Bush Report Card

[DJBruce]

So now that George Bush has departed the office of president and the inauguration mania has claimed down, I am wondering how people would grade Bush's Administration and where would you rank him in the list of all the presidents.

 

Here are a few categories I can think of.

 

Domestic Affairs: C+

-Education: B

-I feel that No Child Left Behind although somewhat flawed was a large step in the right direction.

-Economy: D+

-Although the economy has faced a huge collapse over last few months the problems with the economy where begun before Bush's tenure so he does not completely fail.

-Other: C

-George Bush was able to rally and unity a nation after the devastating attacks on 9/11. Yet he was unable to guide the nation through hurricane Katrina.

International Affairs: B

-Relations with China: C

-Not horrible relations with China but things could have been better.

-Relations with Russia: B+

-Bush seem to work fairly well with Russia and was able to avoid hostilities over the plan to deploy missiles in Eastern Europe.

-War on Terrorism: A-

-Despite the not having captured Osama Bin Laden we have not been attack on American soil since the implementation of his new plan.

-War in Iraq: C+

-The beginning the war was mismanaged yet the surge has seemed to work.

-World Standing: D

-Not much to say except that the world have a lower image of us now.

-Other: A-

-The Bush Administration did a lot to help fight AIDS and other diseases in Africa and also had a excellent response to the Tsunami.

 

In my opinion Bush ranks right in the middle of all presidents. He had by no means a excellent presidency yet by no means the worse.

[Pangloss]

I think I'm going to suggest over on the mod board that we limit this thread to "report cards" only. It just feels too much like hitting people over their opinions to allow replies to people's "report cards" -- let's let people have their say in this thread without rebuke. What do you all think?

[Phi for All]

Domestic Affairs: D+

-Education: D

-I feel that No Child Left Behind was a good idea but it was so underfunded that it became a hindrance to positive learning. His stance against stem cell research made science a bad word in half the households in this country.

-Economy: D+

-Bush was asleep at the switch with regards to the economy. Even McCain warned him his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible. And as a moderate Republican, he should have been more interested in curbing government spending instead of racking up more deficit. The pal-sy deals in the Iraq war didn't help spread the wealth much either, a move that did much to undermine free market process.

-Other: D

-He inspired no confidence in our country other than an "us vs them" kind of uneasy domestic alliance, and it never felt really good, did it?. His lack of transparency, his coercion tactics, his general air of underhandedness all helped to make his the least trusted presidency I've ever seen in my lifetime, including Nixon.

International Affairs: D

-Relations with China: C-

-He unnecessarily aggravated the tensions between China and Taiwan with a hawkish stance that left little room for diplomacy.

-Relations with Russia: B-

-His stance with Russia was the same as his stance with China, but it works with the Russians when you roar like that.

-War on Terrorism: D

-He didn't get bin Laden, and I don't believe you can win a war on terror when there is religion involved. He did NOTHING to de-involve Islam (just the opposite, in fact) and for that alone we are in more danger now than before 9/11.

-War in Iraq: D-

-Take away the fact it should never have been started the way it was, he quite obviously wanted it to last as long as possible, with no exit strategy and no strategy that might have assured other countries it was anything other than a mistake.

-World Standing: F

-I don't think this country has EVER been held in lower esteem during any other president.

-Other: C

-The Bush Administration will end up helping the Obama Administration in its diplomatic efforts in much the same way it ends up helping to stop hitting your foot with a hammer. Obama is going to have at least a year of "good cop" good karma to work with, so thanks for that, W.

[iNow]

Domestic Affairs: D+

- Liberties and freedoms were sacrificed in the name of security. Past presidents have repeatedly warned of the dangers of sacrificing your principles and values, and becoming the evil you claim to be fighting, yet Bush did this repeatedly and in numerous instances.

 

-Education: C-

-Good motivation, but a bad idea that was not well executed anyway. Teachers are forced to "teach to the test," as that's how funding comes. It's ultimately caused our kids to get dumber. I also have strong issues with the incursion of the religious creationist agenda in the science classroom.

 

-Economy: F

- He didn't do it all himself, but he certainly chose people with the wrong ideology and belief systems that didn't match reality to lead his policy. Even Greenspan conceded that his understanding of how the free market would operate was fundamentally flawed, yet no such retraction from the administration. They blew it, and this could have been (not avoided, but) mitigated a very long time ago.

 

-Other: D

-He was an embarrassment, both in how he spoke and how he acted. He closed the doors to progress and opened new wounds of anger and hatred against our people. On a brighter side, Obama is going to get an immediate boost for just being different.

 

International Affairs: D

- See "Other" above. He's not exactly known for forming new bonds and easing world tensions. Hey, now Iran and North Korea have bombs, too... super (hmm... maybe Iran isn't quite there... yet... but you get the point).

.

-War on Terrorism: D

-Despite the lack of attacks, things got worse, not better. Bush was terrorists best recruiting propoganda, and they didn't even have to misrepresent him. The size and strength of our enemies grew tremendously, so this "war" only made things worse for our future.

 

-War in Iraq: C+

-Horrible fuster cluck, but certainly showing signs of improvement. I am happy to see difference in the region, and genuinely hope things work out, but I think the existing success has more to do with quality personnel in the military than with the vision Bush gave them.

 

I do give him an A for his work on AIDS in Africa, but an F for environment and energy, and D overall.

Edited January 24, 2009 by Sayonara³
Off-topic content removed

[bascule]

Wow, does anyone really want to see my report card for Bush? I think it's fairly predictable.

 

War in Afghanistan: F-

 

The Taliban have recouped. Osama bin Laden was allowed to escape. The country's government is completely corrupt and run at the behest of a shadow government controlled by the opium cartels. The entire country is essentially one big opium farm. What should've been the focus of our post-9/11 anti-terror activities was allowed to linger by the wayside, and is now an abominable mess.

 

Afghanistan remains a huge black eye for Bush foreign policy and the "war on terror" in general

 

War in Iraq: D-

 

The situation is Iraq is certainly better than the situation in Afghanistan and better than it was, so I'm not giving Iraq an F. However, the haphazard way the case for the war was made, the human casualties involved (both Iraqi and American), and the way the administration willfully disregarded the advice of the CIA in terms of disseminating intelligence the CIA themselves was unsure of do anything but earn this administration high marks for the war there.

 

Counterterrorism: D

 

Ascertaining whether an administration's counterterrorism policy is actually working is difficult to do, because you won't know it isn't working until it fails.

 

That said, two of the most visible domestic counterterrorism measures: the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security, both seem like jokes and wasteful failures.

 

Air travel in the United States, especially for foreigners, has become increasingly a more incovenient and hostile experience as paranoia surrounding potential terrorist attacks against airplanes has seemingly only increased. I don't think the measures that have been put in place are remotely pragmatic, and many give merely an illusion of security.

 

I have not seen any evidence of a credible terrorist threat which was stopped by this administration. Certainly there have been alleged "threats", but were the perpetrators actually serious and capable of pulling it off?

 

Economy: F

 

I think this president overall has been quite toxic to our economy. I'm not trying to pin everything on him. Clearly Greenspan is culpable in the financial crisis. However, I believe Bush has fostered economic policies which are counter to the country's best interests.

 

Under Bush we've seen massive increases in government spending coupled with a decrease in taxation. While it's arguable the original intent of the tax cuts was to stimulate the economy during the post-9/11 recession, the increases in spending were not. We've seen the budget of the DoD nearly double despite the DoD's inability to account for trillions of dollars of spending.

 

This increased spending with decreased revenue has resulted in rampant foreign borrowing by our government. This has lead to a massive devaluation of the dollar. Where 1 Euro would fetch US$0.75 when Bush took office, now US$1 fetches only 0.78 euros. The prices of consumer goods have skyrocketed. Commodities overseas which used to be traded in dollars, like oil, have moved to other currencies following the dollar's massive devaluation.

 

With the financial crisis looming, Bush urged a federal bailout of our financial institutions. This bailout is increasingly seen as little more than a handout that executives have used to line their pockets with.

 

World Standing: F

 

Following September 11th, 2001 the entire world felt sorry for America. Considerable support was thrown behind us from countries around the world. It's hard to imagine any other time in history when America was hated less. Countries around the world felt like that could just as easily happen to them, and there was an international outpouring of support.

 

Bush exploited those sympathies to get all nations on board for his "war on terror". Slowly, sympathy for America dried up and evaporated. Relationships grew increasingly vitriolic and Bush and vicariously America soon became hated around the world.

America's pre-emptive invasion of Iraq was not received well by the international community, who would go on to brand it "illegal".

 

As has been said earlier, I don't think there's been any other time in recent history when America has been looked down upon in this manner.

 

Civil Liberties: F-

 

At one point in time the Fourth Amendment and FISA checked the executive branch from wiretapping Americans without a warrant. Bush decided to bypass these checks and personally authorized a program which spied on innocent Americans without a warrant. A federal judge has ruled Bush culpable for this crime.

 

Furthermore, the NSA engaged in unwarranted and widespread electronic spying on Americans. Recently a whistleblower has emerged claiming the NSA's warrantless surveillance program targeted U.S. journalists, and vacuumed in all domestic communications of Americans, including, faxes, phone calls and network traffic.

 

I think this is a completely unprecedented abuse of executive power and one which flies in the face of our civil liberties.

 

--

 

I could keep going, but I think I've gotten my point across. I wasn't a fan of Bush.

[Pangloss]

My report card, based on the categories listed in the Wikipedia.

 

Domestic Policy

===========

Domestic Security: B-/C+

+ Re-forming all domestic security through the new cabinet-level DHS makes sense both economically and in terms of information management. Critics have blasted the old way, revolving around a multi-agency but conflicted-interest Director of Central Intelligence for decades, and this may ultimately prove to be the single most significant security achievement of the Bush administration.

- Attempting other security overhauls that were badly needed but poorly understood, debated, written, and/or implemented. Patriot Act, FISA mismanagement, domestic wiretapping, all fall under this category, which is generally a failure, but not enough to drag the grade down any farther than indicated above.

+ Credit for no attacks (sure sure, other factors are responsible, but you every Al Qaeda put away was one less opportunity, and even if replacements were created they had to be trained and enabled with money that had to be re-earned).

 

Diversity and Civil Rights: C

+/- Faith-based initiatives. I give him credit for exploring the idea, but some of them failed. I don't have a problem with the concept and I think it makes sense so long as it is appropriate and monitored.

- Gay rights. Come on, it's the 21st century for pete's sake. He does get some credit for appointing gays to administration positions.

+ Racial diversity. Gotta give him credit here for appointing minorities to key administration positions (Rice, Powell, Gonzales)

 

Science: D-

- Stem cell research.

+ Space exploration. Only thing saving him from failure here.

- Global warming (as it pertains to science funding). Applying politics to NSF funding and public relations was a disaster. I can almost give him credit for skepticism, except for the fact that the motivation was clearly not honest scientific skepticism, but rather a blatant ideological preference.

+ Pollution cleanups, better forestry, and the treehuggers can kiss my lilly white ass. But a relatively minor plus.

+/- Dodging the flawed Kyoto treaty. It was a bad treaty, though tactically it might have been better to sign it, so it's a wash.

+ ANWR drilling. Needs to happen, but the amount is such that it doesn't really account for much of a plus here.

 

Education: A

+ No Child Left Behind. Yup, a plus. It's not as if Democrats are going to chuck it out the window, folks -- they consider its only flaw to be lack of funding. And they're right, and it will continue, as should be. Credit where it's due.

 

Economy: D+

Up until a few months ago I'd have given him a great score here, but holy cow. Let's get specific, though:

+ Tax cuts. Damn right.

+ War on poverty. Rate drops from 34.6% to 12.4%.

- Real GDP up 2.5%. Acceptable but not great, and who knows how that it's crashing again. Can't call this a plus -- it's gotta be a minus.

- Budget deficits. When they were not necessary. Dammit. This minus outweights most of the pluses.

+ Free trade. Progress towards more FTAs.

 

Health Care: F

- He completely failed to even start to realistically address the problems with health care in this country. Period.

 

Social Security: F

- Privatization? Come on. Get real.

 

Misci: F

- Ban on partial-birth abortion. GTF out of the doctor's office. Yeesh.

- Terri Schiavo. (Mostly congress, but Bush gets a piece of the blame here too.)

+ Amber Alert system.

- Adam Walsh Act (national database for registered sex offenders)

- Hurricane Katrina handling. All hurricanes are disasters, but this one was much more of one than it needed to be.

+ Supreme Court picks. Excellent, but not enough to save this category from a failing grade.

 

Overall Domestic Policy Grade: C-/D+

 

I'll do foreign policy separately.

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Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

Bush Foreign Policy Report Card

========================

 

Afghanistan: B

I think this has been well-handled in general, but has suffered mainly because it could have used the resources we spent in Iraq.

 

Iraq: F

Bad decision, poorly handled. This one decision alone is almost enough for me to fail the entire presidency. Surge almost saves this category from a failing grade, but not quite. We'll see what happens in the long run -- I could amend this to a D ten years from now.

 

Middle East: F

- I dunno, maybe it's not possible for anybody to get a passing grade here. But aside from the general lack of progress in Israel, there's also poor progress with Syria, Egypt, and others, and negative progress with Iran and with allies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

+ Libya. I guess that's something.

 

Africa: B

+ AIDS funding and committing a larger percentage of GDP to helping there, which makes a lot of sense and not just on humanitarian grounds.

- Darfur.

 

Caribbean/South America: D

- Nobody seems to care about Haiti.

- South America is a rotting cesspool of anti-Americanism -- nice work there.

 

Europe: D

- This is mainly due to Iraq, but the point is he blew it with all our allies over there. It may not be entirely fair, but it was his responsibility.

 

Overall Foreign Policy Grade: F

Overall administration grade: D

 

To be honest I'm a little surprised I arrived at such a low grade. But when I added it all up and honestly reviewed my feelings, I could just barely pass the guy at all. There are quite a lot of individual things I can point at and say "that was good", but the bad things so outweigh them that I just can't go any higher. But I am a bit surprised at the result.

Edited January 24, 2009 by Pangloss
Consecutive posts merged.