Del, I'd be interested in your take on the W. Presidency. My opinion is that he is a pretty good guy all in all. Thought that then and still think that now. He has not pandered himself after his years as president like others have. I did see a thing on him a little while ago, that said in a very smart way that his policy on AIDS in Africa stemmed the tide of the disease there. Something the media never would have reported at the time. I tend to think he wasn't near as smart/experienced as his dad and that led to a problem with him taking maybe too much advice from those around him. Getting involved in a two front war is never a good idea. In terms of the housing crisis, the impending collapse of the banks, failure of the automotive industry all that **** is owned not only by him, but the governments before him. The media didn't give him a fair shake, but at the same time he didn't exactly help himself either with the misspoken phrases and indecision.
I think W. Bush was actually alright. I think he legitimately had the country's interest to heart. Without 9/11, he goes down as a very good conservative president.
But 9/11 got him a bit in over his head. Not his fault, 99.99999% of all people would be in over their head after 9/11.
The problem was he then turned to two people I'm not sure have a scrupulous bone in their bodies: Cheney and Rumsfeld. Those two arrogant pricks pretty much played everyone around them to their own benefit. I really don't like Cheney. As a VP candidate you kind of say who gives a **** (at least back then), when you look at his record. Failed out of Yale. Two DUI's. Draft dodger/escape artist. The guy is a total sleezeball and yet after 9/11 his foreign policy "pull" went up to 99%.
If Bush had picked anyone else as VP we would have a different history.
And this has nothing to do with going into Afghanistan or Iraq. Hell, I was in favor of invasion back then and I'm still in favor of it today. The problem was the arrogance of Cheney/Rumsfeld's plan and how ill-prepared we were of the Sunni element. Most of this **** was Middle East 101 and we just ignored it all and went in guns blazing.
It took Bush about his entire first term to finally stop listening to those idiots and figure some things out on his own (and with better advice). Honestly, the war took everything else out of Bush. I firmly think the blind eye towards the banking industry was because Bush and most of his cabinet was too busy worried about the war and public opinion from 2004-2007. Most of that banking stuff and derivatives take a math genius to figure out anyhow. Honestly, the government has like a 110 IQ. The guys on Wall Street are IQ 140-150+ playing games with high-level math equations only .01% of the world's population can even understand. I think by then, Bush was done. After 5-6 years of watching kids die (even for a good cause), he just didn't want anything more to do with any of it. I would think that weighs on anyone.
I think people forget Bush was literally a war president. He buried more troops than any president since Nixon.
Overall, he's in the middle. Without Cheney/Rumsfeld he might even have been pretty good. But that's on him for picking to listening to them. No one else. And it's still in his court for kind of ignoring the banking crisis and laissez faire policies toward Wall Street even with some excuses.
