Shell-Shocked Bush Administration Survivors Look Back

The Bush administration was notable for claiming dozens of political victims, only some of whom were Democrats. We interviewed the survivors who feel particularly burned by the Bush brand--everyone from the last New England Republican to a fired U.S. attorney to a children's author whose book about a goat became fodder for Osama bin Laden. Their reflections on the last eight years are below.

Former Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee voted against the war in Iraq and the Bush tax cuts. And yet the Republican brand was so toxic that he lost in the 2006 midterms--the elections Bush called a "thumping." Chafee is no longer a Republican.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[ObjectiveRealist]

Brownie quote:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-08/i-survived-the-bush-presidency/1/
Look, I don’t dislike the guy. Am I mad? Frustrated? Disappointed? Sure, as he probably is with me. Having said all those things, he has some good qualities. He is a caring individual—I can think of times being in the car or in a meeting and actually having a good, fun time.
/quote

Then maybe he was qualified to be the party chairman, but the GOP should never again be trusted to have *any* role in judging qualifications for holding public office. They have violated the public trust, unforgivably.

[cobraxus]

The essence of the problem was that when the critics of the administration started saying things like “the whole war was built on an error,” and then they escalated their rhetoric and said “the whole war was built on a lie,” the administration did an abominable job of answering that. They often refused to engage their critics, and that is something that I condemn in my book. The administration just fell down on the job of strategic communications and allowed a lot of very important issues to be defined by its critics, to the detriment of the country. When the political heat fades, and people look to the facts, I think there will be a reevaluation of this administration

in other words if GWB had simply been a better liar or suppressed his critics than none of this would've reflected badly on the neocons.

[eahce]

What a crock

[kareemachan]

Maybe they couldn't refute the allegations?

[ObjectiveRealist]

quote:
The essence of the problem was that when the critics of the administration started saying things like "the whole war was built on an error," and then they escalated their rhetoric and said "the whole war was built on a lie," the administration did an abominable job of answering that.
/quote

Your disingenuous suggestion -- that "they escalated their rhetoric" without referring to the new facts that came to light, prompting that escalation: the Downing Street Memo; CIA intel that no, Muhammad Atta had never met with anybody higher than a pissant of the Iraqi government if anybody, in Prague nor anywhere else; and the details of the treasonous outing of Valerie Plame, showing that the assertions about Nigerian "yellow cake uranium" going to Iraq were lies spun from whole cloth -- says more about you than about the Bush critics whom you libel.

[eahce]

Americans should have stopped the bush coup d etat in 2000. We all share in the blame for the destruction of our once great country through our own negligence.

[ObjectiveRealist]

Screw that.

The case was Al Gore's to press, and when he conceded in 2000 I only extended him the benefit of the doubt in assuming that he actually wanted to be President, and believed he was the better candidate, enough to press his own legal case vigorously. I blame Jeb Bush for fixing the system in Florida, the Diebold guy who promised to "deliver Ohio" and whoever intimidated Al Gore to give up what looks in hindsight like an airtight legal case, had he pursued it like somebody opposing an honest opponent in an open democracy; I blame the perpetrators, not the victims, and absolutely not myself for others' actions and inactions.

[raker]

Christopher Shays is my favorite. What a clueless, ridiculous man. He looks back, and despite war and torture and lies and waste and a contaminated food supply and crumbling infrastructure and Walter Reed and Enron and impending depression - all of which are just the tip of the enormous Bush iceberg - and he see's it as a kind of game: for Bush, or against Bush. Shays could use a bit of the vision thing. Look at Senator Chaffee's brief analysis and compare. Chaffee gets it, but Shays never will.

[NotMcCain]

THEY'RE not the shell-shocked survivors.

WE are.

[Culturemaven]

Flounder, you can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You f*&#ed up - you trusted us! Hey, make the best of it! Maybe we can help.

[zelda777]

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove & Co...the psycho-whackos leading the psycho-wha­ckos...how did these clinically insane evil people get to be in charge of the once-greatest country in the world??? Who fell for this BS, and why? Even with the 2000 and 2004 elections fudged, they were still very close. The real issue is how did so many Americans fall for all this BS???? What were these pro-bush voters thinking??? How stupid did you have to be to believe all the lies - the most recent of which was "The US economy is fundamentally strong"? Why did it take 6 or more long years before people on the whole began to wake up??? How did the word "liberal" become an epithet?

How did 'Bush in Drag" become a VP candidate in 08? Obama has brought hope, but there is still a very disturbing element of hateful and ignorant people in the US. How did the US become so polarized? I could go on...

As the US economy and culture self-destruct in a slo-mo tsunami, maybe some answers will percolate to the surface.

[jayjaga]

Once the economy is put on track by Obama, the Average Americans will go back to the era of culture and religious bigotry again to derail the country and vote in another neocon to start another carnage.

[PepperzMom]

Shrub is beginning to remind me of the I Love Lucy episode involving Lucy's writing of a novel.

Lucy writes it and gets a letter from a publisher that he wants it. Only thing is, the letter was incorrectly sent to her and her book was really a failure. The publisher then turns around and says he has a firend that is interested in it after all.

The only problem is is that publisher wants to use it as an example of how NOT to write a novel!

I think it's clear that Shrubbery & crew will be used in a manner similar to the 2nd publisher - how NOT to be a president.

JMO...

[Leather-n-Lace]

It's the things we don't know about that scare me.

[biglith]

Shell-shocked? What they need is a shell right up they're you know what.

[Oonagh]

Shell shock..... Dough Feith should be shell shocked.... that man designed the Iraq War for the President ... and our poor young men and women have lost their lives ... and the financial drain that it has put on our country... all because of his stupidity.

[thepoliticalcat]

Shell-shocked? These people have never seen a goddamned shell. Four thousand (and counting) people who actually lost their lives to shells, 150,000 more who lost a limb, an organ, or some part of their mind or soul, ONE MILLION dead Iraqis and Afghanis, 4.5 million Iraqi refugees, and hundreds of thousands of maimed and emotionally shattered Iraqis -- those people would have a lot to say (yes, from beyond the grave) about being shell-shocked by this maladministration.

[SimJack]

Getting hit by 'friendly fire' is the biggest b85ch of all time, except when it was on purpose.

[rabiddog6708]

From NBC's Mark Murray
A "Then and Now" to show what the United States looked like when Bush was entering office and what it looks like now as he's leaving.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
Then: 4.2% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 2001)
Now: 6.7% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, November 2008)

DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE
Then: 10,587 (close of Friday, Jan. 19, 2001)
Now: 9,015 (close of Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009)

BUSH FAVORABILITY RATING
Then: 50% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll)
Now: 31% (12/08 NBC/WSJ poll)

CHENEY FAVORABILITY RATING
Then: 49% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll)
Now: 21% (12/08 NBC/WSJ poll)

CONGRESS APPROVAL RATING
Then: 48% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll)
Now: 21% (12/08 NBC/WSJ poll)

SATISFIED WITH THE NATION'S DIRECTION
Then: 45% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll)
Now: 26% (12/08 NBC/WSJ poll)

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE (1985=100)
Then: 115.7 (Conference Board, January 2001)
Now: 38.0, which is an all-time low (Conference Board, December 2008)

FAMILIES LIVING IN POVERTY
Then: 6.4 million (Census numbers for 2000)
Now: 7.6 million (Census numbers for 2007 -- most recent numbers available)

AMERICANS WITHOUT HEALTH INSURANCE
Then: 39.8 million (Census numbers for 2000)
Now: 45.7 million (Census numbers for 2007 -- most recent available)

U.S. BUDGET
Then: +236.2 billion (2000, Congressional Budget Office)
Now: -$1.2 trillion (projected figure for 2009, Congressional Budget Office)

[GJR227]

Not to mention:

4,000+ Americans dead and 36,000+ wounded in a war based on lies.
100,000 Iraqi citizens dead from a war based on lies.
2 million Iraqi citizens displaced from their homes.
$2 Trillion+ American tax dollars to fund Bush's war.

In 2000, Bush inherited a budget surplus from Clinton of $400+billion dollars.
When Bush leaves office, he will leave behind a budget deficit of over $1 trillion.

And the list goes on for what must rank as the worst president in this country's history.

[Happylib]

The three above comments makes my blood boil. I have not had this feeling since the election. I want this man held accountable and no Bush I don't think that elections are the only form of accountability. You should be ASHAMED!!!!!

[ThermoChemist]

I've read similar statistics.
http://www.technmore.com/?p=238

Oil Price:
Clinton (left at): 28.66 cents per barrel.
Bush (current): 81.60 cents per barrel.

National Debt:
Clinton (left at): 5.6 trillion
bush: 10.28 trillion

Jobs Created:
Clinton created: 22.7 million (+2.45% annually)
Bush create: 4.9 million (+.5% annually)

Trade Deficit:
Clinton (left): 39.6 billion
bush (current): 69.2 billion

Budget:
Clinton(left): 118 billion surplus
Bush (current): 407 billion deficit

[Chopin]

great research !

[MovingtoNorway]

The past eight years has been like a train wreck in slow motion. Is it possible that an entire nation can suffer from PTSD?

[thepoliticalcat]

Obviously. We're all walking proof.

[Leather-n-Lace]

I don't think we've even truly realized the darkness that this administration has wrought upon this nations people. The heaviness since that travesty of an election in 2000 to start it off and then that awful day in September of 2001 and so on and so on. It has been a living he// for 8 years.

[mom2sons]

Oh, sadly, more will be revealed. What I'm most upset about is that our young men and women were killed because of lies. I don't know how they can sleep at night. If I was a parent (and I don't care if they went voluntarily) I would bring a lawsuit against them. The damage that they have done to this country hasn't been determined yet. Like I said, more will be revealed.