That George W. Bush is one of the worst Presidents we’ve had in history (if not the worse)? In his 8-year tenure, he has utterly failed in every respect. This country is so much worse than it was 8 years ago that’s it’s really just downright sad. People can do their own research but let me just mention some brief highlights:
National Security and Foreign Policy
We are engaged in 2 wars. We’re losing in Afghanistan to the resurgent Taliban – this is due to negligence and obsessive focus on Iraq, who had nothing to do with 911 and didn’t pose any imminent threat to us. We still haven’t caught Bin Laden after 7 years. We’re now spending $10 billion a month on both wars when we can’t afford such expenditures. These wars have not made us safer. They overstretch and weaken our military capabilities. Bush leaves behind the legacy of the preemptive strike and unilateral action in violation of the UN charter. This stance along with revelations of torture has made the US extremely unpopular abroad and severely damaged our credibility. Let’s not mention the false pretenses used by Bush to invade a much weaker, sovereign country. By all accounts, he should be tried as a war criminal.
Economy
Does this even need to be mentioned? Bush has managed to run the economy right into the ground. After unprecedented growth and budget surpluses from the Clinton years, we now have a record deficit and we’re facing the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. The bottom isn’t here and the government doesn’t really know what they’re doing. The $700 billion bailout did absolutely nothing to calm the markets and the Dow has seen record drops over the last 2 weeks.
Education
No Child Left Behind has been broadly panned as a utter failure in education policy. Schools are doing worse and No Child wasn’t even sufficiently funded. Costs of college education are higher than ever and access to federal funds for student loans is more limited.
Healthcare
More Americans than ever lack health insurance and medical costs have skyrocketed. Insurance companies often refuse to provide coverage for costly illnesses and conditions.
Energy
They’ve done absolutely nothing about energy. We are still heavily dependent on foreign oil and we consume 25% of it, although we have less than 5% of the world’s population. Oil companies have made record profits while we pay more and more at the pump. The current drop in oil prices is due to reduced demand and threat of global recession. No incentives (or not good enough) were provided to auto companies to embrace hybrid technology and alternative fuels and now American companies like GM and Chrysler are struggling heavily against their Japanese counterparts.
Environment
This administration has failed to acknowledge global warming and refused to join the vast majority of the world in enacting the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions.
Civil Liberties
The Patriot Act, Domestic Security Enhancement Act, Military Commissions Act give the government unprecedented power to trample over our civil liberities and remove due process. Elements in those acts clearly violate basic tenets of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
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These are things just off the top of my head. In any area that you can bring up, Bush has failed in. You know, what the Obama campaign says about the McCain campaign is politically motivated but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. McCain is going to continue most of Bush’s failed policies. McCain’s copycat strategy of “we need change” is complete baloney. Case in point, he wants to completely deregulate healthcare and is touting a plan that would literally end employer-provided healthcare benefits – yea, so we can all get screwed over even more by the HMO’s. And with global warming, it just plain ticks me off when Palin says she doesn’t want to debate the causes. HOW DO YOU ADDRESS GLOBAL WARMING IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE CAUSE?! How do you fix ANY problem without finding and fixing the root cause? Sarah Palin, are you an idiot?! I think so.
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