Historian Douglas Brinkley: Bush joins Hoover as a case study on how not to be President

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Move Over, Hoover
By Douglas Brinkley
Sunday, December 3, 2006; Page B01

....Clearly it's dangerous for historians to wield the "worst president" label like a scalp-hungry tomahawk simply because they object to Bush's record. But we live in speedy times and, the truth is, after six years in power and barring a couple of miracles, it's safe to bet that Bush will be forever handcuffed to the bottom rungs of the presidential ladder. The reason: Iraq....

***

Nobody has accused Bush of flinching. After 9/11, he decided to circumvent the United Nations and declare war on Iraq. The principal pretext was that Baghdad supposedly was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. From the get-go, the Iraq war was a matter of choice. Call it Mr. Bush's War. Like a high-stakes poker player pushing in all his chips on one hand, he bet the credibility of the United States on the notion that Sunnis and Shiites wanted democracy, just like the Poles and the Czechs during the Cold War....When you don't achieve a stealth-like victory in a war of choice, then you're seen as being stuck in a quagmire. Already the United States has fought longer in the Iraq war than in World War II. As the death toll continues to rise, more and more Americans are objecting. The pending Democratic takeover of Congress is only one manifestation of the spiraling disapproval of Bush.

At first, you'd want to compare Bush's Iraq predicament to that of Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam War. But LBJ had major domestic accomplishments to boast about when leaving the White House, such as the Civil Rights Act and Medicare/Medicaid. Bush has virtually none. Look at how he dealt with the biggest post-9/11 domestic crisis of his tenure. He didn't rush to help the Gulf region after Hurricane Katrina because the country was overextended in Iraq and had a massive budget deficit. Texas conservatives always say that LBJ's biggest mistake was thinking that he could fund both the Great Society and Vietnam. They believe he had to choose one or the other. They call Johnson fiscally irresponsible. Bush learned this lesson: He chose Iraq over New Orleans....

***

There isn't much that Bush can do now to salvage his reputation. His presidential library will someday be built around two accomplishments: that after 9/11, the U.S. homeland wasn't again attacked by terrorists (knock on wood) and that he won two presidential elections, allowing him to appoint conservatives to key judicial posts....Oddly, the president whom Bush most reminds me of is Herbert Hoover, whose name is synonymous with failure to respond to the Great Depression. When the stock market collapsed, Hoover, for ideological reasons, did too little. When 9/11 happened, Bush did too much, attacking the wrong country at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. He has joined Hoover as a case study on how not to be president.

(Douglas Brinkley is director of the Roosevelt Center at Tulane University.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/01/AR2006120101511.html

[bullimiami]

1. i find this statement ....

""he bet the credibility of the United States on the notion that Sunnis and Shiites wanted democracy,""

to be either blatantly ignorant or a total fantasy.

he never offered iraq 'democracy'. he offered sham elections, a controlled slate of puppet candidates and a constitution and new laws that codified trans-global corporate exploitation.

democracy in iraq would consist of someone like al sadr running an islamic state, controlling all of the contracts and oil revenue. the reality is the shiites are the majority. if the sunnis and kurds couldnt come to an agreement with the shia to allow for some autonomy with respect to resources, revenues and laws respecting religion there would have had to be a division into 3 states.

all of this, which bush promised but which were all lies, the iraqis are taking for themselves.
they will have their country back, land, government and resources, and they will eventually get a stable government either as 3 cooperative states or as 3 seperate countries.
and we still have to deal with turkey and irans refusal to accept an independent kurdistan.

bush has blown it. he set out to defraud the iraqis and it is failing. he has failed his corporate sponsers and will not be able to continue to deliver the plunder which so far has come from the pockets of the american people.

[pacalo]

2. How could one begin to explain to Mr. Brinkley how uninformed he is

in regard to this passage:

There isn't much that Bush can do now to salvage his reputation. His presidential library will someday be built around two accomplishments: that after 9/11, the U.S. homeland wasn't again attacked by terrorists (knock on wood) and that he won two presidential elections, allowing him to appoint conservatives to key judicial posts. I also believe that he is an honest man and that his administration has been largely void of widespread corruption. This will help him from being portrayed as a true villain.

Unbelievable.

[indepat]

3. For Douglas to say W's administration has been largely void of widespread corruption ignores

the wholesale plunder of the environment solely for corporate gain; the plunder of the US treasury by sprinkling trillions of dollars upon patrons, including large corporations; the letting of a vast number of often no-bid, often unlimited cost-overrun contracts to friends and patrons in Iraq, the storm-ravished Gulf coast area, and others; the wholesale politicization of the most of the Federal bureaucracy wherein implementation of the extreme RW PNAC agenda is now job number one rather than the actual mission of that agency; and the plunder of freedom and liberty wherein the Constitution, including much of the Bill of Rights, has been trampled and everyone not a supporter is treated as the enemy and spied upon. Get your head out of you ass Douglas. :rant: by inde :patriot: