Bush Tour Setting The Record Straight

December 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The Bush administration received a ton of criticism during their time. It was one of the more unpopular presidency’s in recent memory and so when George Bush decided to set the record straight, the whole world was willing to listen. It’s wasn’t as if they weren’t listening before but Bush was smart enough to know that telling people what he did wrong as he was still in office, or explaining what they didn’t want to see wouldn’t set anything straight. It would have only fueled the fire.

So as he’s has made the press circuit, he is setting the record straight once and for all. The first thing that he cleared up was probably the incident that got the most attention early and haunted him for the rest of his time in office. The day tragedy struck on 9/11 Bush was at a local kindergarten reading them a story. He got word during the story, but then proceeded to wait for 10 minutes before he ended up leaving the school.

This was heavily criticized to make it look like either Bush was compliant with the events of 9/11 or that he wasn’t smart enough to understand that there needed to be an immediate call to action. It was Bush who has been looking to set the events of that morning straight. Bush revealed that it wasn’t about being ok with the events or certainly not a sense of apathy that caused him to wait. It was about being presidential. It was about not panicking in a very difficult situation. It was about showing a sense of calm to a nation that was certainly anything but calm.

It’s true that Bush is going to be criticized for that and many other events that occurred during his time in office, but what Bush is trying to do is set the record straight once and for all. This book is a very good start in that direction.

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Bush Talks FEMA and Katrina

December 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

When a President leaves office they often find a way to tell their story. While it’s one of the hardest jobs that anyone can have, they aren’t often met with a ton of interest for their story. After all, so much is reported on before they ever leave office that the idea of telling their story seems almost redundant. Still, when George Bush left office there was quite the buzz about his own memoirs. It might have something to do with the fact that there has been no president that has been quite as polarizing as Bush.

His time in office saw so much change and an office in complete chaos and turmoil. It was an event when he left office and the country will always have strong opinions about the way he handled his business. One of the things his time in office will be remembered for is the events that happened during Hurricane Katrina. In 2005, Tragedy struck the brave men and women of New Orleans. When the levee broke it left the city under water. Bush, then President, highly criticized for waiting far too long to act on getting people the supplies that they needed. It was one of the things he was hammered the most for publicly.

Bush had an interesting explanation for the events and it seemed to make sense if you were on the outside looking in. As the President he has some form of control or authority over what happens in each state, but unless it is a situation of being under attack he can’t go over the governors head. So when the floods happened he waiting for then New Orleans governor to make something happen, but she waited and waited. Once it as time he stepped in, but after that it was far too late and there were so many who had needlessly suffered. It was a tough part of the job and one that damaged his already sketchy reputation.

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Looking Back on No Child Left Behind

December 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment

During the time that President Bush was in office he made a lot of changes and did a lot of things that he thought was in the best interest of the country. There are thing he did, like invading Iraq or his handling of the Katrina disaster, that have been very polarizing to the rest of the country. It’s a strange thing being President and not everyone will like him or the things that he does, but there are usually those that will defend his moves. One move that never gets defense is the No Child Left Behind act passed very early in his presidency.

The act, which is good natured in the spirit of, is really about getting kids on through their education even if they are struggling just a little bit. The spirit of the idea is that no child can be kept back a grade. It stems from the idea that kids who are left behind will end up quitting their education if they are asked to repeat their grades. They also feel like that teachers and the school system should be doing their job in order to make sure that kids pass their classes and score up to grade level on the standard tests.

The problem is that this law is a completely impractical way to run the academic lives of kids. Kids are needed to be held back in some situations. What this law did was make it so that even if a kid is not ready to handle the next level of education that they had to go to the next grade. This makes a child over matched and won’t allow them to get to their full potential. It’s clear that there needs to be a certain and immediate reform to this law. If nothing happens then they will be forced to suffer the same fate. This is one thing Bush did that there is no defense for.

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The Impact of the Patriot Act

December 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The aftermath of the events of September 11 were far reaching and had a profound impact on the way the country operates. It also drew a lot of controversy about invading Iraq, the persecution of Muslims, and the civil liberties of the American people. One such act that was passed during the aftermath, that was met with much scrutiny was the USA Patriot Act.

The Act was passed by the U.S Congress and was signed into law by George Bush on October 26, 2001. The title of the act itself is an acronym. It stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. The Act’s primary goal was to allow the government more access to do its job protecting the American people. The act gave law enforcement more access to tapping telephones, and searching through medical records in order to obtain information that might bring terrorists to justice.

In the past these restrictions were in place and had to be ok’d by a Federal judge in order for such information to be searched. However, with the Patriot Act in place there was little need for a judge. Now email and financial records could be searched. Of course there were some parameters that still had to be abided by. The law enforcement agencies couldn’t tap the phones without some form of probably cause and they had to be looking for specific things, but it still lent itself to a much more laxed system.

Another provision in the Patriot Act allowed the Secretary of the Treasury to regulate transactions in banks and other financial institutions. If the transaction involved foreign people or foreign companies than the Patriot Act allowed for a much more watchful eye. This was a measure to make sure that money wasn’t being passed to the wrong people. These provisions were a big part of the impact the Act had on American life.

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Overview of Horrific Bush Events

December 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

George W. Bush certainly had a presidency that could be deemed unforgettable. It seemed like the president had a knack for getting in himself into unpopular situations and creating controversy. It happens when a president is not afraid to take a stand and that stand tends to be on the unpopular point of view. There were those who worked tirelessly to have Bush thrown out of office, and breathed a sigh of relief when Bush finally left the White House. To understand why Bush was so disliked by so many, it’s important to have a firm grasp on what he did during his 8 years. Here is a look at his unpopular decisions during that time.

No Child Left Behind

This school law was one that Bush drew criticism for since the moment it was put into effect. The act stated that a child couldn’t be left behind due to poor test scores and that the child must be moved forward. Parents and educators were outraged that such a law would be put into place. This made people start teaching to the test and start moving kids up who should’ve been left behind.

Katrina

When a President sees national tragedy strike, he knows it’s his call to action. In 2005 when Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast and left the city of New Orleans in ruins, Bush didn’t move for days. Waiting on the Governor to ask for assistance Bush waited for the call to action. It never came, and people suffered. There was a massive outrage as people started thinking that Bush couldn’t care less about the poor African American’s who made up such a huge portion of the affected population. His lack of movement, or his inability to do so, would haunt him for his last years in office. These are just a couple of the polarizing events that made Bush such a controversial figure in the White House.

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More Polarizing Bush Decisions

December 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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There are few presidents who have been as unpopular as President George Bush. During his time in the White House he was very active and made many decisions that impacted the American people. These decisions were met with a lot of anger and angst and the Bush administration tried their best to do what they thought was best. Big decisions always tend to be unpopular ones and these decisions started a ground swell movement to have Bush removed from office. To understand the decisions, you must understand the full scope of the Presidency. Let’s take a look at some very unpopular decisions made by President Bush.

Invading Iraq

The nation mourned the events of 9/11. The were behind the President when he made the decision to go into Afghanastan and they were behind him when he launched a world wide assault on terror. However, when he decided to invade Iraq and go after Saddam Hussein, the American people didn’t feel so good about that. They weren’t sure that the U.S had any reason to be sending soldiers overseas to fight a dictator who wasn’t part of the fight against terror. However, the administration declared that there were weapons of Mass Destruction and those weapons were in Iraq. The decision was met with serious conflict and the American people still stand at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Partial Birth Abortion Ban

This law was not so much unpopular as it was polarizing in what it meant for the rest of the United States. The country had been as divided on abortion as any place. This ban made it impossible for women to have abortions in the second trimester. This was seen by many as a way to take away a woman’s right to choose. Bush was thought of as too religious for the Oval Office. These decisions made him one of the most unpopular presidents in the United States history, but he won’t be soon forgotten.

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A One Term President

November 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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There seems to be a big problem with the presidency these days. Once upon a time the president’s term used to be a lot different. They spent four years doing what they could to fix the nation and in the meantime they would campaign and hope to be re-elected. These days the office is much different. They spend the first two years trying to complete their parties agenda and the next two years looking to win another election.

With this is mind it has been suggested recently that the president only get one term in office. In France the president is given one six year term and they cannot be re-elected. This is a wonderful idea in the United States for a multitude of reasons.

No Election Worries

This is the biggest problem with a president. Every president in their first terms spends half the term trying to keep his office. If you are fortunate enough to catch a president in their second term that is the time when the real work begins. Having a one term and done rule would allow them to spend the entire term worrying about the issues that face the country and nothing else.

Real Work To Be Done

Don’t underestimate this as a real problem with the current structure. Presidents are always more productive in the second term because they realize there is nothing left to lose. They can offend or stand on a wall and no matter what they will be find because they weren’t coming back anyway. Let them do their thing but do it for one term and you might be surprised at the progress that can be made.

Having one term might sound like a novel concept but it has real possibility. Making it happen could provide long term solutions to the problems the country faces.

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Bush on Abortion

October 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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George Bush already made enemies by standing against research in the areas of climate change and stem cells. Bush’s stances on these scientific issues could easily be understood when looking at his background. Bush had business interests that would dictate letting oil companies retain their market share for the immediate future. Bush’s stance on stem cells and abortion brought him into the dangerous political hot water of the abortion debate.

Perhaps no other issue gets the American public to engage in more violent debate than abortion. The debate encompasses issues that are always controversial and often had little gray area; religion, women’s rights and right to life. With religion involved, science did not matter in the abortion debate. No amount of statistical data involved could ever convince the faithful that legal abortion was anything other than a sin. And there was scientific evidence that safe and legal abortion saved the lives of mothers who would otherwise attempt to get an illegal back alley procedure.

Bush was seen by the faithful as the president who would finally overturn the controversial Roe vs. Wade decision that allowed women the right to seek an abortion. The 1973 decision had been the crusade of the Christian right for decades, and with their man in the White House the antiabortion crowd had made headway on an issue that the majority of Americans had already decided upon years ago.

Bush did make headway in one area that could affect Roe v. Wade. He stocked the Supreme Court with relatively young conservative justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts. With the court stocked with conservatives, there was some hope that someone would challenge Roe and come to a different conclusion this time.

But there was another way for Bush to outlaw abortion. He had been quoted as saying that he supported a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. This would trump the Supreme Court and be a defining legislative victory. Perhaps Bush did believe that a constitutional amendment was the best option for the country, but he never pushed the issue. It was one area where politics trumped faith.

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The Political Legacy of George W. Bush

October 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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In the Oliver Stone movie, W there is a scene when the fictional character of George W. Bush insists that he will never be “out-Christianed or out-Texaned” again after losing his first political race. Whether or not this scene actually occurred is debatable, but the spirit of the scene embodied the political tactics that Bush employed.

Bush lived off of his cowboy image. He proclaimed “Dead or alive’ when he announced the hunt for terrorist Osama Bin Laden, and he had a reputation for making the “Hook em’ Horns” sign, a symbol of the University of Texas Longhorns. It was something that someone’s dad might do to try and fit in, which was appropriate because he did have a daughter that attended the University of Texas at Austin. But it was typical of the image that Bush and his team strove to portray.

Bush is a blue blood. He was born into money and had earner his degrees as a legacy student first at the University of Yale and then at Harvard Business School. While Bush was every bit the insider that he accused others of being, he did everything in his power to show himself as something different. He distanced himself from his father’s legacy and found success as an everyman.

It is difficult imagining Bush as the polarizing figure that he became without this effort to show himself as nothing more than a regular American Christian, but after he exposed that their was a market for this type of politician even at the highest political office in the country Bush opened the door for others to try and emulate his success.

Bush’s legacy is Sarah Palin, but while Bush was playing a role, Palin is a regular American. At least she was before national fame and book tours. Palin’s political success shows that to be successful in American it doesn’t require much more than than finding a niche and exploiting it. Perhaps Palin will never reach the heights that Bush did, but the model will be tried over and over until it is proven to no longer work.

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Bush Stands Alone

October 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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George W. Bush’s first term was a roller coaster of approval ratings that eventually reached a plateau, which made his reelection an uncertain proposition. Bush had won his office in a highly contested election that had to be determined by a Supreme Court decision. Once in office, Bush saw his approval ratings plummet after the media reported on his multiple vacations. His presidency also lacked any signature legislation. He appeared to be headed for a forgettable one term presidency, until Sept. 11, 2001.

The World Trade Center, which had been the target of Islamic terrorists in 1993 were not so lucky the second time around. From the smoldering wreck of the World Trade Center the presidency of the second Bush in the White House rose from the ashes. He earned support of the vast majority of he American public. He vowed to hunt down the perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks. His “dead or alive”pledge seemed to resonate with an American public that wanted revenge.

Bush almost immediately cashed in his political capital to launch a series of military attacks. Bush invaded Afghanistan to attack members of the terrorist group Al Qaeda and the radical Islamic Taliban regime. While most of the world supported American military action in Afghanistan, Bush’s proclamation that the United States reserved the right to make unilateral preemptive strikes anywhere that the nation deemed necessary was greeted by the international community as a bridge too far.

After all, America remains the only nation in human history to launch a nuclear attack, and while sympathy for America united the world after 9-11, the rest of the world began to see the Bush Administration as overreacting to the terrorist attacks.

By 2003, it became known that the United States was not satisfied only fighting its war on terror in Afghanistan. An old foe, Iraq and its dictator Saddam Hussein entered into American cross hairs. The world had marched with Bush into Afghanistan, but going into Iraq would mean that Bush and America would be isolated. Bush was willing to act alone and run for re-election on that conviction.

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