Lonely and lame, Bush agonises over legacy
· President avoids limelight after Libby backlash
· Republican ally withdraws support over Iraq
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Saturday July 7, 2007
The Guardian
Laura Bush held an early family party for him on Wednesday, to which a few professional golfers were also invited, and on Thursday the president made a rare outing to watch a baseball game. But these few birthday celebrations apart, it has been a relentless week for the US president.
A backlash against his decision on Monday to commute the jail sentence of the former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby was followed on Thursday by the withdrawal of support for his Iraq strategy by Pete Domenici, a Republican senator for 35 years. The loss of such a loyal senator is ominous for Mr Bush's war plans.
More defections are expected, and Mr Bush cuts a lonely figure, holed up in the White House fretting over his legacy.
Professor Robert Dallek, author of several books about the presidency, said that while it was not unusual for a president to limp to the end of his term as a lame duck, he saw Mr Bush as a particularly pronounced case. "If you are looking at defeat, no one wants to be associated with the person responsible. This is the case with Bush. You do not see his party rally round. He has united opinion against him and it makes for a lonely, isolated position," Prof Dallek said. "Once a president loses trust, he cannot govern effectively."
Although he has 18 months left in office, Mr Bush's options are limited. Last week, he lost his last chance for snatching a lasting domestic legacy when his immigration reform bill was destroyed in Congress. On foreign policy, there is little optimism of a late breakthrough on Israel-Palestine, Iran or Iraq
---OK, to this very day a lot of serious Republicans still hold true that Jimmy Carter will and still does go down and this Nation's worst President so I ask you this, Does W. top him? People seem to forget about W's first term, it wasnt that bad. He did an outstanding job in the wake of 9/11 as far as keeping this country together and united. Sure, sure, some can bitch that he helped put the dreaded "Patriot Act" into play, but whatever, im not talking about that.....So, what do think, Carter vs. Bush, whos worse? Granted, most of us were all to young to remember him, hell I think we were all too young to remember Carter really besides just kinda remembering him as President or something.....---
4 comments:
Hey, Eric... Sorry for my long absence. Let's see if I can provoke something here. Aside from W, I can think of two Presidents who might be worse than Carter: Nixon and Harding.
As for W's first term not being so bad, here are some of his wonderful accomplishments: (1) dropped support of the Kyoto process, and in so doing, stabbed his own EPA administrator in the back and pissed off our allies; (2) raised tariffs on steel but not finished goods, encouraging manufacturing jobs to move overseas; (3) enacted No Child Left Behind (NCLB), an expensive program that has never been funded properly, fails to achieve its stated objectives, and encroaches on historical local control of schools; (4) enacted the Medicare Act of 2003, a huge expansion of the federal government that benefits drug companies more than Medicare recipients; (5) deceived the American public in taking us into an unnecessary war in Iraq, then botched its execution while crowing "mission accomplished"; (6) had hundreds of men held illegally in Guantanamo -- a legal black hole -- where detainees had no means for challenging their detention and were kept there even when it became clear many were sent there in error; (7) made extensive use of the signing statement to illegally rewrite laws that were passed by Congress; (8) lowered tax rates on the high income brackets to an extent that the budget deficit ballooned to a quarter of the entire budget -- as if you earned $100 and spent $125; (9) failed to follow through on Clinton's plans to respond to the U.S.S. Cole bombing; (10) enacted legislation with Orwellian names such as "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" that did the opposite of what the names would suggest.
Nixon's Presidency is always overshadowed by the obvious, so I ask,in your opinion, was he a bad President because he was a criminal politician, or just because he got caught?
In this case, whether true or not, I still think W's 1st term will save him as not going down as this nations worst President. A man can and sometimes is judged by one single heroic action(s) over many bad decisions. I aint saying thats right or wrong, but I am saying that is the way it is at times....
I would say that W will with out a doubt go down in history as the worst president (and republican)of this century.
Nixon, may have been a douche, but at least he knew when to call it quits.
Carter was a good guy, who mabye was just in office in a rotten time and probably out of his league.
Worst Republican? Now that is another story.
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