Translating “fantastic job as president” from teahadese, here’s just a short list of Dubya’s failures as president.
*Turned a budget surplus into deficits as far as the eye can see
*Ignored numerous warnings from the outgoing Clinton administration and others (e.g., the CIA’s pre-9/11 memo, “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US”) to take Al Qaeda seriously
*Gave huge tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans for absolutely no intelligible reason other than…that’s the Republican base
*Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, “waterboarding,” and many other violations of the Geneva Conventions
*Launched two unpaid-for wars
*Lied about a supposed link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden
*Totally messed up the Iraq War by putting in far too few troops to do the job, by disbanding the Iraqi army, but failing to establish law and order from day #1, by prematurely declaring victory, by being wildly overoptimistic, etc, etc.
*Failed to pursue Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora and afterwards, taking his eye completely off the ball
**Signed an unpaid-for new Medicare benefit into law
*Reneged on his promise to regulate carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and abandoned the Kyoto Protocol
*Put limits on crucial embryonic stem cell research, thus delaying medical advances that could have saved millions of lives from terrible diseases like diabetes, Alzheimers, Parkinsons, and many others.
*Helped bring world opinion of our country to all-time lows
*Put they right-wingnut John Roberts and Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court, after the Supreme Court stole the presidency for him in 2000
*The disastrous response (or lack thereof, more accurately) to Hurricane Katrina
*Made zero progress on getting us off our “oil addiction”
*Put in place and/or failed to fix deregulatory and other policies (e.g., “too big to fail”) that helped plunge us into a financial and economic freefall from which we’re still digging our way out
*Left office less popular than any other president other than Richard Nixon
Bottom line: George W. Bush was the antithesis of a “fantastic” president, and if Marco Rubio really believes that, then he’s an imbecile. It’s very telling that Rubio is high on the Republican “short list” for VP this year, or for future runs for national office. That really tells you where this party’s at these days – in the ditch.
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