Sorry. The blame ultimately ends up with the guy who actually HAS the power. Bush couldn't stand up to Cheney? That's on HIM
You have a point and I agree with it largely, but it really misses the story also. While Bush might be 'morally' accountable, when you get an incompetent narcissist sociopath figurehead who will be 'president' and serve powerful interests, ultimately pointing your finger at them and 'blaming' them for doing so doesn't get you much except a 'duh' and a laugh from them at your expense.
Let's switch gears for a second to another election, governor of California nearly 20 years ago. You had a Democratic governor just re-elected doing pretty well after some not very good Republicans; but you also had a large scandal in how some energy companies were scamming the state, getting rich finding ways to rip off the people, with a corrupt Bush/Cheney White House on the scammers' side.
The energy companies had finally sort of gotten caught, and California was going to be entitled to a lot of damages for its citizens - $9 billion in fact, and Governor Davis had filed suit under a law that would let California get those damages. The person who would lose the most was Ken Lay, Enron CEO, and he began looking for ways to kill Davis' efforts.
He started an effort to find a new governor who would abandon the lawsuit, holding a secret planning meeting - one of the people recruited was Arnold Schwarzeneggar, who attended that meeting. They funded a recall movement to hype up public discontent over DMV fees Davis had increased - and it worked, the public who had just re-elected Davis, now voted to recall him. He was out of power, in part ironically blamed for all the power company problems.
And California had a strange election to replace him, anyone could run - you had over 100 people on the ballot from academics to unknown politicians to the quirky like actor Gary Coleman - and Arnold Schwarzeneggar, recruited and groomed by Enron and other businesses.
(Schwarzeneggar was not what you'd call the most 'loyal' person to those he should be - when he bought a plane, he did over the border in Nevada to avoid California sales tax; this was around the time he was fathering a child with the maid while married to Maria Shriver; and he supported screwing the people of California out of $9 billion to help Ken Lay).
And Schwarzeneggar's name recognition and 'public image' built by decades of movie hero roles was too powerful for the other 100+ candidates to overcome, and the 'celebrity' won the governorship - in a mockery of the theory of democracy. (Davis on the other hand was such a devoted public servant, he worked hard to help Schwarzeneggar learn the job, which Schwarzeneggar admitted and thanked him for).
Now, you can point fingers all day at Schwarzeneggar as the elected authority, and blame him for accepting the sweetheart settlement for Enron, which was the whole reason he'd been groomed for governor and a recall done to get him in. But how good does that do, really, appealing to some absent 'moral' conscience of Schwarzeneggar, without looking at the real issues from Ken Lay to the weaknesses in our democracy that let this happen?
(Of course, Schwarzeneggar went on to be the bad governor you'd expect - the state went into great debt, Schwarzeneggar put his name behind some initiatives and lost, and I think even the DMV fees Davis was recalled over were restored. He was followed by Democrat Jerry Brown returning as governor, who turned the state around to a far better shape. But a bit like trump, Schwarzeneggar was very 'popular' with many voters initially, so much so that he was
a 'celebrity politician' who took part in George W. Bush's re-election campaign with lots of half-jokes about how to overcome Schwarzeneggar being born out of the US so he could be president - he was similarly unqualified to Bush, but better looking and more appealing).
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