He's obviously lied a fair amount. But he doesn't strike me as dramatically out of the range of normal politicians. Okay, the consequences of some of these have been pretty dire - but a lot of the lies are really just extremely selective spin. There was _some_ evidence that there might be WMDs in Iraq - so if you ignore the larger body of evidence that calls it into doubt, it's not lying that far beyond the scope what we expect from the office. Not a high bar, I'll grant.
And he's not exactly an intellectual. But I've always thought that he's played up this intentionally - voters don't like smart people, unfortunately. Sure, he occasionally abuses the language, and he doesn't take a nuanced approach to, well, anything. But I think he's only slightly below average here, for a politician.
But incompetent - we have a winner! He consistently misjudges critical sitations, like Katrina or Iraq, gloms on to the expectation that best matches what he'd like, and is unable to change course. He hires cronies rather than skilled professionals. He has a hard time believing the truth - that's not lying in my book. He's really clueless about what to do with facts. Whether his ideas are good or bad, he's not competent enough to carry them out effectively.
Even the neocons are starting to backlash on this point. With congress in his pocket and what was once a historic approval rating, he's gotten almost nothing done. They're pissed at him. He just can't execute on anything.
And it's not even one of these 'not getting anything done is good' things, since he's botching important management issues that are normally during the campaign just assumed that they'll be run with care.
He's not a historically bad president because he's politically wrong on so many things. What separates him from Reagan is that he's just bad at his job, while Reagan was ideologically similar in many respects but good at his job.
The good news: He's constitutionally ineligible from ever being president again! And his legacy is starting to poison the Republican well. Here's hoping the small government libertarian wing of their party can rise again - that's the honorable opposition, not these clowns.
in re: lying It's not that no other politician lies. It's... the bald faced quality of it, like a child with chocolate smeared all around his mouth who says "What candy bar? I saw no candy bar." because he kept his eyes closed while he ate it. It's the prolific nature of it, the sheer number of times that he simply states something obviously wrong is so. It's that he does it when, so far as I can tell, there is no advantage to be gained by lying as opposed to telling the truth. But yes, of the three, incompetent is far and away the most appropriate brand.
According to Pew (http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=271) most folks agree with you: The changing impressions of the president can best be viewed by tracking over time how often words come up in these top-of-the-mind associations. Until now, the most frequently offered word to describe the president was "honest," but this comes up far less often today than in the past. Other positive traits such as "integrity" are also cited less, and virtually no respondent used superlatives such as "excellent" or "great" terms that came up fairly often in previous surveys.
The single word most frequently associated with George W. Bush today is "incompetent,"and close behind are two other increasingly mentioned descriptors: "idiot" and "liar." All three are mentioned far more often today than a year ago.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 12:21 am (UTC)He's obviously lied a fair amount. But he doesn't strike me as dramatically out of the range of normal politicians. Okay, the consequences of some of these have been pretty dire - but a lot of the lies are really just extremely selective spin. There was _some_ evidence that there might be WMDs in Iraq - so if you ignore the larger body of evidence that calls it into doubt, it's not lying that far beyond the scope what we expect from the office. Not a high bar, I'll grant.
And he's not exactly an intellectual. But I've always thought that he's played up this intentionally - voters don't like smart people, unfortunately. Sure, he occasionally abuses the language, and he doesn't take a nuanced approach to, well, anything. But I think he's only slightly below average here, for a politician.
But incompetent - we have a winner! He consistently misjudges critical sitations, like Katrina or Iraq, gloms on to the expectation that best matches what he'd like, and is unable to change course. He hires cronies rather than skilled professionals. He has a hard time believing the truth - that's not lying in my book. He's really clueless about what to do with facts. Whether his ideas are good or bad, he's not competent enough to carry them out effectively.
Even the neocons are starting to backlash on this point. With congress in his pocket and what was once a historic approval rating, he's gotten almost nothing done. They're pissed at him. He just can't execute on anything.
And it's not even one of these 'not getting anything done is good' things, since he's botching important management issues that are normally during the campaign just assumed that they'll be run with care.
He's not a historically bad president because he's politically wrong on so many things. What separates him from Reagan is that he's just bad at his job, while Reagan was ideologically similar in many respects but good at his job.
The good news: He's constitutionally ineligible from ever being president again! And his legacy is starting to poison the Republican well. Here's hoping the small government libertarian wing of their party can rise again - that's the honorable opposition, not these clowns.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 12:27 am (UTC)It's not that no other politician lies. It's... the bald faced quality of it, like a child with chocolate smeared all around his mouth who says "What candy bar? I saw no candy bar." because he kept his eyes closed while he ate it. It's the prolific nature of it, the sheer number of times that he simply states something obviously wrong is so. It's that he does it when, so far as I can tell, there is no advantage to be gained by lying as opposed to telling the truth.
But yes, of the three, incompetent is far and away the most appropriate brand.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 12:58 am (UTC)The changing impressions of the president can best be viewed by tracking over time how often words come up in these top-of-the-mind associations. Until now, the most frequently offered word to describe the president was "honest," but this comes up far less often today than in the past. Other positive traits such as "integrity" are also cited less, and virtually no respondent used superlatives such as "excellent" or "great" terms that came up fairly often in previous surveys.
The single word most frequently associated with George W. Bush today is "incompetent,"and close behind are two other increasingly mentioned descriptors: "idiot" and "liar." All three are mentioned far more often today than a year ago.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 02:21 am (UTC)So that's how long it takes to wake some people up... *makes note*