AP: Bush Pretty Much Wrong About Everything

This is an exquisite article from the Associated Press, and the only thing I quibble with in it is part of the headline:

Bush leaving some problems to successors

If you replace "some" with "all," you'd pretty much catch the spirit of the article - and the truth about the Bush years, which have been remarkable in their resulting in NOT ONE decent policy, NOT ONE problem that hasn't grown worse, NOT ONE positive accomplishment.

Over and over, President Bush confidently promised to "solve problems, not pass them on to future presidents and future generations." As the clock runs out on his eight-year presidency, a tall stack of troubles remain and Bush's words ring hollow.

Iraq, budget deficits, the looming insolvency of Social Security and Medicare, high health and energy costs, a national immigration mess — the next president will inherit these problems in January 2009. With Bush's popularity at an all time low and relations with the Democratic-led Congress acrimonious, he has little or no chance of pulling off a surprise victory in his time left.

The focus of the Bush Presidency now is to plkay defense until January 2009. But what is the legacy that he's "protecting"?

• The economy is relatively sound and deficits are falling after peaking in 2004. But an entire presidency of red ink has ballooned the overall federal debt from $5.7 trillion when Bush became president to $8.9 trillion now. The Iraq war, including providing medical care and disability benefits to veterans, as well as expensive new programs like a Medicare prescription drug benefit threaten to drive deficits back up. Economists fear growing odds of a recession.

• The nation's health care spending, public and private, totaled $1.5 trillion when Bush took office. By the time he leaves, it is expected to be $2.6 trillion — a 75 percent increase. Meanwhile, the nation's number of uninsured has swelled, from 14 percent of the population in 2001 to 16 percent last year, or a total of 47 million people.

• Now in its fifth year, the Iraq war has claimed the lives of more than 3,800 members of the U.S. military and more than 73,000 Iraqi civilians, wounded over 28,000 U.S. military personnel, and cost nearly half a trillion dollars. Even if combat ends, Bush says the United States will need to provide military, economic and political support beyond his presidency and have "an enduring relationship" with Iraq.

It goes on and on that way. The author, Jennifer Loven, is devastating in her clarity. Though she does write that "No domestic terrorist attack has followed those of Sept. 11, 2001" (hello, anthrax?), she's right about Bush's war on terror making the terror threat greater, not less. When Bush was inaugurated, gas was A DOLLAR FORTY-FIVE A GALLON nationwide; now it's nearly twice that, after fighting a war that was "largely about oil," in the words of Alan Greenspan. The cost per barrel of oil has gone from $29 to $80. The immigration issue has had no changes, with more people in an underground economy living in constant fear and no solution in sight. There's more: Social Security and Medicare, education reform, democracy promotion, being a "uniter," not to mention that which Loven leaves out - our moral standing, torture, domestic spying, public faith in government, the Gulf Coast, Presidential records and official secrecy, the separation of powers and the very health of Constitutional democracy, etc., etc.

"It's hard to find something he has done that really has improved the situation a great deal," said Stephen J. Wayne, a Georgetown University presidential scholar [...]

"We're in a worse place than we were in 1999" before Bush became president, lamented Matthew Dowd, a former pollster and chief campaign strategist for Bush who has become disillusioned with his old boss.

We're in a worse place than we were in 1899, Matt. But thanks for your help in getting this guy elected! 'Preciate it!

And let's be clear: we're not talking about a situation where the President was blocked by a gridlocked Congress. He had almost unfettered control of every branch of government for the majority of his two terms in office, and arguably, even now. And yet he has failed in every single respect. All this while pumping up his own image as a problem solver ("That means I solve problems") and a decider.

I don't think America can take much more of this problem-solving.

This is a pretty rich quote, from the aforementioned Mr. Dowd:

Dowd said Bush has only to look at himself for why he didn't fulfill his promise. His unwillingness to admit mistakes and inattention to building relationships with lawmakers of both parties helped put success out of reach, Dowd said.

"Most of the responsibility — I don't want to use the word blame — is at his doorstep. It has to be," Dowd said. "In the end, he is the leader, elected twice, with Congress at times in his own party."

I want to use the word blame, and what's more, the voters do to. They blamed Bush by returning the Congress to the Democrats, and they're going to blame the Republican Party for letting someone this incompetent become their standard-bearer by electing a Democrat to the White House next November.

I will add one disturbing caveat. The President has not failed at everything. The one goal which he has completely succeeded at achieving is the extreme expansion of Presidential power. Of course, that was his top priority, or at least the top priority of his Fourthbranch sidekick. The problem is that Bush's success is our collective failure, and it's highly unlikely that we'll be able to roll that back in the near future. The only way we can do so is through repudiation, complete and total repudiation (not excluding indictment), so that future Presidents would never DARE to cite George W. Bush as a precedent for expanding their own power. The Amish concept of "shunning" would appear to fit.