I'm not exonerating him by any means - Edit 1
Before modification by Brian at 13/04/2010 04:56:30 PM
Blah blah blah...I'm so sick of hearing how Bush was the worst President ever, and how he destroyed this, and shit on that. Congress placed the bills in front of him, Congress confirmed his nominations for various positions. People give the President entirely too much credit for the good and the bad.
Am I saying I like what was going on while he was President, or that I like the decisions he made that Congress had no part in? No, I think he made plenty of mistakes, all I'm really saying is that Congress has more than their fair share of blame, and I think it's silly that nobody ever mentions it.
Am I saying I like what was going on while he was President, or that I like the decisions he made that Congress had no part in? No, I think he made plenty of mistakes, all I'm really saying is that Congress has more than their fair share of blame, and I think it's silly that nobody ever mentions it.
When you have a majority Congressional party whose primary campaign message is "I support the President" you can't really say that absolves him from blame when they rubberstamp what he puts in front of them. They share the blame, but how does it exonerate Bush when they pass legislation Bush introduced (prior to Obama Presidents often introduced legislation on things other than corporate bailouts
)? That doesn't let minority Dems off the hook for unanimous votes in favor of things like the IWR, but that objection is one more of principle than policy: Senate Dems voting against the IWR in 2002 wouldn't have stopped it and most would've been committing political suicide since the invasion was very popular with the public then; they just shouldn't have had the nerve to vote for it and then campaign against it in '04 (in Kerrys case it was particularly stupid. )I'm simply saying that it's silly that he is the sole person blamed for all the country's woes, when Congress approved the things he did prior to him doing them. It's not about party's, it's about responsibility, and the Senators and members of the House who approved so much of what was going on are just as much at fault as Bush. I'm not trying to argue that Bush was a great President, or anything of the sort....I think he was pretty dumb and that he could have done a much better job of guiding the country during his 8 years in office. Congress (both republicans and democrats) made plenty of mistakes as well, and they deserve to be mentioned as (a big) part of the problem.
I only really mention it, because Bush bashing is so popular that people don't ever seem to stop and think about the reality of situations. The failure in running the country isn't something to lay solely at Bush's feet, the failure is something to lay at both Congress and Bush's feet.