Who still likes Bush?

See poll, meant to add poll

Who here still likes George W Bush?

A couple of coworkers said they still love Bush. The question here:

How do you currently feel about Bush?

I do not like or dislike Bush. He did a lot of things that didn't piss me off and he did a lot of things that did piss me off just as Obama has done some things to piss me off and some thing that didn't piss me off.

I like him better now that he's not in the WH, and particularly since his people are no longer in the WH, Justice Dept, etc etc etc

I forgot to add the poll. See my other thread.

MyOwnDrum said:

I forgot to add the poll. See my other thread.

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Sorry .... found it. Maybe you could ask a mod to merge the threads?

I can't vote tho, no poll option quite fits for me. Could be an interesting poll tho.

The longer Obama is in office, the better Bush is looking. But I still dislike Bush very much. I just wish we'd improve our Presidents, not dig a deeper hole.

Re: Who here still likes George W Bush?

MyOwnDrum said:

A couple of coworkers said they still love Bush. The question here:

How do you currently feel about Bush?

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funny, there are very few people i know, republican or dem, who admit to liking bush. with the exception of dittoheads.

I really like Bush a lot. His major flaw was that he wasn't enough of an orator to inspire across the political spectrum. Therefore, there were a lot of political forces arrayed against him and his policy. The policy I liked the most was the war in Iraq.

My speculation is that the Bush Administration knew exactly what they were doing from the get go in the Iraq war. All of the turmoil immediately after the invasion was planned. The activities of General Jay Garner, followed by Paul Bremer were part of the plan. This includes things like disbanding the Iraqi Army so that the power structure of Sunnis in Iraq was broken irrepairably. This empowered the Shia so that their power base could be dominant and enable Sistani's school of political theory. It possibly goes so far as to anticipate the insurgency.

As far as the objectives of the war in Iraq go, there are short-term and long-term objectives. One short-term objective is that it forced Saudi Arabia to deal with the growing Jihadist threat within that country and they did indeed deal with it. I think the number one long-term objective was to build a weapon and deploy it in the region. That weapon is a democratic Iraq and the primary target is Iran.

There is a dysfunctional democracy in Lebanon. Turkey has a democracy. And of course Israel. There are no other democratic examples. The primary target of a democratic Iraq is Iran. We can see the effects starting to cause trouble within that country. The recent clashes between A-nejad and the moderates hid a more important clash, which was between various groups of clerics.

There are two schools of political theory in the Twelver sect of Shia Islam. The Twelver sect is the dominant sect in Iraq and Iran (and other countries in the Gulf). One of these political schools is in power in Iran and is the Khomenist School. This school believes that the government is run by the clerics and so the clerics have executive power in Iran. The other school is the Quietist School headed by Ali Sistani of Iraq. This school thinks that the jurisprudence of a government should be run by the Clerics, or at least that the Quran is a leading text of jurisprudence, but that the executive is a secular function.

Since the invasion and introduction of democracy in a Quietist fashion in Iraq, there has been a lot of clerical travels between Najaf, Iraq and Qom, Iran. Qom is the spiritual center of Iran. The Quietist school has been gaining significant ground against the Khomenist School in Qom and the real struggle in Iran is between groups of clerics over who will run the government.

This is a non-trivial result of the invasion of Iraq, and it's true long-term objective. I believe it was the primary objective.

Re: Who here still likes George W Bush?

He came to my wedding. He's a great guy.
Any time he wants to hang at my place, he's more than welcome.

Re: Who here still likes George W Bush?

Goobieman said:

He came to my wedding. He's a great guy.
Any time he wants to hang at my place, he's more than welcome.

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Cool he was member at my church I grew up in and now he lives pretty close by.

Re: Who here still likes George W Bush?

Goobieman said:

He came to my wedding. He's a great guy.
Any time he wants to hang at my place, he's more than welcome.

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winston53660 said:

Cool he was member at my church I grew up in and now he lives pretty close by.

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Pretty neat ...

Re: Who here still likes George W Bush?

winston53660 said:

Cool he was member at my church I grew up in and now he lives pretty close by.

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AND... I'd not think twice about leaving him alone with my 20-something daughter.

(I was kidding about the wedding, BTW.)

Re: Who here still likes George W Bush?

Goobieman said:

AND... I'd not think twice about leaving him alone with my 20-something daughter.

(I was kidding about the wedding, BTW.)

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Ya know I wouldn't have a problem with that either.

You should see the black SUVs crawling around the hood

Re: Who here still likes George W Bush?

Goobieman said:

AND... I'd not think twice about leaving him alone with my 20-something daughter.

(I was kidding about the wedding, BTW.)

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Wait? He didn't come to your wedding? I totally believed that. :doh

Re: Who here still likes George W Bush?

liblady said:

funny, there are very few people i know, republican or dem, who admit to liking bush. with the exception of dittoheads.

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I was rather surprised that they admitted it publicly, in mixed company.

Re: Who here still likes George W Bush?

MyOwnDrum said:

I was rather surprised that they admitted it publicly, in mixed company.

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In person he is a fairly nice guy.

Re: Who here still likes George W Bush?

winston53660 said:

In person he is a fairly nice guy.

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I was speaking of him as a public figure. In person I'm sure he's decent and likable.

Re: Who here still likes George W Bush?

MyOwnDrum said:

I was speaking of him as a public figure. In person I'm sure he's decent and likable.

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Oh he stank as a President

Re: Who here still likes George W Bush?

I think he's a likeable personaliity, he did some things very well in foreign policy in the early onset of his administration, his appointments to the SCOTUS were terrific,, Condi rice was a better than average Sec. of State, etc.
Bush's biggest political failings are going to be on domestic policy and media relations, he shouldn't have signed the first stimulus package into law, it led to that second stinker and talk of a third one by the current batch of morons in Washington, With the early Republican majority during his White House tenure, we could have scaled back a lot of useless governmental powers, but they were expanded, there was a good shot at improving the tax code, yet it was further complictated, and used to think it was impossible to **** up the economic benefits of a tax cut.........yet this decade both political parties found a way to do that, signed by the former president.

Again though, what the former president did right he deserves credit for, and he was IMO less polarizing than the current resident of the White House.

Re: Who here still likes George W Bush?

Other than his bad spending for 8 years, I've got nothing really bad to say about him. He fails as a conservative... but other than that and maybe some smaller policy issues I disagreed with, I've got nothing against the guy.

Re: Who here still likes George W Bush?

MyOwnDrum said:

A couple of coworkers said they still love Bush. The question here:
How do you currently feel about Bush?

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He did his best in the face of adverse circumstances

Re: Who here still likes George W Bush?

Goobieman said:

He did his best in the face of adverse circumstances

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Well I think he did try his best and I really wish things worked out better for him even though I disagreed with just about everything he did.

I think he was below average. I think he stabbed us (his conservative base) in the back way to much to be anything other than below average or less.