Honestly, you make some valid points but the reality is - a lot of things changed. Bush had a lot of stuff on his plate that he wanted to do in 2000 when he got elected. He had money, he had a good economy, and all of the healthcare reform, education reform, corporate giant prosecuting, etc was capable of being done.

September 11, 2001 changed that though man. It smashed our economy and turned it into a spirally recession. The worst we've seen since the Depression. Job loss rocketed as consumers were afraid to spend any money because we were afraid of Terrorism and the effects it had on us, and to compound the problem we now had a war that we had to fight.

The war on terrorism, that is. I know you say it's no excuse but it really is man. It really is. We had to develop a new plan, a new offensive, reinitiate our intelligence services that had been cut all but to nothing, and we had to do it fast and efficiently. We had no time to waste and no time to allow the money to come in to do this. Where did that come from? Well, frankly, we had no choice but to go in more debt to do this.

I wont sit here and say the timing of the Iraqi war was good, it wasn't. That's a debate all in itself, so I'll give the 87B deficit that he created for that to you guys, as a fault of GWB.

But what I wont give is that he caused the economy to fall, jobs to fail, and the country to "sprial downward" shortly after his election. Look, if it was a country that attacked us, we would have been able to deal with it a lot better and cheaply than the terrorists. The reason being, we were setup to deal with exactly that kind of threat. We were NOT set up intelligence-wise or training wise to deal with the attack of terrorism and the subsequent change in policies to be able to find them, track them, find their money sources, attack them, and remove them from their country's of origin. That had to be created ON THE SPOT with no time to spare, at any cost. To me, it's a cost worth dealing with.

Now, Osama's capture is important; but it is not the end all be all on the war on terrorism, give it time. I'm sure Osama will be captured dead or alive before November, and if he's not -- it doesn't matter all that much because he really isn't in control of his organization anymore anyway.

Back to jobs. While the recent job survey wasn't quite as high as we had liked, the jobs *have* been increasing, and the economy *has* been rebounding at a faster rate than nearly any other time. The quarter before last it grew 8.x%, faster than even during the dot com boom. This quarter it grew 4.x%, again a very high percentage.

Jobs have been increasing, granted last month wasnt the 200,000 expected, but it wasn't a decline either. Unemployment is at a 5.6% rate which is lower than 70% of any other time the unemployment rate has been recorded, in US History. Even during the dot com boom unemployment was only at 5%.

So, jobs are coming back, money is flowing back in and the economy is rebounding, even after a terrible tragedy, a perhaps unecessary war (we have yet to see if it was necessary, so I must assume that there is a possibility it was not, even though i do support it), and a recession that was all but unheard of in US History.

I truely believe that the next 4 years will bring more money, more jobs on a month to month basis (just as they have so far), and once that it on it's way, all of the stuff that Bush wanted to do BEFORE he was dealt such a terrible hand, he will be able to get to it.

I wont sit here and say that he's done everything right, he hasn't. No one does everything right and President Bush is no John F. Kennedy or George Washington, and neither of THEM did everything right. But, Bush has done a pretty good job for this country given the circumstances he's been dealt. Oh, and on a personal level. I got a nice tax refund thanks to president bush. And no, I dont care if the super rich got a bigger refund than me, as far as I'm concerned, they deserve one - just because of all the people trying to scam their money out of them just because they have a lot of it.

 

Wow. Just wow. I'm shocked that you percieve Bush & Cheney et al. as the better choice on the basis of foreign policy. The Bush administration has laid waste to long standing relationships within the EU over the invasion of Iraq.
I would give Kerry a little more credit, personally.

Kerry in 04.

 

wait wait wait... we had a war we had to fight?? which war is this?? one minute we are pursuing a dude that has killed thousands of americans and the next, another dude that is a percieved (under false intelligence) growing threat

i are teh confused... and i think dubya and papi were a little eager to get back to iraq... there's a reason the UN didnt support us

 

Read my response, dont' skim over it.

The war he *had* to fight was the war on Terrorism, not Iraq.

The war in Iraq has yet to be determined if we had to fight it or not, and I will give it to you guys that it may have in-fact, been a waste of $87B.

 

that was my point..

 

Personally I think the European Union is attack against the United States ability to have a stronger economy in itself.

And frankly, the majority of the countries that dont' support us or were harmed by our decision to go into Iraq, really havn't been good allies to begin with. They've been there because they wanted our protection, not because they've ever really done anything for us.

Admittingly, Bush can be a little hard-lined on foriegn policy, but when it comes to terrorism and telling countries that we wont stand for their support of it, or threats to our national security, we need someone who is hard-lined. In my opinion that's better than a man who is willing to reopen dialog with a country that has been a supporter of terrorism for at least the past 20 years, a country that is about to collapse from within' itself -- without our military helping it out (like we had to do in Iraq) -- which will then bring a new and strong ally in the middle east, to the US. If they don't collapse, we wont have that and the middle east "reform" will take much longer, and be much bloodier.

Again, I'm torn on the Iraq issue. I support it now, in the beginning I didn't, and in the future I may not. So I'm not trying to turn this into another Iraq debate. I think I need more time, a year or two more, to decide if it was the right thing to do or not.

 

Well that was a lame point, because I made that point in my original comment.

You can't respond to someone's response by saying what they said. Unless of course, you are agreeing with me.

and FYI, I'd vote for someone who will remain to be nameless, if he was actually going to challenge Bush for the position. But he's not, so my vote has to go to Bush...

 

i wasnt refuting, obviously :chuckles:

but i wasnt agreeing with everything either, esp that last line

 

I think I'm adminttingly a little paranoid about the motives of this board and the majority of the internet.

It seems to be primarily democrat/liberal, so I'm used to the attacks coming in -- it's rare I see someone somewhat centered saying "I agree with part, but not all".

My bad.

 

Certainly, no president this side of FDR has been "perfect." Hell..Blessed with hindsight, I think Clinton's tightening of the military and intelligence budget, combined with poor responses to the Somalian Crisis and the attack on the USS Cole, set us up- in part- for an attack like 9.11. And I agree, we were blindsided by 9.11.01. It radically changed everything.

But in my heart, I cannot see how the invasion of Iraq could have come at a worse time. We still have men in Afghanistan, and that problem is far from resolved.

The billions spent in removing Hussein could have been fed into MediCare, Social Security investment funds, education, etc.

I'm not going to blame Bush for the job losses, what I chastize his administration for is failure to act.... a pandemic failure to act on virtually all elements of the domestic agenda.

He has neglected serious problems at home that IMHO, were much more pressing than the removal of Hussein (as I mentioned in discussions prior to the Invasion).

Supply-side economic theory can't work when companies take the money and run. And that's exactly what's happening. It's the 1970's all over again. Corporations are simply taking the money and continuing to outsource their jobs overseas. Dell, State-Farm, Nike, Addidas, GM, Ford, General Mills, etc, etc. All are finding their labour elsewhere. And we are suffering as a result of this administration's failure to act.