If you have a few minutes, take the moment to go read Brad Reed’s “The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency:”
Narrowing down the Bush administration’s various debacles to a mere 10 was no easy feat. In fact, I expect that many people will express dismay that their least favorite moment was left off the list. “How could commuting Scooter Libby’s sentence not even make the top 10??!!” I can hear some of you shrieking already. Well, I’ll tell you. Essentially, I tried to rate each Bush disaster by two main criteria: its body count and its damage to the country’s reputation. So while Bush’s awkward groping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel may be personally humiliating to everyone, it doesn’t have the same heft as, say, the Iraq War.
But for those of you who insist on seeing your least favorite moment get its due, here is list of every honorable mention I could come up with: warrantless wiretapping; Valerie Plame; Scooter Libby’s sentence commuted; Bush believes Rafael Palmeiro is innocent; soldiers face neglect at Walter Reed; signing statements; the Kyoto treaty ripped up; loyalty oaths; the fake turkey; a staged teleconference with troops, staged FEMA press conference, extraordinary rendition, support for junk science; endorsement of neo-creationist “intelligent design”; inaction against global warming; record oil prices; record budget deficits; record trade deficits; record number of Americans without health insurance; two recessions; no-bid contracts; bin Laden still at large; the Federal Marriage Amendment; stem cell research vetoed; waterboarding ban vetoed; “Last throes”; “Old Europe”; “It’s hard work”; “Bring it on”; “Yo, Blair!”; “I’m the decider”; “I’m the commander guy”; “I’m a war president”; “This is the guy who tried to kill my dad”; “So?”; “Let the Eagle Soar”; John Bolton; Kenny Boy; Harriet Miers; John Roberts; Sam Alito; Blair talks Bush out of bombing al-Jazeera; Cheney shoots some guy in the face; the Military Commissions Act; Jose Padilla arrested and held without charge or access to counsel; endless tax cuts for the rich; let’s waste a shitload of money by sending people to Mars and let’s hire some Heritage Foundation staffers to rebuild Iraq.
Go read the whole thing.
Then, when you come back, go read Dean Barnett, better known to most of you as Hugh Hewitt’s jock strap, whinging that the A. James Bacevich article I linked earlier is unfair and that Bacevich is “ignoring inconvenient facts” because “Since 9/11, there has not been a terrorist attack on American soil.”
It is an awesome juxtaposition, I swear.
nightjar
Haven’t read the whole thing yet, don’t have time right now, but a quick comment. Dimwitted wingnuts don’t get it. Why should AQ bother with another homeland 9-11 like attack, the first one caused the slow motion aftershock of Bush destroying the Constitution (along with all the other stuff Bacevich lists). No bomb can match that.
Jay
“Eight years of epic fail.”
We LOLCat fans are still waiting for an “Epic Fail” post label (to be set beside the fantastic “I read these morons so you don’t have to,” &c.), John. Really, it would be the cherry atop the funniest blog on teh intertrons.
calipygian
Dean Barnett and Hugh Hewitt should know how well the GWOT is going – after all, they are risking their lives every day at the very bloody tip of the spear:
Wilfred
Yeah, but did you read Bacevich’s article? Do you agree with his assessment and its implications? What’s the point of linking the article without a discussion of its contents?
I’ll save you the trouble. Nomotherfuckingbody in either party, with the possible exception of Dennis Kucinich, will go near it. It is as much as a condemnation of Bush’s enablers in both parties as it is of Bush himself.
Incertus
Given that the White House is declaring more victory in Iraq, I guess to let us move forward into victory in Iran, I’d say that list is still in flux.
Ted
I don’t understand this. I really don’t. No fiction writer could have come up with the last eight years. WTF happened?
It’s almost like some greater force was at work. Bush administration fuck-ups are so frequent and so severe that they defy the simple rules of statistics and chance.
Incertus
That’s because you assume that fuck-ups of that type aren’t deliberate. That’s not necessarily true. I’m not even talking about conspiracy-theory stuff here–powerful people have benefited from every one of those things that non-powerful have looked at as errors or mistakes. It’s not a stretch to suggest that much of what has happened in the last eight years wasn’t so much planned, but exploited for every possible gain.
Zifnab
Jesus Christ, look at that man’s balls. They’re fucking huge! Hugh, how do you walk?
I disagree on one thing. While “Mission Accomplished” was perhaps the hallmark of Bush League Stupid, there was really nothing worse than 9/11. I mean, “Mission Accomplished” might have been a fuck-up for the Bush Admin, but it was a wake up for the rest of the country. It was the flag Bush planted, that let every wingtard show his true colors. Go back to May 1st, 2003 and you can pick out every blowhard, every warmongering apologist, every jackhole scumbag pundit and politico who should never be listened to again. It was the crown jewel on Bush’s little fuck-up empire. But from “Mission Accomplished” was born the anti-war backlash which snowballed into the modern progressive movement. In the long run, it was a good thing.
On the flip side, 9/11 was the colossal fuckup of reverse direction but far greater magnitude. This was a fuckup that worked in Bush’s favor and gave him the momentum for all future fuckups. This was the disaster that spawned the Patriot Act and the FISA fight and gave Bush’s AGs cover while they politicized the DoJ. Our President gained so much from 9/11. His administration was practically built on it.
So, assuming we are talking about events that screwed over the American people, 9/11 takes the cake, no question.
Brachiator
Jesus. Loyalists. Cronyism.
Good times.
Keith
I gotta say that Katrina was #1. Not as many people died, but the level of neglect followed by incompetance followed by trying to mask the incompetance by political message (Bush’s photo-op on the airplane with the fist being held back by the constraining arm comes to mind) was a top-to-bottom fiasco. I mean, you’ve got Karl Rove put in charge of the “recovery”, which is about as cynically political as you can get especially in light of the enormous struggles the impoverished faced.
Cols714
There would be no 2nd Bush term without 9/11
Velvet Elvis
So the Anthrax scare was before 9/11?
Patrick Briggs
So what do you say to right-wing Rethuglicans who say “we’ve not been attacked since 9/11?”
SpotWeld
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the time he nearly killed himself with a pretzel.
Gus
fixed
Alex
Dean Barnett has outdumbed himself.
So what do you say to right-wing Rethuglicans who say “we’ve not been attacked since 9/11?”
That significant terrorist attacks worldwide, as tallied by our America’s own counter terror agencies, have risen from 208 in 2002 to over 14,000 last year, a rise of some 6700%.
Ted
Forgot about that one! You can make a whole version of Trivial Persuit out of the Bush administration.
SpotWeld
More like the home-game version of Jackass.
Bill Arnold
The right-wing refuses to be out-right-winged by left-wing parodies of the right-wing.
They hate to lose.
calipygian
Goddamn right those are big balls. The Michael he was talking to was CNNs Michael Ware.
Big, huge balls.
Svensker
He said the Empire State Building thing to Michael fucking Ware? Oh ha ah ahhahhahhhahhaha, the guy is even stoopider than I thought.
Garrigus Carraig
JFK: Mystery.
Deep Throat: Solved!
Anthrax: ???
calipygian
Dont forget John Yoo’s definition of torture:
By that standard, John McCain wasn’t tortured.
BFR
OT but in case you hadn’t heard, WA-08 congressional candidate and Responsible Plan author Darcy Burner’s home burned down today.
If you’re looking for a candidate to support and all…
crw
OT but in the trample of Wes Clark and how awful Obama is, you have missed some of the most awesome judicial snark (literally!) unleashed on the Bush administration evar:
H/t Sully
Ted
Is the McCain campaign still crying like a 3 year old on cable news? I haven’t caught any of it yet today.
JL
I just turned on MSNBC a few minutes ago so, I’m not sure. I was actually hoping the MSM would cover the latest whine about Jim Webb saying calm down and don’t drag the military into the political arena.
JL
Is anyone else having problems going the AlterNet article that John linked to?
Blue Raven
Oh, sure. Switch it from a valid observation on his chutzpah to a sexist fat joke. Fixed, indeed.
myiq2xu
Did Jeff Gannon/Guckert make the list?
A Different JC
Yeah, I can’t get it in either IE or Mozilla
Incertus
It’s been linked to by a lot of people today–their intertubes might have blown up. The whole site seems to be down.
qwerty42
Courtesy Sullivan, here is Prof Bainbridge’s response to Barnett.
Sirkowski
The link asploded.
Apsaras
I’d give them this variaton on an old Chris Rock bit.
TCG
Did Brownie do a Heckuva Job, or not?
Wilfred
Tell them how one day a neighbor passed by Nasrudin’s house and saw him strewing pieces of bread all around his property. “Why are you doing that,” he asked.
“It’s to keep the tigers away,” said Nasrudin.
“But there are no tigers around here,” said the man.
“I know,” said Nasrudin, “Effective, isn’t it?”
maxbaer (not the original)
Barnett addresses all the points in Bacevich’s column with “we haven’t been attacked since 9/11?” How can anyone be that fuckin’ stupid?
And for good measure he uses the words oodles and beclowns.
Incertus
Presumably he gets paid good money.
McMartin
The Alternet link is live again, so I finally managed to read it.
I think I agree with Zifnab regarding #2, though Katrina and the 9/11 politicization definitely jockey for the #1 spot.
My favorite part of the article was that the John Birch Society lines up with the side of righteousness re: Abu Ghraib.
Phoenix Woman
Thanks for this, John. Glad to see not everyone’s let themselves go bonkers over the non-issue of Obama’s undoing a bit of Bush policy.
That’s right, kids: UNDOING. Because government and religious charities have always worked together — the main difference under Bush is that he removed the heavy-duty safeguards that existed on the use of taxpayer money by these groups. As Steve Benen notes but almost nobody heard, Obama’s main theme in the speech was that he was going to restore the safeguards.
Another thing which Obama hinted at but couldn’t exactly say out loud: There’s no way that the tax rates that obtained under Eisenhower are coming back anytime soon. Without them, and with a staggering debt to be inherited from Bush, how does Obama even start to repair the shredded safety net? By the judicious, pre-Bush methods used by the pre-Bush Feds to work with religious groups. (And not just Christian ones, but Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and other groups as well.)
KevinD
“He BECLOWNS himself…” WTF, who talks like that?
Baron Elmo
I’d gently explain the concept of Lisa Simpson’s magic rock, with the right-wing Rethuglican in question cast in the role of Homer:
calipygian
KevinD –
You don’t read too many right-wing blogs, do you? Its a favorite of the right wing for some reason. I dimly remember seeing it being created at Red State or something.
They are really, really proud of that term. Really.
KevinD
Someone should point out to these people that is was over eight years between the first attack on the WTC and the second, Bush is not exactly breaking any records here.
Oh yeah, he stopped the guy from cutting down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch, Victory is Ours!
Martin
Katrina is definitely #1 with me. I remember watching the diehard hurricane bloggers go apeshit over Katrina the day before. It was pretty obvious what was going to happen and that’s exactly what happened.
Iraq is horrible, but Katrina demonstrated pretty clearly that each citizen is on his/her own if the shit hits the fan. That was incredibly demoralizing – and it’s the point that Bush lost the nation.
KevinD
I’ve tried calipygian, I’ve tried to follow the links, to expand my horizons, but it just makes my head hurt too much.
And I used to be a Republican.
calipygian
KevinD –
I am a high school drop out, 20 year military veteran. I voted Reagan, Bush, Bush, Clinton, gave money to McCain but was too disgusted to vote, Kerry (wanted Dean) and caught a bad case of Dodd-mania but now am solidly for Obama.
I am the Republican’s core and they lost me when Karl Rove accused John McCain of fathering a black baby during the South Carolina primary.
I lost all respect for McCain with that picture of him rapturously hugging the Decider after what they did to him in South Carolina four years before.
If McCain were any sort of man, he would have kicked Bush right in the teeth. But there he was, slobbering on him like a dog.
Disgusting.
calipygian
Sorry. Couldn’t have voted Reagan. But I really, really liked him.
ResumeMan
Well, IMO the “Mission Accomplished” thing stands in for the Iraq war overall. And while 9/11 was a major failure of planning and listening to your @#%# staff, and of course it led to all the subsequent horrors, it was still unintended (unless yer a “9/11 truther”). Iraq was deliberate, it was unnecessary, and its disastrous consequences were widely predicted. It was an intentional, willful disaster, of the sort that neither 9/11 or Katrina was.
And also, the effects of Iraq will be profound and long-lasting to a much greater extent than Katrina.
Chuck Butcher
I’m a left Democrat and always have been and I wanted to puke.
Sunny
And you say you voted for this abomination, John? What was wrong with you? Was it something in the water? Please, tell me, when did bush jump the shark for you? What was that moment? And do you feel like you’ve come back from the edge or that maybe you flew a little too close to the sun?
KevinD
calipygian, I followed the same trajectory as you, substitute one Perot vote for the 2nd Bush (Yeah, I know, I was angry that year).
I joined the Army out of high school in the eighties in the time of Reagan, Rambo, and Red Dawn, and it’s been a long, slow learning curve. But as soon as I saw the Smirker coming, I knew that was it for me.
Shade Tail
Personally, I would condense numbers 10 and 1 into a single item and move the Valarie Plame incident up into the list. They said “body count” was one of their main criteria, didn’t they? For crying out loud, the body count of *this* one has the potential to outdo all the others combined, and it’s going to be a long time before we have a full accounting of the damage. If we ever have one at all.
I mean, Plame was the CIA’s officer in charge of counter-proliferation. Who knows how many agents and informants have been compromised by this? And who knows how many *real* WMDs are going to end up in terrorist hands because of our counter-proliferation efforts having been utterly destroyed?
McMartin
At this point in time, that’s a hypothetical body count, though. When a similar list is made for the history books in 2108, it may end up higher up, but not now.
jibeaux
There’s also, it’s far easier for us to attack us over there, when we conveniently go into their countries.
QuickRob
the turkey was real. NYT actually issued a correction regarding it, but it doesn’t look like many people got the memo:
query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E7DE113BF932A25754C0A9629C8B63&scp=9&sq=turkey…
West Virginia Rebel
I don’t agree with the Kyoto one because as far as I’m concerned that has turned into an economic and unachievable boondoggle for those countries that signed up for what is essentially a punishment treaty. Besides, the President doesn’t have the authority to ratify treaties.
Most of the rest seems pretty much on the mark, unfortunately.
orogeny
How long was it after that first WTC bombing before there was another terrorist attack on US soil?
orogeny
Make that “another Islamofascist terrorist attack on US soil”.
NonWonderDog
Real or not, the White House itself said the turkey was just a table decoration. Apparently Bush saw it and decided he needed to get a photo of him “presenting it” to the troops. He definitely didn’t bring a turkey with him to give to anyone, though–he just posed with the centerpiece.
Most people assumed a decorative turkey would be made of plastic instead of flesh, but it doesn’t really change the story either way.
croatoan
So what do you say to right-wing Rethuglicans who say “we’ve not been attacked since 9/11?”
Quote President Bush:
Joe1347
To refresh your memory, the supercar project was a $1.5 Billion dollar Government program to develop ultra-high efficiency cars. One of the first things that Bush did in office was to kill the Supercar program. In the late 90’s (pre-Bush), the development of the Prius was Japan’s (Toyota) response to the US Supercar program. Strangely enough, Japan was afraid that the US would leapfrog Toyota in automotive fuel efficiency under the US-funded Supercar program and Toyota instituted a crash development program for the Prius.
With oil approaching $150/barrel, which would be better for the USA (today) – a few more oil wells drilled in the Gulf of Mexico or GM and Ford selling a million or so 50 mpg cars in 2008?
Ken
And you are doing everything in your power to get McCain elected. I’m sure you thought Gore was a right winger as well.
The blogoshpere has shown me they are just as useless as the MSM.
I really should turn against Obama because he didn’t defend Clark’s idiotic comments.
And why should he. Who the hell is Wesley Clark. What has he done for me. I know what Obama has done. And he has been a great senator that meets with my progressive group and works on all the things we ask.
So I once thought you had a brain. Good luck working for McCain.
Ripley
Every time Dick Cheney takes a breath, Satan smiles.
Cain
One could argue that we saved 1.5 billion, already people are coming up with hybrids even american cars.. Hell Exxon is investing in battery technology. So I would say, good move. We don’t need to toss money at the american car companies. THey need to get fucked from one end through the other end and hopefully it’ll improve them.
cain
Ninerdave
I laugh at them.
Ninerdave
That’s ok. The evangelicals have been looking for the end of time for years. Cheney is just helping it along.
Joshua Norton
Methinks John needs to repeat his threat of violence and sudden death to anyone who doesn’t embed their links and forces the page to spread across 3 screens.
Zuzu's Petals
God bless Andrew Bacevich.
Zuzu's Petals
And not only that, most of the perpetrators have been captured, tried, and imprisoned. Thanks to Clinton.
Snopes
Phoebe
1. This list should not have been made while there’s some presidency left. It’s tempting fate.
2. I don’t know about size of bad moments, because for me the jaw-droppingness can’t be divorced from when it happened. Specifically, “Bring it on” was the moment for me when all hope died, when I knew we were completely doomed, that there was not one shred of sense in this man. After that I wasn’t surprised by anything. Except Harriet Meiers. That actually did surprise me. Again, this is not about gravity of consequences or anything like that. The only thing I can really measure is the space between my jaw and the floor, using calipers.
firebrand
Epic fail doesn’t even begin to describe the Bush administration. I don’t think there’s even a word or group of words for the level of absolute, total, complete failure that we’ve seen over the past eight years.
What’s more depressing about that article was that there were still so many more failures that the writer of the article didn’t even remember to list. You can’t blame him, either. The failures of the Bush administration would probably fill up more book volumes than the complete Encyclopedia Britannica.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
It’s almost like some greater force was at work. Bush administration fuck-ups are so frequent and so severe that they defy the simple rules of statistics and chance.
“Jeepers, Thelma, how ever did you figure out that Osama bin Laden was hiding in the White House disguised as Karl Rove?”
Wilfred
Bush underestimates himself. The most important thing about the New History is that it doesn’t exist, it’s been erased along with anything else that might remotely strike at Bush’s intuitive grasp of American self-importance and exceptionalism.
Bush is America without guilt, and guilt is all about the past and our debt to it. Bush is about the futureless and (Nietzschean) eternal present, just like a dog, or a hamster or a salamander – the pleasure principle triumphant, and exhausted. Now comes the death wish.
Decided FenceSitter
Communists – Bush’s Role Models in the War on Terror
h/t Drum
Right now I’m so livid I can barely form a cogent thought.
El Cid
Phoebe has a point. There was a time in which I was sure that 9/11/2001 would be viewed as the biggest failure of the Bush Jr. administration, but with hard work and video games, Bush Jr. managed to struggle past this early career hurdle.
QuickRob
Whatever you say! Who even needs goalposts?! Just kick the ball blindfolded…
susan
ANY ADMINISTRATION, ANY ONE would have done what the Bush administration has done over the past eight years. ANY ADMINISTRATION would have done everything in their power to protect us against another terrorist attack. What the f**k does this administration want? A freaking cookie? It’s called doing their job and we can all be grateful that this is at the very least a job they chose to do, unless, which is my guess, they have just gotten very, very lucky. But it’s pathetic that after 8 years and dozens of fuck ups all they can do it point to the fact that we haven’t had another attack on our soil. (forget about the anthrax, the media has)
But unlike perhaps another administration who still would have protected us against another attack, this current crop has given us another bonus. I now have to worry that one day, my children, my friends, my family can be thrown into prison and have the key thrown away because this administration thought the only way they could protect us was to turn us into a fascist nation. NOW THAT IS SOMETHING ONLY THIS ADMINISTRATION WOULD DO. Good Job Guys!
bago
Yeah. Nero fiddled while rome burned, Bush strummed while New Orleans drowned.
I blame teh gays.
bago
Oh, and instead of letting the peasants eat cake, Bush was giving McCain a cake. Although from his perspective, a senator might as well be a peasant.