We now have President George W. Bush’s self-evaluation on the record. Without a doubt, he is the worst U.S. president in history. On his watch, we experienced:
- The biggest terrorist attack ever on American soil, with a death toll worse than Pearl Harbor in 1941
- A failed “war on terror” — after 7 years, al-Qaeda is stronger than ever before
- Fiasco in Iraq– official lying leading to a pointless, catastrophic invasion and occupation of a country that posed no threat
- Illegal imprisonment and torture of accused enemy combatants and terrorism suspects
- Admitted illegal widespread warrantless surveillance of American citizens by government agencies
- Failure to send emergency help to Hurricane Katrina victims, and rebuild a destroyed New Orleans
- A losing war in Afghanistan, as under-resourced U.S. and NATO forces failed to stop the Taliban resurgence
- Collapse of the financial markets followed by a botched bailout for billionaires, leading to the worst economy since the Great Depression
If you had to make a self-evaluation after eight years of presiding over one policy disaster after another, if you had to look at numbers showing that you are the most despised chief executive in the history of public opinion polling, what would you say?
In a personal and wide-ranging interview about his legacy… Bush told his sister, Dorothy Bush Koch, in a conversation recorded for the oral-history organization StoryCorps for the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress:
“I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process… I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values. And I darn sure wasn’t going to sacrifice those values; that I was a president that had to make tough choices and was willing to make them,” he said.
No regrets, no admission of error.
UPDATE: Bush does have regrets. In an interview with ABC News scheduled to air Monday night, President Bush said incorrect intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s arsenal was the “biggest regret of all the presidency… That is a do-over that I can’t do.” The truth is, the intelligence was correct and Bush was briefed– no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He chose to ignore what he was told.
UPDATE: Think Progress documents that in 2005 President Bush chose to ignore a chorus of warnings from banking regulators about the coming financial meltdown.
#1 by cav on November 29, 2008 - 11:08 am
I suppose he’s entitled to his opinion. It’s a free country.
Many of us out here in citizenville have regrets. Huge missgivings. He represented us so poorly, it’s a real shame. Maybe our great-great grandkids….
#2 by Becky on November 29, 2008 - 11:10 am
After reading the list of failures, one has to wonder what exactly are his values?
#3 by cav on November 29, 2008 - 11:28 am
He’s a huge disaster-capitalist, and quite a good one at that. ‘What’$ in it for me’? Goes back quite a number of generations.
He’s a person who would like to be remembered as a person…who wants to be remembered as a person – who might have been mistaken for a human being (being human). For a guy who prayed so fervently, he missed that boat completely.
Sorry GW, not likely. More likely to be remembered as some kind of shill of monsterdom
#4 by Becky on November 29, 2008 - 11:56 am
Yes, Cav, he did inherit those traits from generations past. No doubt saw nothing wrong in them.
In a country where it has been said, “Any boy may grow up to be president,” he has shown why not every boy should. Even (or especially) if his dad can buy it for him
#5 by Cliff Lyon on November 29, 2008 - 5:08 pm
George’s values? I thought they were passionate conservatism, small government, no nation building, and bi-partisan government.
The only real values George has is lying, cheating, stealing murder, and cover up.
Oh yeah and making his buddies richer.
Fuck Bush and everyone who voted for him.
#6 by Richard Okelberry on November 30, 2008 - 6:35 am
Richard,
How specifically did Bush fail to prevent 9/11? It’s easy to throw out that the attacks occurred during his presidency but what specifically would you say he did wrong and what specifically should have been done to prevent it?
#7 by Rialto on November 30, 2008 - 6:43 am
Mr. Lyon, will you ever get over it and move on? After all, we are now in the land of milk and honey.
Obama messiah will rain down manna from heaven, and all will be well, as the world beats it’s SUVs into Ipods, and abundance will flow like a river, and all peoples will love one another. Just after the rest of the “has been” Clinton appointments are made.
That is a awful lot of f*cking Mr. Lyon, my advice is to wear an industrial strength condom. Trampoline grade.
#8 by Shane Smith on November 30, 2008 - 8:27 am
““I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process”
You can’t sell what you do not possess.
#9 by Tim Carter on December 1, 2008 - 8:53 am
Hey Richard, I think he could’ve done more to prevent the attacks. He knew about the Cole, for sure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1DcPNGEffc
They gave him definitive research on the threat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYfl8BjjMCI
And of course, Bushs’ quick response on that day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro3o-ld0CWw
And one thing I’ll probably never understand. First tower gets hit, everybody is scared but not FREAKED. Second tower gets hit at 9:02, terrorsits suspected. Andy Card walks into the classroom at 9:06 and whispers to the president “America is under attack.” Flight 77 has just been seen by air traffic doing a U-turn over Ohio. Flight 77 hits the Pentagon at 9:38. If America was under attack as Card told the president, how was he allowed to stay in that classroom? Where was our military that day for over a half an hour to defend our nations capital? I don’t get it.
#10 by Richard Warnick on December 1, 2008 - 9:11 am
R.O. wants to know:
Despite many urgent warnings about the threat from al-Qaeda, the Bush administration did nothing in response to the attack on the USS Cole and nothing to thwart future attacks. Prior to September 11, 2001 the president’s chief adviser on terrorism, Richard Clarke, was never even allowed to brief Bush. Says Clarke:
Remember the August 6, 2001 PDB? Remember the headline? It said, “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.” As Clarke told the 9/11 Commission, “the system was blinking red” with warnings. Yet the President ignored them all.
Bush wants to be remembered as a War President. Really, he is the Vacation President– he holds the record for the most downtime of any chief executive. Whenever something big came up, he was vacationing and could not be bothered to do anything. That’s why the August 6, 2001 PDB failed to interest Bush enough to even schedule an urgent meeting.
#11 by Richard Okelberry on December 1, 2008 - 10:53 am
Richard W.
Ok, Richard… It is apparent that you believe there was actionable intelligence prior to 9/11. Specifically, how do you think President Bush should have responded? What SPECIFICALLY would you have had him do? Covert military attacks into Afghanistan? Or maybe an all out war? Perhaps you believe that he could have persuaded post 9/11 security measures at airport and everywhere else in a pre-9/11 era. Maybe you would have liked him to indiscriminately start rounding up and questioning people of Arab decent to try and gleam information about the impending attacks. Remember while we may have known that Al-Qaeda wanted to attack us, we had no idea where, when or how. It’s time to put on your thinking cap Richard. You also need to remember that the Bush administration began at a point in time where Clinton’s failures against terror where still fresh including his Wag the Dog retaliation on an aspirin factory.
Of course we now know clearly the threat that Al-Qaeda poses. So if even one single attack ever occurs on U.S. soil under Obama we will know exactly who to blame, right? You WILL blame Obama if such an attack occurs right, Richard? You won’t be sitting here making excuses for him will you? As a man of integrity I am very certain that you will apply the exact same standard you apply to Bush to Obama!
Please be specific on what actions you believe either you or Al Gore would have taken prior to 9/11. You do have hind sight so this should be easy for you.
#12 by Richard Warnick on December 1, 2008 - 11:37 am
R.O.– Do you think it might have been a good idea for President Bush to meet with his chief terrorism adviser, Richard Clarke? Apparently Bush felt his time was better spent vacationing at the ranch.
If you want specifics, I generally agree with the acount of the 9/11 Commission. Obviously, the commission had the benefit of hindsight. But even if one or two of the things that went wrong before the 9/11 attacks had gone right, the plot might have been thwarted. To give you just one example, two of the hijackers were known terrorists known to be in the USA. As it turned out, they were living with an FBI informant in San Diego. If the al-Qaeda threat had been a top-level priority from day one of the Bush administration, I really think history might have been different.
As for President-elect Obama, I expect that if he’s handed a PDB on the morning of January 21 with a headline that warns of an imminent al-Qaeda attack he’ll at least call an urgent meeting. Maybe he’ll even pass along the warning to law enforcement agencies. Ya think?
Today, as Obama introduced his national security team and declared, “The buck will stop with me,” ABC is airing an interview with President Bush in which he tries pathetically to evade his responsibility for ordering the invasion of Iraq. Shameful.
#13 by Richard Okelberry on December 1, 2008 - 1:50 pm
Richard W.
So let me get this straight, if President Bush had met with Clark and issued a nationwide warning to law enforcement, 9/11 and if they had pulled in the two terrorists that you mentioned (which by the way does not require a Presidential stamp of approval to do) it is your belief that 9/11 would have never happened? Is that right, Richard? Is it your belief that Bush signed an order prohibiting the FBI from arresting these two terrorists? Also, I imagine you believe that these two would have gladly told us everything they knew if we just asked them nice enough. As long as we are playing the IF and BUT game, you do realize that IF Clinton had simply taken bin Laden from the Saudis that 9/11 would have never happened, BUT his lawyer told him that they couldn’t, right?
Let me ask you something, Richard. Were you as critical of Clinton when the first attack on the Trade Centers occurred? Did you blame Bill for that attack? Show me some of your essays surrounding that event. What is your assessment of that debacle? Was Clinton to busy getting Lewinskis to know what was going on? Come on Richard, if you had a choice between taking a vacation cutting trees on a ranch and getting a Lewinski, which would you choose. Or did you just assume that Clinton had done EVERYTHING possible to avoid the attack?
I should note that you avoided answering whether or not you will be just as critical of Obama if there is another attack on U.S. soil. I bet you won’t be! I bet you will do everything you can to defend the man even though Obama will have a much clearer vision of the threat Al-Qaeda posses and will have the benefit of the various tools put in place under Bush, like a central terrorist information clearing house, Homeland Security, beefed up intelligence gathering and so on. I will put money that you will not say a single negative word against Obama if the day ever comes.
In fact, I doubt you will seriously criticize him even once during his entire Presidency. Even on the day of his inauguration when the order doesn’t come to cease all aggression in Iraq and begin re-deploying troops we won’t hear a single negative peep from you. You are about to get a dose of reality Richard. Very shortly you will not have Bush to complain about anymore. This will instantly become Obama’s war and your war by proxy. Let’s see how quickly you turn from being a complainer to an excuser of ill deeds.
I mean how hard can things be from this point on? The war in Iraq is all but won and the troops are already getting ready to come home. Biden knows where the Al-Qaeda hold outs are, right? The economy can only go up from here and in a few short months we will all be living at pre-Bush levels, with massive tax surpluses, low unemployment and free medical for everyone. Right?
Get-r-Done, Richard!
#14 by Richard Warnick on December 1, 2008 - 2:50 pm
R.O.– Your logic escapes me. Whether I’m critical of future actions of President Obama next year depends on what those actions are. Don’t project your blind loyalty to Bush onto me. I didn’t even vote for Obama, and I never liked President Clinton either (I wasn’t blogging about Clinton in 1993, because I was in the Philippines and blogs hadn’t been invented). I’m still a registered Republican.
President Bush was clearly asleep at the switch on the al-Qaeda threat. Because the President sets the agenda for the entire government, there were consequences. To give two more examples, the Phoenix memo about the threat of al-Qaeda terrorists training at civil aviation schools was ignored and the the arrest of Zacharias Moussawi was not placed into the proper context. If the FBI had been informed of what Richard Clarke knew, and if there was greater awareness of al-Qaeda’s intent, they might have been able to connect the dots before it was too late.
As for the two hijackers in San Diego, the FBI did not know that they were in the country because the CIA didn’t tell them. I agree that arrest and interrogation might not have been the best course of action. They were living with an FBI informant (who failed to inform because nobody asked!) They freely told acquaintances about the upcoming 9/11 attacks, information that wasn’t shared with authorities until later. Just asking around a little, and keeping close tabs on these guys might have been enough. Have you read the 9/11 report?
The Iraq occupation is “all but won”? I suppose that means you’re getting ready to blame Obama for anything bad that happens in Iraq from now on. I’m not going to play that game. For U.S. foreign policy, “winning” Iraq is a meaningless concept. There is nothing for us to win. Not even the oil– it’s a lot cheaper to buy oil with money than try to take it by force.
#15 by Tim Carter on December 1, 2008 - 9:01 pm
Richard O, I think you need to be honest here also.
” As long as we are playing the IF and BUT game, you do realize that IF Clinton had simply taken bin Laden from the Saudis that 9/11 would have never happened, BUT his lawyer told him that they couldn’t, right? ”
Have you blogged about Bush (pre 9-11) refusing to take Bin Laden from Afghanistan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDvVZ2Gn-9g
And if there is another attack on US soil, will you blame Bush or Obama?
#16 by Sean on March 24, 2009 - 11:35 pm
Sorry, Bush is an idiot and quite arguably the worst president in American history. Even advisers who worked for him said the same thing. So many obvious defects in the man and there are still those who want to give him a pat on the back for being a good president.
Interesting, people who say the Iraq War was necessary…so, for the same criteria used for ousting Saddam, why wasn’t North Korea hit first? It fit even more perfectly than Iraq – lunatic tyrannical leader, oppressive and threatening stance in an important region of the world, is confirmed to both support terrorism and contain nuclear weapons…the list goes on for quite a length.
Ole Richard Okelberry here really needs to [re]read up on his favorite pet monkey, too. Read Bob Woodwards series of books chronicling the Bush Administration. He’s very neutral in his writing but still paints the same obvious picture you witnessed in Bush for the last eight years – the man is just a plain idiot.
Fuck Bush and the people who honestly supported him.