Posted by
Pete Zimmerman on Saturday, December 27, 2008 8:15:20 PM
Hindsight is always 20/20, but if there is anything abundantly clear from the presidency of George W. Bush, it is that compromising with the left does nothing but earn you the lowest approval ratings in history and scorn from BOTH the right and the left.
In 2000, people elected what they thought was the "conservative" presidency of George W. Bush. I put the word conservative in parenthesis because it is clear after 8 years that his presidency was anything but conservative.
Coming into office, the new president was haled as someone that could bring Democrats and Republicans together, someone who had worked very effectively with Democrats in Texas as Governor. And George was determined he could do the same thing in Washington, even inviting Ted Kennedy over for dinner and a movie.
But the conservative republican soon proved he was anything but a fiscal conservative, not vetoing a single spending bill in the first 4 years he was in office. Not intent on upsetting anyone, George W. Bush instead set out to show the world what a nice guy he was, honoring any and all requests to spend the taxpayer's money. The contrast between GWB and conservatives soon became abundantly clear - much to our horror!
On the other side of the equation, GWB wanted to please the social conservatives with his ban on embryonic stem cell research, and hawkish views on the military and the U.S. response to 9/11 and Iraq. The left was not on board, especially after things went wrong in Iraq with a badly managed war that should have taken a year or two, not five.
GWB says that his decisions are made on principles, so he cannot be beholden to a political party. But what principles are those? Spend as much money as you can to make the Democrats like you? At the same time alienating the people that put you in office in the first place? People that want responsible and conservative spending? Stay loyal to your friends and those you appoint to office, even though they totally screw up and almost drive our country into the ground? Can you say Donald Rumsfeld?
Don't get me wrong, as a person, I like George Bush, but as a president he stood with everyone and for nobody. He led the forces of good with incompetent men and he was too blind to see it. He tried to make nice with the Democrats and ended up being the butt of their jokes.
The president and his men are famous for saying that history will judge them, and indeed it will. He left office having spent the most money of any president, unable to recognize or stop one of the worst financial disasters in history, unable to recognize and protect the American people from the unscrupulous practices of a banking industry gone wild, and not to repeat myself, but unable to defeat the tiny country of Iraq in 5 years of war - of course you could argue the problem their was that we chose to stay around to build a new nation. Whatever the reason, too many young Americans died as a result.
Godspeed in your new life George.