered for talks to fall apart to prove diplomacy doesn't work.^[237]
• Abducted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and exiled him to Africa,^{[238][239][240]} which included a US/UN occupation and the murder or disappearance of 8,000 of Aristide’s supporters.^[241] Aristide championed the poor and called for France to pay $21 billion for their colonial crimes.
• Allowed detainees to be sent to state interrogation centers in Guantanamo, Bagram, Saudi Arabia, Abu Ghraib, and Syria.^{[242][243][244][245]} We still have forty guys in Guantanamo; only one of them was convicted, but most of them are still uncharged with anything nearly twenty years later.^[246]
• Tried to privatize Social Security.^[247] All that patriotism turned out to be hollow, unless it's about blowing up someone different than you. When taking care of your fellow citizens, it ain't worth dick.
• Used an obscure law to obstruct free speech around anyone protected by the Secret Service.^[248]
• Fired U.S. Attorneys who a) wouldn't prosecute bogus fraud charges against Democrats, or b) pursued fraud charges against Republicans. (See Regent University.)^[249][250]
• Used private email servers to skirt FOIA.^[251]
• Defied Congressional subpoenas,^[252] destroyed documents that should not, by law, be destroyed,^[253] and violated its own rules on document declassification.
• Went around JSCOC and the CIA and created some kind of creepy parallel department which does pretty much the same stuff, but with (at the time) much more direct control from the executive, e.g., the "Terror Alert" system and the way it was used right before the '04 election.^[254] It serves no purpose other than a way of getting around posse comitatus, and is just a giant GOP jobs program; it was pretty clear when they gave the RapiScan contracts to the former DHS chief.^[255] The Democrats support it because they are the only government jobs they will get out of the GOP.
• Went over the heads of Robert Mueller and James Comey to initiate the Stellar Wind program, after the Attorney General was felled by a kidney stone.^[256]
• Unleashed Ron DeSantis upon prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.^[257]
• Allowed the Assault Weapons Ban to expire, which has led to a golden age for Modern Sporting Rifles.^[258]
• Launched ICE in the same breath as the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, and the AUMF. Back in the before times, it was called Immigration and Naturalization Services. Then some Bush Apparatchik was all, "What if we name this after a branch of Cobra Command", and it became US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, because the government didn't want to pretend it was possible to legally naturalize anymore.^[259]
• Had a spate of bribery and sex scandals in the GOP-controlled Congress.^{[260][261][262][263][264]}
• You know what, screw it. Go on his Wikipedia page, and you won't make it past the first few paragraphs.

Silver linings[edit]

President Bush at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. on September 17^th, 2001.

• PEPFAR, which drastically reduced HIV transmission in Africa and remains a highly effective program.
• The National Do Not Call Registry.
• Stood in front of a mosque and said Islam is not our enemy.^[265] That was nice of him.
• Gave us lots of black and brown officials in high positions. Probably a comparison to be made with overseers.^{[249][266][267][268]}
• The wind farms were OK^[269]...even if it was W. who pushed for drilling in ANWAR in the first place.^[270]
• Put in place a Guest Worker Program for illegal immigrants......Of course, it was a futile attempt, as the people in his own camp blasted it as just another "pathway to amnesty."
• Gave the green light for a human mission to Mars.........but it has since been canceled after Congress neutered NASA.^[271]
• You could argue that, while Medicare Part Donuthole was a vote-getting scam^[272] (uber-expensive, no discounts on prescription drugs),^[273] it got peoples' minds on health care reform............though Medicare Part D was paid for on credit.^{[274][note 6]}
• Stopped listening to Cheney after 2004 and fired Rumsfeld in 2006, which enabled him to salvage... something... maybe... from Iraq.
• The "Obamaphone" thing is hilarious because it has absolutely nothing to do with Obama. They're referring to the Lifeline program, which started under the Reagan administration and expanded to include cell phones under the Bush II administration.^[275]
• At least tried to pave the way for a national pandemic response (though justification for funding one such program fell through after a time), and was reportedly "obsessed" with preparing for this eventuality. About this, he stated: "A pandemic is a lot like a forest fire… If caught early it might be extinguished with limited damage. If allowed to smolder, undetected, it can grow to an inferno that can spread quickly beyond our ability to control it."^[276] Too bad somebody rendered any such preparations moot when that eventuality did arrive.^[277]
• The light bulb ban was his idea, so at this point, they're just harping about some imagined grievance from 20 years ago.^[278] Republicans will not rest until their light bulb is as inefficient as possible and inconveniences everyone connected to the same power grid as them. (Trump later reversed the ban.)^[279]
• He never really snapped at people, even though there was so much bad press directed at him, not to mention multiple impeachment attempts by the Democrats. That is the best anyone can say about Bush. He seemed to take an "above the fray" attitude towards all of the negativity. He even sat holding a children's book, waiting for his handlers to tell him what to do. Now that's poise!^[280]

"History will vindicate me."[edit]

January 20, 2009: we waited so long for this moment, we didn't know what to say.

Mr. Bush is currently engaged in two part-time jobs, one as a paid speaker and the other as scapegoat for various elected officials' misconduct.

The damage[edit]

Bush finished at 36th place in a poll of 65 historians conducted by C-SPAN.^[282] He beat out luminary presidents such as Warren G. Harding, Millard Fillmore, and James Buchanan. The overall ranking was averaged from scores given in ten areas. Some examples:

• 40th in economic management. He beat out the father of the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover, but couldn't quite get past the guy who died after only a month in office (William Henry Harrison). This is unfair to Hoover since he came into office seven months before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, while Bush had nearly eight years before his disaster. Hoover simply bungled the management of the Depression, while Bush played an active role in triggering the Great Recession.
• 41st in international relations. He's dead last here unless you count his beating W.H. Harrison (see above).
• 37th in administrative skills. So much for that MBA.

Burning his bridges[edit]

The Bushes with the Trumps in 2018.

Bush campaigned as an outsider (how the son of a former President pulled that off remains a mystery) in 2000. He campaigned on fear of terrorists and gays in '04 and won with moderates, evangelicals,^[284] and neo-cons.

The GOP post-Bush saw the near-collapse of their neoconservative wing in terms of influence: they were foreign policy wonks, and the war was all their idea. The 2008 financial crisis badly damaged their libertarian/neoliberal wing. That's two of Reagan's three wings of conservatism gone. Trump campaigned heavily on driving the neocons out of 'his' party: See him trashing the Bush family in the primaries, and even attacking Hillary for voting "Yes" on Iraq.^[285][286] Not to mention that counties with a high percentage of war deaths voted for Trump. (Maybe nominating a warmonger was not a good look for the Dems.)^[287] Trump stood out from the free-market conservatives by pushing for protectionist trade policies. He even attacked hedge fund managers (in the primaries) and Wall Street (in the GE) for their role in the mortgage crisis.^[288][289]

The xenophobia really ramped up after GWB's immigration reform bill died in the Senate. Before 9/11 and Bush's presidency, a lot of immigrants were starting to vote Republican.^[290][291] If you were watching the debates on Univision, abortion was a top issue for Latinos watching. The U.S. funds conservative churches in Central America and other parts of Latin America, and they follow the same playbook to a "T".

• Bush tried 3 times to give immigrants amnesty. The Republican Party wouldn't hear of it. Under Bush II, 3 million illegals were allowed in,^[292] benefiting the Administration's corporate friends, but not the Republican base. And the establishment wonders why Trump supporters hate them when they insist on lying about this and other issues.^[293][294]
• Conventional wisdom also over-estimated how reliable the Cuban demo was.^[295]
• Muslims had long skewed conservative, mainly on religious grounds, but fled to the Democratic side when the right started treating them all as terrorists:^[296] Stuff like the fact that there was an America’s Most Wanted 9/11 edition, and that it aired at the behest of W.^[297] has been disappeared from our collective conscious. Or the racial profiling in the wake of the attacks.^[298] Or that psycho Michelle Malkin calling for internment camps.

Who?[edit]

Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Obama.

His people tried to palm responsibility for the recession off on Clinton and Obama,^[299][300] but it didn't play.^[301][302]

Most neo-cons now deride a POTUS they unanimously supported (or even wanted to make "president for life")^[303] as a RINO, having sold out all "true conservative principles."^[304][305]

This is yet another fit of wingnut negationism post-recession, spanning from Herbert Hoover's supposed crypto-socialism to Saint Reagan's spectacular efforts at fiscal restraint. Each time their ideas fail, they see the problem as being one of branding, rather than the ideas themselves being flawed. (Many of these people, by the way, declared they were "Tea Partiers" and "Taxed Enough Already" when their man lost again.)^[306] They are the German soldiers fleeing Berlin as the Allies approach, stopping only long enough to burn their uniforms.

Memoirs[edit]

In 2010, Bush published his memoirs, Decision Points, in which he defended using torture as an interrogation method (really pushing it there, are ya!) and described a bizarre moment when his mother showed him the fetus she'd miscarried. Also, of all the low points of his presidency, being called a racist by Kanye West was apparently the absolute worst because it made him feel really sad inside. Facts behind this interaction: Bush flew over the Katrina mess and looked out a plane window. People became agitated that this was his only response. Bush then went back and hugged people.^[307][308]

However, in living up to his reputation that he'd never read a book in much depth,^[309][310] let alone written one, it turned out whole passages of his "memoir" were lifted wholesale from other books, including those written by former aides.^[311]

Irony, guilt or change-of-heart?[edit]

Living under the radar (compared to the constant scrutiny while in office), Bush and his spouse have spent time in Africa opening and renovating medical clinics.^[312]

He also paints pictures of wounded soldiers (his bad), the White House dog Checkers Tony Barney, and other assorted crap. Fittingly, it appears that they were also mostly copied off of The Google.^[313] The ones of himself in the shower are especially disturbing.

Why did he talk like that?[edit]

One of the most infamous things about Bush was the sheer amount of gaffes he made during his administration, to the point where Jacob Weisberg was able to fill up a series of books with what have been labeled "Bushisms," or strange examples of wording coming from the mouth of the 43rd President.

Christopher Hitchens said in a 2000 article for The Nation that he thinks the most likely cause is dyslexia,^[314] which the Mayo Clinic describes as "a learning disorder that involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words."^[315] Others, such as American linguist Mark Liberman, argue Bush is not unusual in how gaffe prone he is, and the reason we see it so frequently is simply due to him being on camera as commonly as he is. As he put it, "In many of the other cases, the cited examples seem well within the range of expected human error. Which of us could stand up to a similar level of linguistic scrutiny?"^[316]

Either way, although it does make for a good laugh every now and again, it must be remembered that of all the things wrong with Bush, his failures with the English language are far from the most important. There is nothing saying somebody with his verbal skills could not have been a good President. In the same regard, his actions in the White House would have been terrible for the nation even if he was better with his words.

National Guard controversy[edit]

Bush in uniform

One of the bigger controversies starting in the 2000 campaign and following Bush for his entire time in the White House involves how he acted while serving in the Air National Guard in the 1970s. According to records, Bush was suspended from his position in 1972 because of his failure to show up for an annual medical examination.^[317] Some have claimed that Bush went AWOL during his time in the military, however "Air Force Reserve records show Bush was credited with enough points to meet his requirements for that year — barely."^[318] That said, Memogate was unambiguously bullshit and pushed hard by people who really should have known better.

Junta[edit]

• Dick Cheney — Cyborg. Currently rocking the J.R. Ewing look (as expected). His daughter, Liz Cheney, attacked her sister for being gay on national television in an opportunistic bid to win a congressional seat in Wyoming
• Karl Rove — Criminal who has avoided summons to appear before Congress.
• Paul Wolfowitz — Architect of the Iraq War and the man who brought much of the Bush staff together. When an Army General asked for more troops, Wolfie and Rumsfeld laughed in his face.^[138] Right before they demoted him.^[319]
• Donald Rumsfeld — Torturing POWs? There's an app for that!^[320] Forget the Iraqis; he was a more significant threat to U.S. soldiers. He actually had to resign after a long while.
• David Frum — Did you know that Iran was co-operating with the US in Afghanistan and improving relations until Bush called them a part of the "Axis of Evil" in a speech Frum wrote?^[321]
• John Ashcroft — Ultra-religious Attorney General who was busy covering up nude statues in the Justice Department.^[322] Also prosecuted Martha Stewart, sings, and authored the PATRIOT Act.
• Alberto Gonzales — You thought Ashcroft was bad? This guy ensured, by any means he knew how, that the United States would use torture.
• Ken Lay — Californians had to fork out an extra $420 a month for his fake "rolling blackouts",^[323] which was never paid back. The governor kept asking for help and being blown off by the Bush administration.^[324] (Gray Davis was a contender for the 2004 Presidential election. After your $700 utility bill, Mr. Bush didn't have to worry about him anymore.)^[325]
• Hank Paulson — The funny thing is that Paulson was Goldman CEO when most of the subprime securities and risky CDs were being written. In 2008, he became Secretary of Treasury, who was also instrumental in handing out the bailouts. While letting other equally-dependent banks fail for doing exactly the same thing.^[326] Pretty funny. If you're a member of the 0.01%, that is.
• John "I Don't Do Carrots" Bolton — A strange little fucker^[327] Definitely one of Bush's sketchier picks. The oh-so-diplomatic Bolton believes that the UN is illegal; in fact, he said that it didn't exist right before Bush named him ambassador to the UN, where he only served for a short time because the senate would not approve him. Trump was supposed to move us away from the blood-thirsty, neocon warmongers, and now he's floating Bolton's name for a position. Bolton, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rice... Funny how old names keep popping back up lately.^{[328][329][330][331]}

See also[edit]

For those of you in the mood, RationalWiki has a fun article about George W. Bush.

• Reaganism — He just seems like a guy you could take to the bar and smash a glass over his head ya know?
• Bushisms
• Mission accomplished
• Bush Derangement Syndrome
• REAL ID Act
• Guantanamo Bay
• Rick Perry — Lieutenant Governor (and successor) in Texas, who is in many ways Bush on steroids.
• Stephen Harper — If America has rednecks, Canada has slednecks.
• Tony Abbott — And in Australia, they have bogans.
• Ronald Reagan — The prototype.
• Donald Trump — The somehow worse next model. He makes Bush look like a rocket scientist.

External links[edit]

• "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" (Late Show with David Letterman) - In case any of us ever forget.
• You're Welcome, America.
• Sadly, this may be less satire than you would think.
• Bush reflects on his time in office near the end of his term
• Some news articles and blog posts on how Dubya let his belief in Gawd influence his presidency:
  • Dubya told Palestinian officials: "God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq"
  • Dubya invoked "Gog and Magog" when trying to sell the Afghanistan and Iraq wars to the French, much to their bewilderment (The French take on this)

Notes[edit]

References[edit]