What makes bush a bad president

These folks have their predecessors in previous administrations left and right, Democrat and Republican , but, in the Bush administration, they were particularly unfettered. Suskind described another example of this grim dynamic in a revealing anecdote, the truth of which I can confirm because I heard it from a source at the Council of Economic Advisers the day it occurred.

It happened early in the administration, when the White House was promoting a tax rebate to stimulate the economy. As Suskind tells it :. The day before, the adviser had learned that the president had decided to send out tax-rebate checks to stimulate the faltering economy.

The fact of the matter was that in this area of policy, this adviser was one of the experts, really top-drawer, and had been instrumental in devising some of the very language now used to discuss these concepts. According to senior administration officials who learned of the encounter soon after it happened, President Bush looked at the man.

I thought you got that. But Bush knew better—on what basis, who knows? This fact was brought home to me a year or so after Bush left office when I ran into a woman I knew from graduate school. She had spent decades working in the government on arms control and was a strong Republican. She confided to me that her office had sent many reports to the Oval Office explaining that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, all of which were ignored.

After his departure from office, foreign officials who had worked with him expressed astonishment at his ignorance and lack of intelligence.

As such, it was difficult for us to communicate with him. I bring all of this up, of course, because of Donald Trump, whose stupidity I have discussed previously and who is killing thousands of Americans weekly from his incompetent handling of the coronavirus.

That is, deaths over and above those that would have occurred under competent leadership , such as that in Germany. Bush remains, much like his election, a subject of profound controversy, and any truly objective evaluation will likely be years in the future. The election of and the Supreme Court case of Bush v. Gore remain two of the most controversial political developments in the last half-century.

Instead, as one of his first actions, President Bush issued an executive order creating the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which further alienated some who thought government money should not go to organizations affiliated with churches.

Yet he did reach across the aisle on other issues including the No Child Left Behind Act, which was the most impactful change in education policy in a generation. Within nine months of taking office, President Bush was afforded the chance to unite the nation after the terrorist attacks of September 11, By most accounts, Bush did a masterful job of speaking for and to the American people.

His crisis leadership, including insisting on returning to the White House the night of the attacks instead of holing up in a safe bunker elsewhere, gave the American people confidence that someone was in charge.

He became the most popular President in the history of polling, reaching an astounding 90 percent approval rating in the wake of the attacks. The Taliban leadership was driven into the mountains and across the boarders into neighboring countries, including Pakistan. Those early successes, however, turned into the longest war in American history, and the President never was able to achieve the greatest symbolic goal of the effort, the killing or capturing of the mastermind of the attacks, Osama bin Laden; U.

Both efforts, especially the Patriot Act, sparked strong divisions within the American people throughout the Bush presidency. The initial attacks and invasion were extremely successful and popular but in the end no weapons of mass destruction were found anywhere in the country and a strong insurgency arose that resulted in the deaths of more than 4, Americans over the next eight years. The war grew increasingly unpopular, and the Democrats used it as a major wedge issue in the and elections, in which they first took over Congress and then the White House two years later.

On the domestic front, the Bush presidency scored early successes in gaining passage of large tax reductions and a major reform of the American educational system with the No Child Left Behind Act.

The tax cuts, however, were not made permanent, as the President wished, and the bipartisan education reforms proved very controversial with their emphasis on testing and school report cards. The tax cuts were eventually made permanent during budget negotiations in the Obama administration but No Child Left Behind was eventually replaced with a new national education plan in After his reelection in , Bush sought major changes to Social Security, arguing a partial privatization plan could insure its solvency.

Thinking about the lives lost, the returning wounded veterans, the families affected and the financial resources squandered, I feel there is nothing worse than a president making such a reckless decision. Additionally, Bush refused to raise taxes to force us all to pay in some way for that war. Worse yet, he lowered taxes and increased the deficit. First, he brought the threat that China poses front and center.

Americans of all stripes now agree that free trade is not fair trade. For too long, China was allowed to cheat and steal our technology, and now we find ourselves with a serious military competitor. Second, by calling out the foolishness of fighting wars that had nothing to do with our national security, he changed the dialogue among the political leadership. Finally, Trump opened a new path in Israeli-Arab relations. To the editor: I believe one can state with absolute certainty that Trump is the worst president in history.

He is dishonest, he does not follow science or even the facts, and he does not seek to unify the country. We know that Trump is very dishonest. He has told thousands of lies to the American people. A day does not pass without him misleading or lying to us.

Other presidents have been negligent in carrying out their duties but none has been so openly hostile to science and facts as Trump. No other president has sought to divide the American people to the extent that Trump has.