31 Reasons Why Bush is a Bad President

You don’t always agree with everything your President does, but George W Bush made so many poor decisions during his presidency that I consider him the worst President in my lifetime (I was born in 1978, but can only remember back to Reagan).? I didn’t start out with a negative disposition toward him at all.? In fact, I voted for him in 2000.? That’s difficult for me to admit now, but in 2000 I actually thought Gore and Bush were politically similar.? Bush called himself a “compassionate conservative,” which is not so different from my facebook’s political label, “liberal capitalist.”? I thought then, and still do, that his Dad was a decent President who didn’t get re-elected because of a triple whammy of a bad economy, a tough opponent, and a Ross Perot.

A President doesn’t have to be the smartest man alive.? That’s what he has advisers for.? It’s clear that George W Bush’s biggest problem is that he’s not even bright enough to evaluate the advice he’s getting.? This caused him to make many mistakes over the last eight years, which I’ve listed below.? The President doesn’t have an effect on everything, so I tried to be fair and only include things where he has a direct or in-direct influence.? So here are 31 Reasons why Bush is a Bad President (I’ve tried to source everything as best as possible).

1. Took more vacation time than any other President
2. Invaded Iraq to get rid of WMDs which didn’t exist
3. Implemented protectionist steel tariffs
4. Outed a CIA agent for political purposes
5. Fired prosecutors who refused to abuse their positions for political purposes
6. Disregarded FISA laws and wiretappd Americans without warrants
7. Never caught Osama Bin Laden
8. Failed to plan for Iraq occupation after Saddam’s government fell and the subsequent occupation has killed 150,000 Iraqi civilians.
9. Created a vague “enemy combatant” status in order to indefinitely hold foreigners and even US citizens without trying or charging them with a crime.
10. Used torture to interrogate prisoners despite evidence that says information acquired through unreliable
11. Prematurely said the mission in Iraq had been accomplished.
12. Approved budgets that outspent our tax revenue by hundreds of billions of dollars.
13. Poor leadership on response to Hurrican Katrina
14. Little or no policy changes on our changing climate
15. Didn’t veto a single bill for six years and when he finally did it was to shoot down the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act.
16. Passed the Military Commissions Act, which removes the right to Habeus Corpus, one of the most fundamental safe guards against tyrannical governments.
17. Pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missle Treaty
18. Issues illegal “signing statements” when passing bills, saying which portions of the bill he will or won’t enforce.? This essentially allows him to rewrite legislation.
19. Pushed for elections in Palestine that lead to a Hamas victory, and then tried to overthrow them.
20. Allowed Don Rumsfeld to outsource much of the Iraq war to security contractors which are not subject to Iraqi or American military laws or standards.
21. Tried to appoint his personal attorney, Harriet Myers, to the supreme court.
22. Dangerous diplomatic philosophy that discourages peaceful negotiations with certain nations.
23. Appointed John Bolton, a man who said “there is no such thing as the United Nations“, as the UN Ambassador.
24. Consistent intellectual disinterest in his job.
25. Failed to act on warning signs of the September, 11th attacks.
26. Was dishonest with the American people about his National Guard service.
27. Lied about giving up golf in a time of war.
28. Dissolving the Iraqi army right after the war, putting thousands of trained soldiers into the insurgency.
29. Believing Paul Wolfowitz that the war and subsequent reconstruction would pay for itself with Iraqi oil revenue.
30. His policies contributed to a quadrupling of the price of oil.
31. Lied to the American people that Saddam Hussein was working with Al-Qaeda

To be fair, I’ll also list all the things I think he’s done right:

1. Negotiated a deal with North Korea to end their nuclear program
2. Negotiated a deal with Libya to end their WMD program

So far he’s 2-31.