Book ‘Em, Zhdano
My New Years resolution this year is that Dan Riehl should stop being such a tool.
What Grade Would You Give Bush?
I give Bush a B and I could debate myself as to whether it’s a B+ or B-, so I won’t. I do think the arguments tend more toward the plus side in that, frankly.
Well, so much for this year. Actually, things were pretty much blown to hell on January 2nd., and survived until then only because a groggy Riehl spent the inaugural day of 2009 in bed yelling at his toes.
But apropos the B-/B+ distinction, I just think it’s funny every time to see the name ‘Bush’ and to watch the right’s self-styled eagles of Libertas and sober adjutant-birds of fact reëmbody Andrei Zhdanov and — pardon the diæreses1 — reëngage his notorious “struggle between the good and the better.” It’s a sign of how drastically things have descended the plumbing that Riehl can’t feign deliberations over whether Bush deserves a grade of A+++infinity+ or one of A+icecream+backrub++, but must, for appearances, advance the pretense of grading him only a little better than average, before refusing on principle to do so.
Speaking of Zhdanovian hackery, do you think there’s another noteworthy Bush encomium over at Hinderaker’s place? I honestly haven’t looked yet,2 but I think there will be! Let’s go see.
Woot. You know, for years, Hindy has been stealing stuff from us when he thinks no one is looking. By inductive reasoning, we can determine that there must have been a post here while I was away to which he added some essment, and that it was titled,
President Bush: An Ass
Jokey jokey ha ha. But back to Hindy:
President Bush leaves office mostly unloved, with some poll respondents saying that they consider him one of our worst presidents ever.
See, that’s how ours started too.
This in itself is odd. Generally, our worst Presidents have been one-termers, for obvious reasons: James Buchanan, Jimmy Carter, Herbert Hoover (if you buy into the myth). But George W. Bush was re-elected rather easily in 2004. Thus, if he really was one of our worst Presidents, either the electorate was subject to mass hypnosis, or something must have gone seriously wrong in his second term.
If we strip away the partisan hysteria, it’s pretty clear that Bush was a reasonably good President, not an epochally horrible one. Let’s start with domestic policy.
Serious now. In terms of art, it ought to be said that the greatness of a Pastor Swank, of a Mark Noonan or a John Hinderaker — the quality which raises them above the howling roil of right-wing authoritarians, of spite retailers, blowhards, closeted gay ministers, cranks, Bible lickers, of nerds-gone-bad, of flag humpers, pseudo-intellectuals, chair-based saucer investigators, of stern-bodiced rape fantasists, of millennarians, Know-Nothings, Free Silver enthusiasts, jingoes, Oreos, Foursquare McPhersonites, splinter Baptists, pseudo-Methodists, Pentecostal highway parishioners, of cynical purveyors of purpose-driven things and of AMWAY, of Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, Graham’s miracle flour, Kellogg’s abstinence-promoting Corn Flake Cereal, or other products unevaluated by the FDA that are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease; of Goldwater idolators, ‘Scoop Jackson liberals,’ McCarthyites, Yankees fans, Likudniks, the mean of spirit, dupes, chumps, Dartmouth grads, shysters, four-flushers, dog-kickers, self-dealers, Professors of X at James Madison University, wingnut welfare skillet-lickers and beak-wetters; of wingnut welfare high-rollers, pimps, queens, bathroom-stall fellators, and generational dependents; of certain former or current WWF/WWE personalities and/or karate movie stars and/or minor Baldwin brothers, convicted Watergate felons, washed-up Red Sox pitchers, and/or 1970s Detroit-area rock musicians, as well as unnh and gaah, not to mention hunnh — isn’t solely in making up things that aren’t true, but often in fact in forgetting things that are.
Because, for instance, someone who just walked into this whole ongoing drama might look at Hindy’s paragraph above, and be like, “Jimmy Carter!? Why, what a cheap shot — and what’s this thing about ‘if you buy into the myth about Hoover?’ And then look at how he… Ooh, the nerve of some people.” And yes, sure, there’s that. But worst-president lists were a bit of a thing a couple of years ago, based on various surveys of historians, and while Hindy’s list starts uncontroversially with James Buchanan, it continues by carefully eliding certain personages, most signally a two-term Republican president named Richard M. Nixon, who was re-elected in a historic landslide in 1972 despite certain irregularities. Hindy’s special genius is in pretending not to know things. Let’s skip ahead a bit.
While his stewardship of the economy was generally good, Bush fell down in other areas of domestic policy. His sponsorship of comprehensive immigration reform and the Medicare drug benefit and his acquiescence in ridiculous levels of federal spending are all black marks. They are balanced by Bush’s excellent judicial appointments and his management of a strikingly scandal-free administration.
The last time we saw that construction, it was ‘extraordinarily scandal free,’ and the context was the epic, multi-part schooling of Powerline on that very subject, executed not by a snark blog, but by David Kurtz and Josh Marshall at TPM. The last episode is here, and apparently Hinderaker still doesn’t know about any of this.
The next time Marshall and Hinderaker crossed paths, it was apropos this astonishing claim:
In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders [George W. Bush] has committed. If Obama doesn’t raise his standards, he will exceed Bush’s total before he is inaugurated.
Back to the current analysis, though: Can you spot what Hinderaker is pretending not to know in the following passage?
In foreign policy, the terrorist attacks dominated, perhaps too much. Few would have predicted on September 12, 2001, that there would be no more successful attacks on American soil or even against American interests abroad, yet that is what happened.
Okay, that’s an easy one. Consider that Hindy once avidly followed this subject, and in fact that his last post on it was on August 1st., 2008.
The category of things that Hindy has never heard of also includes this and this, not to mention this.
As we noted here, President Bush’s strong anti-terrorist policies stopped a long string of successful terrorist attacks that stretched back to the late 1970s. His record in this respect is truly extraordinary, and he deserves an enormous amount of credit for it.
You see how he does it?
With hindsight, the beginning of the end for Bush was his unwillingness to defend himself when he was attacked for the “sixteen words” in his State of the Union address–words that were indisputably true. The same thing happened after Hurricane Katrina, the event that got his second term off on the wrong foot. In truth, the federal response to Katrina was both the largest and the fastest response to any natural disaster in world history. Yet Bush was never willing to stand up to his critics and make the case in his own defense.
That tendency to turn the other cheek was, in the end, fatal. Bush never cared much about politics.
Awesome are his powers.
Everything considered, I give the Bush administration a B-.
There’s a punchline here, but my head is spinning too fast to locate it.
2 I really hadn’t looked yet.
I am slightly disturbed by your use of the hallowed “Hindy” for that asswipe. “Hindy” is a great Merken icon. That douchenozzle is not.
That’s why they have to live in an alternate reality, so they won’t have to acknowledge, um, the real reality.
Y’know, when I was going to school, for students who never even bothered to show up and thus failed that way, they’d get an “I”. Considering the amount of times Bush took vacations rather than deal with a subject, the number of times that he simply refused to act presidential in any form, the number of times he just threw one of his cabinet on the grenade of public opinion…
Bush gets an I from me. Incomplete.
He was never much more than a shitty state governor given the most important political seat in the country and thus even referring to him as Former President suggests he ever acted as one to begin with.
You know, he’s got a point about the one-term thing. Not a very good point, but a point nonetheless. If Bush was so bad, the logic goes, wouldn’t people have kicked him out of office on their first opportunity? The answer is that “people” are stupid and don’t realize it when their president is not only extremely incompetent but also exceedingly immoral. Stupid and uninformed, because the media in 2004 wasn’t doing a particularly excellent job of disseminating the kind of information that should make any rational person vote against that fool. When Kerry lost, my reaction was, “Wow, these people are REALLY, REALLY DUMB.”
But that’s not a position everyone’s willing to take. I’m an elitist, clearly, but if you were to ask, say, Barack Obama in public about why Bush was reelected, he certainly wouldn’t say that it was because the American people couldn’t think, straight or at all. Still, it’s a pretty good question and it’s a good point that needs addressing. If he was so bad, WHY did they reelect him?
Kerry himself.
+
Patrician media.
+
Voting irregularities.
+
War Lust.
+
(Like you said) The stupidity.
I`d mention karma, but not everyone believes in that.
I TiVo’d the inauguration for my dearly beloved, and as Bush tromped through the Capitol, ten hours after the fact, I laughed. There was just something bleakly absurd about the idea that that arsewipe had been president for the past eight years.
Also, can I just say that the “Serious now” paragraph has earned this post a Koufax nomination. The spirit of Blazing Saddles is strong in you, and since that film is increasingly turning into an allegory of our times, it is entirely appropriate.
But apropos the B-/B+ distinction, I just think it’s funny every time to see the name ‘Bush,’ and to watch the right’s self-styled eagles of Libertas and sober adjutant-birds of fact reëmbody Andrei Zhdanov and — pardon the umlauts — reëngage his notorious “struggle between the good and the better.”
Hate to be the diacritical Nazi here, but those are diaereses or tremae not umlauts.
Carry on.
Incontinentia: also, only the motherfucking New Yorker has that prissy stick-up-the-rear style guide. Coöperate, indeed. Is that a fucking metal band? Re-engage will do just fine.
Coöperate, indeed. Is that a fucking metal band?
Yeah. Noöne writes like that!
But srsly: What henry lewis said at 8:20. That, and I love the post title, love it love it love it.
Well, Mauro, I’m not exactly sure that Americans elected W. either time. Both elections were dubious. But like you said, a point nonetheless, why did people vote for him?
Now, if you’ve been reading this site for a while, you’re well aware of the people who supported Bush that are stupid, racist, homophobic, greedy, or a mixture of all of those things. I think a better question is why people who are not terribly stupid, racist, homophobic, or greedy would still vote for Bush.
Here’s my answer, and you can fuck with it all you like: There are some Americans who can’t adapt. They just don’t like change, and if Bush meant more of the same old shit, they’d go for that over anything unfamiliar. These are the people who cheerfully choose to eat at McDonald’s rather than some place that has a burger with three fucking Michelin stars because they can’t trust something they don’t know. Take a look at the contenders. Gore was trying to tell Americans we need to live more in tune with the planet. People who don’t want to sell their SUV’s tuned out. Kerry was a war protester. And Catholic. Too different. McCain was also different from a bog-standard Republican, so he lost a lot of the base.
We’re a country where less than 10% of people have a passport, and many don’t even leave their own state. I have friends in Illinois for whom a trip to Texas is extremely exotic and a big fucking deal. We’re too insular in general, and that insular side of us votes for Bush.
But we’re changing.
Where do you suppose they get “re-elected rather easily” out of the narrowest re-election of all time?
And what pseudonymous in nc said about the “Serious now” paragraph.
I stand in awe at the awesome of your snark.
Where do you suppose they get “re-elected rather easily” out of the narrowest re-election of all time?
It was easy compared to that nasty court battle in 2000.
Generally, our worst Presidents have been one-termers … Herbert Hoover (if you buy into the myth)
I is confused. There is a myth that Hoover was a one-term president? It seems to have found its way into Wikipedia. Someone should set the record straight.
We’re a country where less than 10% of people have a passport, and many don’t even leave their own state.
It’s a fair bit more than 10% now, especially since you need a passport to go to Canuckomexistan. Still, there are people for whom travelling out of the county is an awfully big adventure.
Why did Bush get elected (not reëlected) in 2004? Oh, I’ll say that Kerry would have been a good president, but he was chosen to be the Democrats’ Bush, and people a) basically went with the fucktard they know; b) were still in a fucked-up kind of mental place, That doesn’t surprise me: I saw the Tories get re-elected in 1992. I also saw Blair win in a landslide in 1997, have a decent four years, then piss it all away.
And as for Assrocket’s bullshit ‘worst = one term’ argument — had Bush been beaten in 2004, he would not have had the full scope to achieve true awfulness, given that Schiavo, Katrina, et al were his masterworks of shittiness.
but those are diaereses or tremae not umlauts.
I forgive Gavin a lot, on account of writing “a historic landslide”.
What are these “tremae” and why haven’t you told the OED about them?
What are these “tremae”
Fortunately there are no pluralisation pedants here, who would prefer ‘tremata’.
While his stewardship of the economy was generally good,
Via Daily Kos:
“When George W. Bush took office the Dow was at 10,578.20. By the time he left office, it had fallen to 7,949.09.”
Hindy’s not even phoning it in anymore, is he?
I found this guys rant to be humorus at first, but by the end I cant help but feel anger at the revisionist history this jackass is trying to pull. Point of fact FORMER PRESIDENT………….george bush’s administration began to unravel not due to his not defending himself from the 16 words, the unraveling begain with his DOA plans for Social Security. it became more frayed with Terry Schaivo and Cindy Sheehan, and Katrina went Freddy Kreuger on what was left. And FORMER PRESIDENT…………bush not having any scandals? Can this idjit even say the name Valorie Plame?
I know that republicant’s are fighting a war on reality, this just shows that like cartoon villans they are determined to go down in a blaze of glory (or in this case blinding stupidity) no matter what the cost. They must think us all fools to make their lies so transparent.
What a knobhead. Honestly, there’s a global glut of total dickheads, and he’s one of ’em.
well, steve beat me to the punch about how “easily re-elected” has to be part of hindy’s alternate-reality, since awol won only by a few percentage points, and that’s with the help of mr. blackwell of ohio.
but my point, gavin, is that hindy actually is correct, at least in hardly-ever–right-wing-speak, as to no further attacks on american soil since sept. 12, because of course, the anthrax mailings were obviously sent by a white man, and hindy and the neos are talking about sand negros exclusively.
Just think – oxygen-bandits like this guy are always on about Obama being made into a messiah … but the Bush-as-Jesus-in-shitkickers tropes are sure thick in the air around their pointy heads whenever he comes up as a topic, complete with his martyrdom at the hands of the Pharisee media & public – to wit:
Joe Wilson & Valerie Plame will be rather surprised to hear that.
I had seen this post of Hindy’s whilst trolling the neoconnie blogs last night to taste their delicious tears. Sadly, I encountered this desperate attempt at redefining reality according to a scale he shat out of the uttermost depths of his tiny-penised shriveled self-esteem.
My problem was that I had recently read through this: http://www.netrootsmass.net/hughs-bush-scandals-list/
And it really, really took all the fun out of things for me. Please, someone who has a registration over at Powerline, go and post this list for their edification. I hadn’t even heard of some of the shit that was on this list – or maybe my neocortex had just shut down under the relentless avalanche of pure awfulness, spite & incompetence that was the last 8 years.
I mean, I hadn’t heard of the shit at Fish & Wildlife, fer crissakes. I mean, how can you fuck a post where all you gotta do is keep the rednecks from exterminating every damn species? Or all the crap at Justice, laid out end to end, over and over again how they perverted the function of government and ran it – blatantly, and in full view of anyone with eyes – to enrich their cronies and fuck everyone else on the planet?
I know we’ve been talking about the Truth & Reconciliation stuff in South Africa, kinda noodling around with the idea that we need to exhume all this ugly, ugly shit so that we can acknowledge that yes, indeed, it did actually happen … but the difference here is that the South Africans basically only fucked over their own countrymen.
The shitstains in the Bush Administration took their act on the road. They were aggressively trying to fuck up as much stuff on the planet as was humanly possible. They were sadistic, perverted 6-year-olds loaded up on meth, driving Hummers with machetes welded through the bumpers through the Louvre.
“The Smiler” character to murdered his way to the presidency in Transmetropolitan… was pure prophecy.
My father is a Yankee fan and Dartmouth grad, and he has never voted for a Bush.
Hmmph.
Fine, fine, he voted for Goldwater, but he was young and my mother hadn’t gotten to him yet. He didn’t vote for Reagan, either, fww.
N before any Bosox fans jump in….
bite me.
Herbert Hoover (if you buy into the myth)
Herbert Hoover’s great-granddaughter doesn’t buy into the myth. And she should know, because she’s his great-granddaughter.
What else can they do?
Confronted with 1-2 million Americans standing on the Mall being wildly enthused about no longer being represented by a Republican; that takes an awe-inspiring amount of reality reconstruction.
So much, in fact, it has to slop over onto everything they do. Next you know, they’ll be putting the bedspread in the oven and showering with lard.
Our allegedly liberal media didn’t do much in 2004 to inform in the public.
Also, remember how often the “Color Coded Terror Threat Level” was changed up and down during the election, and then forgotten completely?
Anyone think a Democratic president could pull a trick so blatant and not get called out for it?
It’s a funny quirk of history that the man who very likely caused the 2nd Republican Great Depression isn’t fit to carry Herbert Hoover’s shoes.
Herbert Hoover was a right wing ideologue, but a decent man who actually gave a damn. Hoover had a record of success in aid and emergency efforts, and even launched programs which would serve as the basis for many New Deal efforts. (However, FDR avoided Hoover’s mean manipulations to try and impose more right wing bullsh*t in his final 5 months in office, thankfully.)
‘I could debate myself, so I won’t.’ Jesus. In that same grammatical spirit, let me just say that I should call Dan Riehl a sub-literate moron, but I will.
B-.
That’s not a grade. It’s a smiley.
It is posts like this that remind me that Conservatives live in a completely made up fantasy world that only they can see.
I only recently became aware of the Conservative effort to blame the Great Depression on FDR, and not Hoover. I can understand that in the light of the Conservative fantasy that Bush became President on Sept 12 (Clinton was still President on 9/11), and Obama became President the day before the stock market crashed in September 2008.
So it was FDR’s socialism that retroactively caused the stock market crash of 1929 and that the Great Depression lasted until a Republican regained the White House, Eisenhower in 1956.
Without any question the historical record shows that Hoover did little to alleviate the Depression caused by unfettered capitalism and greed.
Without question Bush was among the worst five presidents America has ever had.
“That’s not a grade. It’s a smiley.”
So if Bush’s ‘smiley’ was B- then would Obama’s be a B––
You know what they say about how black men are hung…
Generally, our worst Presidents have been one-termers, for obvious reasons: James Buchanan, Jimmy Carter, Herbert Hoover
“Oh, and Richard Nixon, who was re-elected and then resigned office in disgrace with the worst approval rating ever prior to Bush, but I’m just going to pretend he didn’t exist because it completely invalidates the premise I’m trying to make for the next two paragraphs.“
Bush wasn’t a bad president because he won a narrow re-election against a weak candidate? But they claim FDR was a poor president and he was elected 4 frigging times, none of them close (not even 1940 or 44)!
Poor Presidents can be re-elected. Had Harding lived he probably would have won re-election in 1924. Coolidge could have won in 1928 but left in time for poor Hoover to be at the wheel when the ship ran aground (although Hoover supported Coolidge’s policies and was a part of the Harding and Coolidge cabinets so he isn’t totally blameless!) The American people can pick some real losers at the polls sometimes and re-election is not a reliable measure of how successful or unsuccessful a President was.
Let’s go back and look at some Presidents who were either good but could not get re-elected, or were poor Presidents and did (or could have been ) re-elected.
Arthur. 1884. Good. Couldn’t even get re-nominated. He didn’t try too hard though as was hiding a serious illness that would kill him shortly after leaving office, but for a sitting President to not be re-nominated is still a big deal.
Cleveland. 1888. Good. Lost electoral college, won popular vote.
Harding. Poor. Could have won in 1924.
Coolidge. Poor. Could have won 1928.
Truman. 1952. Very good. Couldn’t even be re-nominated.
Nixon. 1972. Poor, won re-election.
Bush: AWFUL, won in 2004
How about poor Presidents who lost their bid for re-election?
Harrison: 1892
Cleveland: 1896 could not be re-nominated. (His 2d term was much worst that his first)
Taft: 1912
Johnson (great on Civil Rights, lousy! on war) 1968
Carter: 1980
Bush 1: 1992
Good Presidents who won re-election.
McKinley: 1900
TR: 1904 (and could have won 1908 had he run)
Wilson: 1916
FDR: 1936, 1940, 1944
Truman: 1948 (yes, I know Harry is on 2 lists)
Ike: 1956
Clinton: 1996
( I did not include Ford and Reagan as I am not sure where to fit them).
So re-election is not a very reliable gauge of whether or not a President will be seen as a good leader once he is finished. Some times, to be fair, their historic ranking is low due to things that become clear to more people in hindsight, such as how Coolidge and Harding’s policies lead to the Great Depression. Other times people are just tired of a leader and want a change even if in hindsight people remember him as a good president (Truman, 1952). Sometimes a poor performance in their second term affect how there are perceived (Cleveland) . Good presidents CAN be rewarded with re-election (FDR for example) but re-election on its own is not a sufficient measure.
(I hope this works since we don’t have preview!)
Because just enough people listened to the right-wing noise machine shrieking non-stop blather about how John Kerry was a sissy effeminate latte-sipping know-it-all intellectual elitist Northern godless secular Christophobe who looked kinda French and loved terrorists and probably faked his war wounds to scam the USA out of three perfectly good Purple Heart medals. Oh, and there were gay-marriage amendments in the swing states, which must work like catnip for homophobes.
Here’s what makes me the most insane over this bullshit: it’s not only the Republican historical revisionists who are spewing this “oh well, the economic collapse just happened; there’s no connection to who was in office at the time*,” it’s also everyone in the media (*note: only applies when a Republican is in office).
I’m not a fucking economist, but I spent a good part of the time between 2002 and 2008 wondering how the fuck couples in their mid-20s were able to buy $300,000 McMansions, thinking, “am I really that big of a loser that I couldn’t afford to buy a modest ($65K) house until I was 30?” Also wondering why that $65K house I had bought kept increasing exponentially in value in an economy where not only I, but pretty much everyone I knew, was making less money and paying more for everything. I can’t have been the only person who, for five years, hearing media reports that “housing is driving the economy, it’s the only strong sector” kept asking myself “how is it possible that consumers too maxed out in debt to buy consumer goods are buying $300,000 houses?”
Fuck no. They knew exactly what the fuck was going on. They knew it was a bubble being driven by people with negative savings rates and increasing debt loads. After the recession of 2001, the economy never recovered – they just papered over it by allowing a housing bubble to grow unchecked, so they could continue to make their bullshit claims about how “strong” the economy was. I read something about some kid working at the White House who pointed out to them several years ago that the price of houses had exceeded rents. Did they do anything to correct for that, given that it’s inescapable, uncontravertable evidence of a bubble? Hell no. Instead they kept pimping their talking point about the “ownership society”, which I suppose means, “you own it until the rate readjusts”.
They fucking KNEW what was going on and simply chose not to correct it, instead hoping that it wouldn’t fall apart until after they were safely out of town. Unfortunately, they were off in their timing by about 6 months, and the stats on unchecked subprime-lending and credit default swaps and all of the other things that made this shitpile possible show that ALL of it happened on their watch, when they had a feckless dipshit in the White House and whole host of feckless dipshit yes-men controlling the Congress. They own this motherfucker, lock, stock, and barrell.
In the short term, the revisionists might manage to convince the few, the pwn3d, the stupid into believing that it all just “happened”, but they won’t succeed in planting their version in the history books, because there are all those pesky facts proving that the market went apeshit on their watch, while they egged it on.
He’s like the Fox Mulder of neocon policy, he WANTS to believe.
It’s like the question Stephen Colbert likes to ask his guests. “So–George W. Bush: great President, or the GREATEST President?”
why did people vote for him?
He scared ’em into it. The ones that weren’t askeered of terra were askeered of Teh Ghey.
It took me a long time to understand the loathing of Carter so prevalent on the right. Even Clinton doesn’t come in for as much out-of-the-blue slamming as Carter. Why? He wasn’t a good president, but he made no meaningful structural changes and 6 months after he left office there was no real “Carter Effect” to contend with. Nothing to rank him as one of the worst.
After time I came to realize Carter’s place in the Wingnut Hall of Shame: the worse you claim he was, the better St. Ronnie becomes. See, St. Ronnie didn’t just singlehandedly beat International Communism (which must be news to the Chinese, North Koreans, etc), save capitalism from socialism, slash taxes for everybody (I know it’s BS but the wingnuts like to claim otherwise), heal the sick and give sight to the blind. He rescued America from the Brink of Doom to which Carter had brought it.
The worse you claim Carter was, the more structurally bad Carter was, the more “pushing America to the brink of collapse” bad Carter was, the better St. Ronnie was.
And as for 2004, Kerry ran an abysmal campaign. It’s not always about the other side. Sometimes the Dems just plain blow it, and in 2004 they most certainly did. Don’t ever forget the horror and panic at the DNC and DLC when Dean came out of nowhere. Those people wanted a malleable insider and they got what they wanted. And Bush won.
Assessment-Rocket’s revisionism skillz are so 1337 that he even revisionizaificates his own damn self.
<blockquote?As we noted here, President Bush’s strong anti-terrorist policies stopped a long string of successful terrorist attacks that stretched back to the late 1970s.
So, I clicked on “here”. Apparently the late 1970s ended in 1988.
Also, I love how American University in Beirut, Khobar Towers and some unnamed-unknown airlines are “American Interests” but the Green Zone isn’t.
Herbert Hoover (if you buy into the myth).
Errrrrrrrrrrrr, WHAT myth?
He is universally acknowledged to have put his full faith and credit into the free markets and lost the bet! Never wavering from a losing bet (sound familiar) he plowed stoically on to the anals of history.
Loser. Hindrocket is a fucking loser. Not content with trying to fluff Bush one more time, he’s decided to engage in a double header, sucking Bush and Hoover alternately.
What a tool.
Whoops with the tags. I blame Obama. Less than two days into this farce of an Administration and he’s already messing up my blockquotes. What’s next, mandatory Fairness Doctrine ghey abortions?
And as for 2004, Kerry ran an abysmal campaign. It’s not always about the other side. Sometimes the Dems just plain blow it, and in 2004 they most certainly did.
Funny, I wrote almost this exact thought at my blog this morning…
One incident from the Bush presidency stands out for me as a true indication of his character.
Remember when Max Cleland tried to deliver a letter to Bush at Crawford – the letter was to ask him to denounce the SwiftBoaters’ lies about Kerry, I think – and Bush refused to meet him?
A different guy, a decent guy, even Bush’s dad, I think, would have just invited him onto the porch out of the hot sun for a cool drink, taken the letter, even if he intended to ignore it.
But not Dubya. That petty-ass disdain, kicking sand in the face, unwilling to meet halfway defensiveness was emblematic of his approach to almost every problem he was faced with.
Serious now are not a paragraph!!!
That’s a run-on sentence that could make the preamble to the Constitution tight-lipped with envy.
Damn.
We’ve had a black President for less than 48 hours, and already I’ve got a tan!
There was just something bleakly absurd about the idea that that arsewipe had been president for the past eight years.
I gotta say, Dana Perino’s a good sport for doing the MIB thing on T3h Daily.
Now gwb can get back to his regular fare of ruining every business he breathes on. Has he been in a Circuit City recently?
He wasn’t a good president, but he made no meaningful structural changes and 6 months after he left office there was no real “Carter Effect” to contend with.
Ironically, if Carter hadn’t started deregulating shit, like removing Regulation Q from the banking statutes, and deregulating the airline and trucking industries, St Ronnie would have been SO fucked when he took office when he tried to deregulate everything else.
This. Bush’s first term had a lot of loose ends, a lot of unanswered questions. His second term [i]alone[/i] makes him one of the worst presidents in history. That his first term wasn’t all that great seals the deal even more.
Bush was strenuously mediocre but beloved by a decent amount of people up until August 2005-November 2006. That was the point of no return into the shitshow.
Yay, fail at teh HTML.
McKinley = Less evil, more successful Bush.
acto212: I agree with you on Regulation Q – and forgot about that in my “letting Carter off the hook” spiel. But the airline and trucking industries really did need deregulating – they were operating under archaic regulations which had to go. You can debate the specifics of how they were deregulated – perhaps different restrictions could have been put in place. But – as with Ma Bell in the computer age – we had a case of industries being tied to regulations that no longer accomplished any meaningful public good. At that point change was inevitable.
Personally I always thought that Jr won in 2004 because people dont usually change leadership in the middle of a war, and people still thought we were in a war back then.
It looks to me like a pair of asscheeks dropping a log. Which also happens to be Bush’s grade.
Back to the Rectocet:
Hurricane Katrina, the event that got his second term off on the wrong foot.
Is that what they’re calling it nowadays? I believe the Mexicans celebrate it with Dia de los Wrong Foot.
Bob,
I didn’t intend that as a value judgement, and in fact, I agree with you regarding the deregulation. I just thought it was interesting that rightwingers never credit Carter with, you know, getting gubmint off their backs…
I believe the Mexicans celebrate it with Dia de los Wrong Foot.
Pied a Loco?
Although “B-” might well be the right grade from Powerline. Remember that in their grading schemes the Iraq War has been a great success, federal response to Katrina was stellar and the economy is currently in excellent shape.
Now, you and I might think that grading criteria is way too lax – and it looks like the Powertoolz are going to agree with us, because they are changing their standards starting Noon, the day before yesterday.
And as for 2004, Kerry ran an abysmal campaign. It’s not always about the other side. Sometimes the Dems just plain blow it, and in 2004 they most certainly did.
Right. I still can’t really fathom why anyone thought that Kerry was a good choice in the first place. As best I can recall, my reaction to Kerry went something like this:
1. Who?
2. Oh, HIM?
3. But…why?
4. No, seriously. Out of all the Democrats in the country, why *this* zhlub?
Never did figure out the answer to that question. The Economist put it well when they labeled the 2004 election as “the incompetent vs. the incoherent.”
Any thread title that incorporates a Hawaii 5-0 reference is just fine with me.
Carry on!
I agree with all the lousy Kerry campaign complaints, but still, I don’t give a sh*t. American voters are supposed to god damn act like f***ing grown-ups, and not choose the candidate with the coolest campaign but the person better to lead the nation.
If Kerry’s entire 2004 campaign had consisted of him being passed out drunk in a gutter but occasionally waking to hold up his middle finger and scream “F*** You, America!” and then collapsing back, he still would have been the better leader.
Thank god Obama was not only the better candidate but an insanely good campaigner, because we’re so stupid as a group that we really do have to be tricked with twinkly lights and nice music into doing the right thing.
That was our movie of choice to watch at our inauguration party.
See: http://joemax93.blogspot.com/2008/09/hold-it.html
“There’s a new sheriff in town…”
Never did figure out the answer to that question.
Nor I, but I think it was a spasm of DLCishness, made extra stupid and spiteful by the party leadership’s wish to punk Howard Dean. In keeping with the Republican-lite idea, they went with the establishmentest candidate they could find.
Or something like that. I can’t explain why all the primary voters wanted Kerry. That was the first primary I ever voted in, and I went proudly with Kucinich.
…we’re so stupid as a group that we really do have to be tricked with twinkly lights and nice music into doing the right thing.
This has occurred to me (and caused no small amount of depression) whenever people discuss campaign financing. Money in politics wouldn’t matter so much or need regulating if voters weren’t hypnotized by shiny objects.
Before I go back and read everything subsequent, what pseudonymous said–
“Also, can I just say that the “Serious now” paragraph has earned this post a Koufax nomination.”
I don’t know about Blazing Saddles, but you also qualify for the Dr. Bronner Castile Peppermint Trophy for Meaningful Rantation. Well done, sir.
Outstanding, Gavin. This (and the pineapple strüdel) are why I visit Sadly, No! on a regular basis.
I seem to have lost track. Where do they give out Koufaxes these days?
I agree with all the lousy Kerry campaign complaints, but still, I don’t give a sh*t. American voters are supposed to god damn act like f***ing grown-ups, and not choose the candidate with the coolest campaign but the person better to lead the nation.
Yea, but….it don’t work that way, and we all know that. Just because we pay attention to what’s going on doesn’t mean most of the country does.
Generally, our worst Presidents have been one-termers, for obvious reasons: James Buchanan, Jimmy Carter, Herbert Hoover
“Oh, and Richard Nixon, who was re-elected and then resigned office in disgrace with the worst approval rating ever prior to Bush, but I’m just going to pretend he didn’t exist because it completely invalidates the premise I’m trying to make for the next two paragraphs.“
Ah, how soon we forget U.S. Grant, another Republican who was re-elected in a landslide in 1873, and who had the most scandal-ridden two terms in U.S. history — at least until the reigns of Nixon, Reagan, and 43.
Anyway – why the talk of giving Bush a grade, when he should be the one giving grades?
Don’t miss the epoch-making first comment to that post!
Professor X “teaches” at George Mason, I believe.
And is it me, or are the “B” grades carved backward on their faces??!?!
…all this is, of course, central to hindraker’s point.
“I agree with all the lousy Kerry campaign complaints, but still, I don’t give a sh*t. American voters are supposed to god damn act like f***ing grown-ups, and not choose the candidate with the coolest campaign but the person better to lead the nation.”
Kerry’s incoherence as a candidate may have reflected incoherent thinking in general, no? As of 2004 Bush was a known incompetent; Kerry an unknown, incoherent careerist hack with his finger in the air trying desperately to figure out who to be when he grew up. Do I think he would have been a “better” president than Bush? No, I think he would have been a slightly less bad president. I voted for him, but couldn’t begin to defend him to anyone questioning my vote. If all you got is “yeah, but the other guy….” maybe its time to admit the party lets its followers down and nominated someone who no more deserved a desk in the Oval Office then Bush did.
Hunter Thompson on Hubert Humphrey: “There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey is until you’ve followed him around for a while.”
Not far off the mark with regards to Kerry. The American people were choosing between two contemptible party hacks. Not sure I can join your assault on those who chose Tweedle Dumb over Tweedle Dee.
Don’t miss the epoch-making first comment to that post!
Ah yes, “tonguejack my shitbox”. Truly a new day dawned with that post.
and — pardon the diareses —
Sorry, Gavin, still wrong; we insist on the “diæreses” spelling. “Diareses” are where Gollum records the events of his day.
Lydia Pinkham shoutout! Best post ever?
We’ll drink, we’ll drink, we’ll drink
to Lily the Pink, the Pink, the Pink,
The saviour of the human race…
As if we needed an excuse.
“And as for Assrocket’s bullshit ‘worst = one term’ argument — had Bush been beaten in 2004, he would not have had the full scope to achieve true awfulness, given that Schiavo, Katrina, et al were his masterworks of shittiness.”
Well, yeah…but does anyone here doubt for a second that Assrocket would be singing a different tune about his specious “worst = one term” claim if Bush really had gone down to defeat in 2004?
And furthermore: By his exhalted standards, doesn’t Clinton’s 2 terms make him one of America’s best Presidents? Heh, heh, heh!
And as for Kerry – and Gore, too – yes, their shittiness as candidates was more than slightly responsible for making the elections close enough for Junior to steal…but never doubt that the rotten little creep did indeed steal them. Bush was never legitimately elected, probably not in 2004, but definitely not in 2000.
Hey! What about us?
So does this mean conservatives have reeled backward from their “Bush is NOT one of us” stance? He was sure shootin’ one of them from 2000 – 2006, when he was flipping the bird to the American public with impunity. It’s only when the GOP lost the 2006 midterms and Bush’s ratings started circling the bowl that it was suddenly discovered he wasn’t really a conservative. And as far as the administration being notably scandal-free: I remember back in 2001 I was out of the country for a few weeks. When I left, the GOP and the media were still foaming at the mouth over the Marc Rich pardon and the supposed “trashing” of the White House during the transition. When I returned two weeks later, the joyriding submarine full of Bush rangers had struck a Japanese fishing boat and killed several people, and nobody raised an eyebrow. I thought to myself that the rules for “scandal” had certainly changed quickly.
So in Hinderaker-ese:
scandal-free = no blow jobs,
generally good (with ref to the economy) = disastrous
few gaffes or verbal blunders = incoherent
indisputably true = demonstrably false
So I guess we should just hold everything that he writes up to a mirror.
Coöperate, indeed.
Because cooperating (no diareses) means “making barrels”.
This is a case of grade inflation, as Chimpy got a “Gentleman’s C” in college.
I’m amused by the fact that every fawning right-wing retrospective of the presidency of George Bush (including Bush’s own) includes the fact that “we haven’t been attacked once since 9/11”.
Think about that. The best thing that they can say about Bush is that during his presidency we only had one unprecedented terrorist attack on our soil that destroyed several iconic American structures, and caused severe damage to the headquarters of our military, The Pentagon.
ONLY ONE!!!!
That’s like saying Lee Harvey Oswald was a great American because he only killed one US president.
When a US president takes credit for the fact that only the World Trade Center and a big part of the Pentagon was destroyed by terrorists under his watch, that is what’s known as a lowering the bar.
Mugs, Pugs, Thugs said,
Over here with us!
the federal response to Katrina was both the largest and the fastest response to any natural disaster in world history.
How can he write that with a straight face ?!?!?
What an asswipe!
Scandal free?
My favorite scandal, not the biggest, but my favorite, was the guy who was domestic policy adviser in the White House who was returning items to Target or switching price tags or something like that. They took him out in handcuffs as I recall.
These guys were scandalous in small ways, and in big ways (Hank Paulson).
Corrected again, by God!
I am still marvelling at Hindraker’s argument that the less than half of US voters who preferred Bush in 2004 must have been right — after all, they could not very well have succumbed to mass hypnosis, could they?? — while the 70% of poll respondents who currently despise Bush must be wrong, and the victims of some sort of mass hypnosis.
I imagine him citing the case of State vs. Chewbacca as a precedent.
Scandal free ?
A gay male prostitute on the WH press corps is what ? Part of Bush’s legacy ?
He constructs very lawyerly arguments, shifting things here and there until things achieve a sort of strict, germaphobic internal consistency. It’s like he’s trying to create a perfect, self-referential description of the universe as he would like it to be — as though he imagines that by arguing in the manner of an attorney to a judge, he can convince the universe to be a certain way.
What’s, you know, perennially striking is that he doesn’t seem to pay much attention at all to whether his assertions match up with the actual, objective world. Reality-as-it-is just seems like a vexing distraction to him…
Corrected again, by God!
This kind of responsiveness to feedback is why we comment here. The other day I was over at Pharyngula, correcting PZ Myers on his spelling of “déshabillée”, and did he acknowledge it? Did he bogroll.
He constructs very lawyerly arguments, shifting things here and there until things achieve a sort of strict, germaphobic internal consistency.
This style has the advantage of not lending itself well to Shorterising, so instead we are treated to a lengthy exegesis / improvisation. Huzzah!
Oh, P-Zizzy is a big celebrity now, ever since the communion wafer controversy. We should just be thankful that we knew him back in the nabe.
Shorter?
Super post! A++++ Highly recommended! (Internet traditions. I am aware.)
But can’t you see that *you* can’t make new resolution for me – *I* have to make the resolution myself! Huh? Huh who’s the fool now??
As I recall, Bush’s popularity was sagging badly before 9/11; among other things, the economy was going bad after the tech bubble burst, and he’d bungled and lost the senate majority by alienating Jim Jeffords; shortly to come were the Enron scandals and the Worldcom bankruptcy. Without the huge boost he got from the country uniting around him after 9/11, and after starting the war of retribution, he likely would have been a one term president.
He never realized, as most of the country eventually did, that it was he that was lucky that the country would unite behind him after the attack, and not that the country was fortunate to have him.
And furthermore: By his exhalted standards, doesn’t Clinton’s 2 terms make him one of America’s best Presidents? Heh, heh, heh!
I’d suggest that FDR’s three terms, plus Truman’s term equals GREATEST U.S. PRESIDENT PERIOD.
My favorite scandal…
Government-Funded Gay Hookers at the Watergate.
That was a good one.
Bush won in 2004 because the coattails of 9/11 were just barely long enough.
I dearly love my boss at work, but she can charitably be described as a “low-information voter.” She agonized between Bush and Kerry up to the last minute, but went for Bush because he made her feel “more secure.”
And of course, it didn’t help that Kerry was such a stiff. I voted for the man and his heart’s in the right place, but he can be a real pill sometimes.
Here’s a thought about blind links. I’m way less likely to click on something that doesn’t tell me what it is (and how I wish YouTube links would offer a clue in their names). When you make a link, right after the link name in quotation marks, you can proceed to say
and then when your readers hover the mouse over the link, a little clue of your choice pops up in just the dearest little box. Like this! (I hope… it’s not showing up in preview, but I will try to have faith that it will work. If not, well, then I’ll post again and again, getting increasingly upset in the process.)
Kip, if you use Firefox, I highly recommend InterClue for all your link checking-out-without-clicking needs. Not that including a title isn’t a great idea, it is, and I’ll try to remember to use it.
Here’s another thought: click on what Gavin gives you or no seconds of gruel.
I haven’t programmed for Internet Explorer in years, but I do remember that IE preferred “alt” tags for tool tips. But ‘title’ I do believe is an Internet standard so at least the latest iterations of Internet Exploder should support it.
Look back through programming references for old versions of IE if you ever want some laughs. Watch as Microsoft comically misunderstands the underlying concepts of HTML and where it was headed at the time (JavaScript, the DOM, and eventually XHTML).
I’m seeing tooltips over some links now, and I’m pleased with the kindness of people I don’t know. Thanks, folks! Now for those joiks at YouTube.