ever heard of the PNAC? thats a real doozy
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But while we’re here…
&
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It’s tradition for former presidents to not involve themselves in politics too much after leaving office. It’s one thing to stump for candidates, but it’s another for them to bash the current administration. To the best of my recollection his father kept a rather low profile after leaving office, and Clinton stayed out of politics except for support his wife when she ran for senate. Obama is just doing motivational kind of stuff, he’s not being very political right now.
I’m pretty sure Bush showed support for McCain and Romney, but he didn’t support Trump and in fact spoke against him to some extent, which is shocking. He’s doing what he should do. Granted he could get involved in more charitable type work, but that’s up to him. Cheney on the other hand, he did go on the news for a while and bash Obama, although I don’t think I’ve heard anything about him in a log time.
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here Mr. Reagan hunts buffalo from Air Force One
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There is that famous brush clearing picture of Double-Wide pointing at (I presume) a reporter with a tree saw. I can’t ever respect anyone who would point at someone with a bladed tool.
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Still, W not even attending the last Republican national convention was remarkable. And no one looking to be the next Republican president after him was reminiscing about how great America was under George W. Bush.
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World : at least you can’t do worse than you did with Dubya Bush.
America : hold my beer.
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The Overton window both becomes smaller, and moves to the right. The Democrat party has never been invested in the voice of the left, or even the majority. ‘68 proved that, and’ 34. Anyone who feels surprise at this, needs to learn more history.
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It will be interesting to see if Obama continues to follow this precedent considering
- Trump is breaking with tradition by regularly trashing his predecessor even a year after taking office, and
- Obama is the first President in several generations who left office with both high approval ratings and well below the customary retirement age, meaning he could potentially remain active and influential in public service for the next 30 years or more.
At this point it would be hard to blame Obama for saying “precedent, shmecedent. I’m gonna help take my goddamn country back.”
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Among Dr. Doom’s under-appreciated superpowers is the ability to blow a horn without removing his inflexible metal face mask. Not to mention his ability to talk and toot simultaneously.
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Actually, GHWB and some of his advisors talked about that decision later. The reasoning behind that one was that (1) the experts came to the conclusion that after this war kicked the crap out of Saddam’s army, his political position would be seriously weakened and he wouldn’t hold the country for more than a few more months (political or military overthrow from within would be imminent); (2) taking and holding the country would piss off other countries in the region, and turn things (more) against us in the Arab world, where stopping at this point would leave us able to claim we were protecting Kuwait against an invader; and (3) holding the country would take a large amount of money and possibly draw us into a Vietnam-like quagmire.
I always thought it was a “I’ll finish what daddy started, then he’ll love me and realize I’m a big boy!” sort of thing.
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Short term memory, people tend to remember the good, and current president makes him look good in comparison. At the time I would have been counted as a supporter, though not wholly, and in hindsight I disagree with many things he did.
bush was kind of just a puppet in my eyes
the PNAC was the real culprit behind these new wars… and look at all the countries crossed off the PNAC list since. i think only Iran and N. Korea remain
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The only “hanging chad” fiasco was the Democrats attempting to recount only the urban circumscriptions that they dominated in Florida to look for ballots that they could get requalified without also recounting all the rural circumscriptions where Republicans dominate. If you read the supreme court decision it was this attempt at making democratic votes more important than republican votes that that ended the circus.
As for how sympathetic Bush 43 was, why don’t you ask Obama? If Obama & Bush could overcome their differences (as they clearly did) Why can’t you?
Personally, I regret that Bush’s immigration+amnesty legislation was blocked by the Republican right wing allied with the Democrats. His legislation went further in many respects than Obama’s.
If he’d’a jumped nimbly side-stance, put his other hand up behind his head and wiggled the fingers of that hand, then perhaps I would feel differently about him.
He did none of those things, to my knowledge.
Jeb’s direct influence in florida, too
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Also significant to Reagan’s legacy, I think, are his stumping for trickle-down economics (and contributions to austerity & privatization ideologies) in addition to putting into gear the dismantling of the welfare state through his racist rhetorical invocation of the “welfare queen!”
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I guess for all those reasons I stated and many others - fighting gay marriage tooth and nail, introducing torture as an acceptable U.S. policy, trying to tie social security to the stock market (watching your safety net disappear outside of your control while wall street cashes in is not something I appreciate). The patriot act was born under his watch which in effect has essentially greenlit every police organization’s wet dream of snooping on anyone they feel like harassing without court oversight. Oh… everyone’s favorite the TSA was created by him. That whole Katrina thing played out pretty well. I think he also somehow managed to turn the Arab world into something that was a bit of a concern into an all consuming mess for my entire adult life so thanks for that too. Those are a few things maybe I don’t really feel like overcoming to forgive a guy whom didn’t do anything positive for me personally.
As for Obama he has to make plays like that since he’s trying to end partisan bickering, and them both being former presidents puts them in a weird club that I’m not ever going to be part of so I don’t see why you’d expect me or anyone else to forgive and forget for a man responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people just because some other politician trying to achieve a political goal did the same. For all you know he hates his guts but for appearances in the political arena has “forgiven” him so that republicans looking at democrats can’t point at Obama as being disrespectful as an excuse to not work with them in the future.
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