The Fall of George W. Bush

Posted by Lorren on September 12, 2008

Yesterday was the 7th anniversary of terrorists attacking the World Trade Center. If you weren’t holed up in a cave, you probably already knew that. It was on the news, and I’m pretty sure that was why all flags were flying at half mast around here… nobody that I know of died or anything.

It got me to thinking about the presidential approval rating. How far the president has fallen.

I never voted for the guy. During the 2000 election, I was in the middle of moving to Italy and I hadn’t thought ahead of time enough to get an absentee ballot. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, I lived in California at the time and that wasn’t a close state. I would have voted for Gore. In 2004, I didn’t like him nor Kerry, so I voted for the Constitutional party candidate, Peroutka.

I never really liked him either. I remember right after he was voted in in 2000, how he had won only by the slimmest of margins, yet he was going after what he wanted like gangbusters, even though most of the people didn’t want what he was trying to sell. It grated on my nerves how he made up nicknames for everybody in congress. Ugh.

But in 2001, he had a shining moment. The World Trade Center was attacked, and he was going to go after who did it like gangbusters. Great! His approval rating went up to 88%. Hard to fathom considering that it’s been hovering in the low 30s for quite some time, but people actually used to like the guy.

So what went wrong?

Going after Bin Laden was a good thing. Going after the Taliban was a good thing. It made him look good. They were obviously a threat to our country. He looked like a strong leader. We respected him. Did he let power get to his head?

I remember in December 2002, he declared that Sadaam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and we had to go after Iraq. It’s an easy date to remember for me because I saw the TV announcements while we were on our vacation in Germany, and my daughter was 6 months old at the time… it was her first trip out of Italy.

My thoughts at the time were “so what’s the evidence?” As a Navy Lieutenant at the time, I did realize that there were some things that were classified and not openly advertised to the general public. I had information about it at the time, and I still know things that are not public knowledge. I had never seen anything concrete to say that Iraq had WMDs, so at the time I shrugged and said to myself “this looks sort of odd… but I’ll give the guy the benefit of the doubt and hold off my judgement until there’s more evidence.”

Years later, we know that there was no real evidence for WMDs. There was some flimsy evidence that it might be true, and the president pounced on it, probably to further his own agenda. He’s good at that…

He has done nothing to alleviate the conditions of Nacho Ramos and Jose Compeon, two border patrol agents who are in jail for defending our country from a drug runner. The whole case here was botched. They gave the drug runner immunity, but then he went on to commit more crimes. Nacho and Jose are currently in solitary confinement “for their protection”… but there are plenty of other high profile criminals who are not stuck in solitary. People have pleaded for them to receive a pardon, but the president won’t listen. How are we supposed to recruit border patrol agents if this is how we treat them when they do their jobs?

On the whole border issue, the president doesn’t listen to the people at all. We don’t want immigrants pouring over our borders in the middle of the night. Jobs that Americans won’t do? That is untrue, unless you think that working in unsafe conditions, working for less than minimum wage, and putting up with sexual abuse as part of the “jobs that Americans won’t do.” Illegal immigrants are attractive to businesses, because they can pay them pennies, can treat them in any demeaning condition that they see fit, and don’t have to worry about giving them a safe working environment. Arizona will revoke your business license if you knowingly hire illegal immigrants… somehow we’re finding Americans to fill the jobs in our state.

Oh yeah… why hasn’t our president done anything about the fact that the Mexican military has repeatedly breached our borders and pointed guns at our border patrol agents? Wouldn’t that be considered an act of war? Why haven’t we heard anything about this from the federal government on this?

What about our energy policy? People have been clamoring for us to do something about gas prices for years. Only in the past month or so has our president started to listen to people in this respect, and finally called for lifting the ban on offshore drilling… which I might add other countries do, probably following a lot fewer environmental regulations than we would.

Our government has been ineffective, making people want to take up farming so they can take their pitchforks to Washington. It’s not all the president’s fault, but quite a few things have been. That is how a president can go from being strong and respected, to being a president with a 30% approval rating. Something for the next president, whoever he may be, to keep in mind.