Everything about Criticism Of George W Bush totally explained
George W. Bush, the 43rd
President of the
United States, has drawn significant domestic and international
criticism since his
election in 2000.
His level of popular support has declined from 90 percent (the highest ever recorded by
The Gallup Organization) immediately after the
September 11,
2001 attacks to 26 percent (in a Newsweek poll taken in June 2007), the lowest level for any sitting President in 35 years, rivaling
Richard Nixon's unpopularity at the time of the
Watergate scandal and his subsequent resignation. A NBC/WSJ poll also taken in June 2007 indicated only 19% of respondents believing that the country is headed in the right direction, the lowest level recorded in 15 years.
His opponents have criticized his role in the controversial 2000 election, his way of fighting the
War on Terrorism, his support for the
USA PATRIOT Act and the
2003 invasion of Iraq, among many other acts and issues along the way, and there's currently a
movement to impeach him. Former President
Jimmy Carter has called Bush's presidency "the worst in history", although he later said that comment was "careless or misinterpreted," and that he "wasn't comparing this administration with other administrations back through history, but just with President Nixon's." On April 15, 2008, the results of an informal poll of 109 historians (conducted by
George Mason University's History News Network) found that 98.2% of the respondents considered Bush's Presidency a failure. 61% of the historians said that Bush was the worst President in United States history.
Criticisms of administration
Foreign policy and national defense
Al Qaeda
In a
White House briefing on
August 6,
2001, President Bush was informed of the terrorist threat posed by
Al Qaeda in a memorandum entitled "
Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.". Critics allege that these warnings were ignored.
At a
press conference held on July, 2007, Bush denied a United States
National Counterterrorism Center report that stated that
Al-Qaeda has "regrouped to an extent not seen since 2001." . Bush said that was "simply not the case."
He has also received criticism for publicly using phrases like "bring it on" and "wanted dead or alive", both regarding terrorists.
"Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., called the president's language 'irresponsible and inciteful'". "'I am shaking my head in disbelief,' Lautenberg said. 'When I served in the Army in Europe during World War II, I never heard any military commander — let alone the commander in chief — invite enemies to attack U.S. troops.'" And indeed the Iraqi Resistance group known as the "Islamic Jihad Army" put out a video which stated "George W. Bush, you've asked us to 'bring it on.' And so help me, [wewill] like you never expected. Do you've another challenge?" Bush apologized for these comments in 2006. .
However on September 9, 2007, Bush's homeland security adviser again caused a stir when she, in referencing a new tape by Bin Laden, said "
This is about the best he can do. This is a man on a run, from a cave, who's virtually impotent other than these tapes". "In appearance on two Sunday talk shows, she used the 'virtually impotent' reference both times, suggesting the language was chosen with careful purpose". "Such a comment could prove incendiary to like-minded followers of bin Laden who see themselves as a 'vanguard of a global assault on the United States' ... "A provocation like that isn't helpful" said Thomas Sanderson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies .
Iraq
Another oft-stated reason for opposition is the
Westphalian concept that foreign governments should never possess a right to intervene in another sovereign nation's internal affairs.
Giorgio Agamben, the Italian philosopher, has also offered a critique of the logic of such pre-emptive war.
Anti-war sentiment has led to a number of large
protests in the US, among the most visible being the one led by
Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, and some reflection in electoral politics. A significant minority of mostly
Democratic politicians, such as former Vice President Al Gore and Barack Obama, opposed the invasion of Iraq. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee for President in 2004, voted to authorize the invasion. Howard Dean, a rival for the nomination, ran on an anti-war position, but didn't favor quick troop withdrawal. Dennis Kucinich, another candidate for the Democratic nomination, favored replacement of the U.S. occupation force with one sponsored by the
UN, as did
Ralph Nader's independent presidential candidacy.
Torture
Another point of discussion has been whether the detainment and treatment of prisoners in the
Abu Ghraib prison and the
Guantánamo Bay detainment camp constitutes
torture or not. Although a
CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll
"found that sizable majorities of Americans disagree with tactics ranging from leaving prisoners naked and chained in uncomfortable positions for hours, to trying to make a prisoner think he was being drowned.
President Bush has stated that "We don't torture." Yet, many people and governments don't see it that way and have staged several protests. These sentiments are partly a result of the Pentagon's suggestion that the president can legally torture anyone he deems to be a threat to security, and because the Bush administration has repeatedly tried to stop attempts at limiting torture, including
legislation by President Bush to exclude himself from the laws created by the
McCain Detainee Amendment as well as
vetoing legislation that would have made
waterboarding and other coercive interrogation methods illegal. Furthermore many people are concerned by the Bush Administration's use of
Extraordinary rendition, where individuals are sent to other countries where torture can easily occur without any form of oversight. Bush defends this practice on the basis that:
[...] the United States government has an obligation to protect the American people. It's in our country's interests to find those who would do harm to us and get them out of harm's way. And we'll do so within the law, and we'll do so in honoring our commitment not to torture people. And we expect the countries where we send somebody to, not to torture, as well. But you bet, when we find somebody who might do harm to the American people, we'll detain them and ask others from their country of origin to detain them. It makes sense. The American people expect us to do that.
A pentagon memo lists many interrogation techniques which were requested and approved during the presidency of George W. Bush on the basis that "The current guidelines for interrogation procedures at GTMO limit the ability of interrogators to counter advanced resistance".. The Bush administration's connection to torture has been one of the main considerations in the
movement to impeach George W. Bush.
Torture has in several cases become military policy and several high ranking US officials are being charged with war crimes in Germany.
Other human rights
The Bush administration has been criticized for failing to support the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Bush administration "has taken the position that disability is neither a human rights issue nor a predicate for international law."
Domestic policy
Domestic criticism of Bush has waxed and waned throughout his administration. Before 9/11, Bush was reviled by the bulk of the American left, mostly for his role in the controversial 2000 election, and for perceived shortcomings in his
No Child Left Behind program for education. The next major domestic item which Bush faced significant opposition to was his program of
tax cuts, codified in the
Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the
Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. Both acts ultimately passed, but calls for their repeal lasted until the end of the
2004 campaign. Democratic candidate
Howard Dean in particular called for a repeal of the part of the tax cuts which affected the wealthiest Americans in order to fund public health care programs and reduce the federal deficit.
After Bush was re-elected, he made
Social Security reform a top priority. He proposed options to permit Americans to divert a portion of their Social Security tax (FICA) into secured investments, creating a "nest egg" that he claimed would enjoy steady growth. This led Democrats to label the program a "privatization" of Social Security. Bush embarked on a 60-day tour to shore up public support for the plan, attacking the political reaction against reforms. Ultimately, however, no consensus on a plan could be reached within the congressional Republican party, and Bush was left without any political will to pass his reforms. The issue was dropped, and the status quo maintained.
Bush has been increasingly forced to defend his actions on many fronts and has been unable to generate widespread support in the nation as a whole. An example of the general displeasure and extent to which many Americans have lost respect and confidence in the President lies in his recent election as the "Biggest Tool of 2006" in an online poll created by Comedy Central.
The Republican Party's defeat in the
2006 US midterm elections is taken as another sign of plummeting public support for President Bush. After the Democratic Party's victory,
MSNBC reported that "The war in Iraq, scandals in Congress and declining support for Bush and Republicans on Capitol Hill defined the battle for House and Senate control".
Civil liberties and expanding government
After
9/11, Bush continually signed legislation interpreted as limiting the civil liberties of United States citizens. The two most prominent pieces of legislation are the
PATRIOT Act and the
Military Commissions Act of 2006, which remove certain privacy rights and the right of
habeas corpus. Criticism has come from both sides on this issue. Conservatives have criticized him for increased government spending, including non-defense spending, after running as a candidate who pledged to reduce spending and make government smaller. Liberals have criticized him for eliminating basic civil liberties and for not fulfilling his
Constitutional duties to uphold
habeas corpus.
Economy and fiscal policies
The Bush administration has also come under attack from the American right-wing, particularly with regard to its economic policies. The American Conservative laments "Bush doesn’t know how to stop. Like a credit-card thief, the President of the United States is going on a shopping binge and making other people pay. If history gives Bush a nickname, it'll be Deadbeat Dubya".
Calling Bush "The Mother of All Big Spenders", the libertarian think-tank
Cato Institute writes that "Sadly, the Bush administration has consistently sacrificed sound policy to the god of political expediency". Yet when Democrats want to increase spending on domestic issues such as health care for the poor Bush suddenly becomes a "fiscal conservative" accusing them of "working to bring back the failed tax-and-spend policies of the past" and vowing to fight them. But says Cato's Chris Edwards, "When he gives speeches now, you hear him bashing the Democrats on overspending. It sounds ridiculous, because we know he's a big spender." "After running up $3 trillion in new debt - including more than half a trillion dollars for his flawed Iraq policy - it's astounding that the president is once again lecturing Congress about fiscal responsibility and fiscal priorities," stated Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev).
Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve for 18 years, serving under six Presidents and who describes himself as "a lifelong Libertarian Republican", writes in his book
The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World that Bush and the congressional Republicans "swapped principle for power". "Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences". Interestingly he writes that former President Bill Clinton had "a consistent, disciplined focus on long-term economic growth [which] became a hallmark of his presidency" and says that Clinton was "by far" one of the two "smartest presidents I've worked with".
Greenspan also says "I am saddened that it's politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil" and "getting Saddam out of there was very important, but had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, it had to do with oil." With regards to the costs of the war in Iraq, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that it'll come to between one and one and a half trillion dollars by 2010.
"Those costs -- both to sustain the current mission in Iraq and to pay longer-term 'hidden' expenses like troop healthcare and replacement equipment -- are far more than US officials advertised when Congress gave President Bush the authority to launch the invasion in March 2003. At the time, the White House and then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld predicted a quick, decisive victory and counted on Iraqi oil revenues to pay for the war. And when Lawrence Lindsey, one of Bush's top budget advisers, estimated in 2003 that the entire undertaking could cost as much as $200 billion, he was fired ... McGovern said he's worried about the long-term financial impact of the war, adding that his primary concern is that the United States is borrowing money to pay for it. Some leading economists have predicted that, depending on how long troops remain in Iraq, the endeavor could reach several trillion dollars as a result of more 'hidden' costs -- including recruiting expenses to replenish the ranks and the lifelong benefits the government pays to veterans. 'It is being paid for on the national credit card,' McGovern said. 'It is being put on the backs of our kids and grandkids. That is indefensible.'"
In fact, according to the former World Bank vice-president, Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and now a professor at the Columbia Business School, when other factors, like medical and welfare costs of US military servicemen are added in, the cost just to date is closer to $3.3 trillion. However, continues Stiglitz, "Three trillion is a very conservative number, the true costs are likely to be much larger than that". "The money being spent on the war each week would be enough to wipe out illiteracy around the world ... Just a few days' funding would be enough to provide health insurance for US children who were not covered," he said.
There are even fears that the United States and world economy could slide into another Great Depression.
Response to Hurricane Katrina
The President came under more criticism when the powerful
Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast region during the early hours of
August 30,
2005. In the wake of the hurricane, two levees protecting
New Orleans from
Lake Pontchartrain collapsed, leading to widespread flooding. In the aftermath of this
disaster, thousands of city residents, unable or unwilling to evacuate prior to the hurricane, became stranded with little or no relief for several days, resulting in lawless and unsanitary conditions in some areas. Blame for inadequate disaster response was partially attributed to state and local authorities, but public outcry in the disaster's early hours was largely directed at the Bush administration, mainly
FEMA and the
Department of Homeland Security alleging weak crisis management and coordination. In fact a Canadian search-and-rescue team actually made it to a New Orleans suburb 5 days before U.S. aid arrived. Additionally, Bush rejected aid from other countries such as Cuba, which offered to send "more than 1500 medical doctors with 37 tons of medical supplies".
Rapper
Kanye West said in
A Concert for Hurricane Relief that "George Bush doesn't care about
black people," alleging that Bush didn't do anything to help merely because most of the victims were black.
Others have identified political
conservatism as the overriding cause of problems in the way the disaster was handled. These critics argue that the alleged unreadiness of the
United States National Guard, negligence of federal authorities, and haplessness of officials such as
Michael Brown didn't represent incompetence on the part of the federal authorities, but were instead natural and deliberate consequences of the
conservative philosophy embraced by the Bush administration, especially "sink or swim" policies to
force reductions in government expenditure and
privatize key government responsibilities such as
disaster preparedness
, both of which resulted in the systematic dismantling of FEMA by the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Criticism led to the resignation of FEMA director
Michael Brown, and eventually, Bush himself accepted personal responsibility for what he deemed "serious problems in the federal government's response" in a
September 15, 2005 press conference. Currently, the administration is investigating itself, yet several politicians have called for either congressional or independent investigations, claiming that the Executive Branch can't satisfactorily investigate itself.
Environment
Bush has been criticized by national and international environmental groups for his administration's attacks on and rollbacks of hard won environmental protections going back more than three decades and for its general anti-environmental thrust. These are in areas ranging from the attacks on the endangered species act and the clean air and water acts to climate change and many more. For a comprehensive (to date of the report) list see the National Resources defense Council's report
The Bush Record, NRDC's comprehensive account of the Bush administration's environmental policies from 2001 through 2005. More up-to-date information can be found
on the U.S. Senate website. According to MSNBC:
» After four years in office, the George W. Bush administration has compiled an environmental record that's taking our nation in a new and dangerous direction. Last year alone, Bush administration agencies made more than 150 actions that weakened our environmental laws. Over the course of the first term, this administration led the most thorough and destructive campaign against America's environmental safeguards in the past 40 years.
In
Texas Chainsaw Management (2007)
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. argues that "The verdict on George W. Bush as the nation's environmental steward has already been written in stone. No president has mounted a more sustained and deliberate assault on the nation's environment. No president has acted with more solicitude toward polluting industries. Assaulting the environment across a broad front, the Bush administration has promoted and implemented more than 400 measures that eviscerate 30 years of environmental policy." Kennedy has also written a book
Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy. See also the website
BushGreenWatch.
Dismissal of U.S. attorneys
The
dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy is an ongoing political dispute initiated by the
unprecedented dismissal of seven
United States Attorneys by the Bush administration's
Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2006, and their replacement by interim appointees under provisions of the 2005
Patriot Act reauthorization.
Congressional investigations have focused on whether the
Department of Justice and the
White House were using the U.S. Attorney positions for political advantage. Allegations are that some of the attorneys were targeted for dismissal to impede investigations of
Republican politicians or that some were targeted for their failure to initiate investigations that would damage
Democratic politicians or hamper Democratic-leaning voters.
Clear explanations for the dismissals remain elusive, however, with several administration officials providing contradictory testimony or testimony contradicted by documents subpoened by Congress. On July 25, 2007 the
United States House Committee on the Judiciary voted along party lines 22-17 to issue citations of
Contempt of Congress to
White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former
White House Counsel Harriet Miers for their failure to respond to Congressional subpoenas.
Critics argue that the scandal has undermined both the integrity of the Department of Justice and the non-partisan tradition of U.S. Attorneys.
Others have gone so far as to liken the event to
Watergate, referring to it as
Gonzales-gate.
Many members of Congress from both parties called for the resignation of
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
As of June 25, 2007, six senior staff of the Department of Justice had resigned, including the Deputy Attorney General, the Acting Associate Attorney General, the Chief of Staff for the Attorney General, the Chief of Staff for the Deputy Attorney General, the Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, and the DOJ's White House Liaison.
By
September 17,
2007 Attorney General,
Alberto Gonzales, and several additional senior Department of Justice officers had departed from office. His successor,
Michael Mukasey after a controversy over his Senate testimony regarding the legality of torture and
waterboarding, was confirmed to office by a vote of the Senate on
November 8,
2007, and was sworn in on
November 9,
2007.
Hostility toward the poor
Detractors have presented examples of a hostility to the poor, and a favoring of the rich, on the part of the Bush Administration, and Republicans in general. "This is an impressive crowd -- the haves and the have-mores. Some call you the elite. I call you my base," stated Bush, before a
white-tie fundraiser; footage of this statement was shown in Michael Moore's documentary
Fahrenheit 9/11 to emphasize this specific issue. His supposed distaste for the working class shows in tax cuts for the very rich, which leading economists have suggested may hurt the poor.
Moral and ethical questions have been raised over the billions of dollars Bush has requested for the open-ended Iraq war, while ensuring less money is made available to help children and the poor in the United States. One example is a perceived stinginess toward poor children with regards to health care in a time when it's increasingly unaffordable. Another example is Bush's effort to cut food stamps for the poor. In 2005, Bush called for "billions of dollars in cuts that will touch people on food stamps and farmers on price supports, children under Medicaid and adults in public housing." While passed by the Republican Congress, initially the "White House proposed the restriction".
Criticisms of personality
Leadership
Bush's critics have questioned his leadership skills regarding some events. One occasion was on the moment of the
September 11th World Trade Center attacks: after being told by Chief of Staff
Andrew Card that the U.S. was "under attack", Bush continued with the reading lesson with elementary school children for seven minutes. Democratic 2004 presidential candidate
John Kerry cited Bush's lack of swift action, calling into question the incumbent's leadership capabilities, and concluding: "Americans want to know that the person they choose as president has all the skills and ability, all of the mental toughness, all of the gut instinct necessary to be a strong commander in chief." The 9/11 Commission later released a summary of Bush closed-door testimony, which stated the President's "instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis". It went on to say "The President felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening." This was impossible, as no televised footage of the first plane crashing into the tower was broadcast until the afternoon of that day. The White House explained his remarks as "a mistaken recollection".
Bush's response to
Hurricane Katrina was also criticized widely by the media, particularly by commentators
Frank Rich,
David Remnick,
Josh Marshall,
Arianna Huffington,
Greg Mitchell,
Andrew Sullivan, and
Howard Kurtz. Remnick charges that "to a frightening degree, Bush's faults of leadership and character were brought into high relief by the [HurricaneKatrina] crisis."
Intellectual and psychological ability
George W. Bush's
intellectual capacities have been questioned by press, media personalities and politicians on numerous occasions. This tendency led to farcical hoaxes such as the
U.S. Presidents IQ hoax. A real
historiometric study, published in 2006 the scientific journal
Political Psychology, estimated the
IQs of all US presidents since 1900 by analyzing each president's speeches and publications. The study ranked Bush second to last, with an estimated IQ between 111.1 and 138.5, and a mean of 125 (an IQ considered above average). In an interview, it was noted by the study's director that "Bush may be 'much smarter' than the findings imply" but that he "scores particularly unimpressively for '
openness to experience, a cognitive proclivity that encompasses unusual receptiveness to fantasy, aesthetics, actions, ideas and values.'"
Personal behavior
Bush has admitted undergoing a 'battle' with alcohol and
alcoholism, which, he's stated, ended in 1986.
Bush's presidency has seen the re-emergence of the use of a term previously applied to his father, "
Bushism", to describe Bush's colorful
mispronunciations and misuse of words when speaking. Bushisms have been widely popularized and
archived across the
Internet due to their often humorous nature. Even as early as the
2000 presidential debates, this was the subject of a
Saturday Night Live sketch (see "
Strategery"). Perhaps his most famous mispronunciation is that of "
nucular" instead of "nu
clear" when referring to
nuclear weapons. In addition, he's often disparagingly called "
Dubya", a stereotypical Texan pronunciation of the letter "W," which is Bush's middle initial. However, Bush's supporters have been known to refer to him as Dubya as well.
Bush critic Georgie Anne Geyer found his behavior shocking
and Sean-Paul Kelley, founder of the left-wing blog
The Agonist, found his behavior appalling. Mishaps include an unexpected shoulder rub he gave German Chancellor
Angela Merkel at the
G-8 summit, an incident where Bush wiped his glasses on an unsuspecting woman's dress on
The David Letterman Show, an incident when he ruined a rented house in
Montgomery, Alabama and never paid the damage fine, and a time when he flashed the
finger in front of a camera during his time as governor.
Another more recent example is during a commemorative ceremony in which Bush presented the mothers of fallen soldiers with a Presidential coin, in which he jokingly commented to one of them "now don't go sell it on eBay".
Surveys of historians
Since 2006,
surveys of professional historians have given the Bush presidency low marks. A 2006
Siena College poll of 744 professors reported the following results:
