Chauncey, I appreciate your input, but allow me to answer some of your points.
Quote:
By th etime 2008 comes around we will be starting to realy benefit from his policies.
Most of the hardships we have been feeling lately have been the trees of the Cinton administration.
It really surprises me that people forget that many of the decisions that Presidents make take time to actually be felt.
[snip]
I think that by the time 2008 comes around Bush will have the economy stronger.
[snip]
Political game plans can take years and years to be executed.
If you have a plan that starts getting kinks in the middle do you give up on the plan and lose everything? no you adjust to the situation stay on course and keep your eyes on the goal.
I think in 2008 we will be fine.
|
If I understand you correctly, you believe that the economic policies of a president can only be examined in the years immediately following his first four years. There is some truth to that, of course; you can't realistically measure all of the impacts of an economic policy immediately after it is passed. Nonetheless, you claim both that Bush's economic policies will prove themselves by his 8th year in office. You ALSO claim that any economic problems the country faces are caused by Clinton's economic policies. Yet by Clinton's 8th year, this country prospered by like never before in its history. So what is it: do economic policies prove themselves within 8 years, or can they have longer-range consequences, as you claim Clinton's did? I'm not going to argue the point too much, but frankly, your argument for Bush's economic policies so far is,
1. Things suck now, but you can't hold him accountable for it yet, the logic of which means that no president could ever be held accountable for his first four years of economic policy, and
2. Businesses need money to give us jobs. But his tax cuts actually went to rich individuals, who have little reason to spend that on creating jobs. And by the way, the average job created during Bush's time has paid $9,000 less than the jobs that were lost. Bush is the first Prez since Hoover to LOSE jobs. Also, businesses that were given money have largely outsourced or gone overseas, as Bush has done nothing to stop them. There are other arguments, but it is tough to list them all here...
You also say that "kinks" in policy execution mean that you just keep on going and ignore them. Well, excuse me, but since when? Are we to IGNORE any problems in policy from the President, and just keep going forward without rethinking or reexamining the policies themselves? Were you saying that when Clinton ran policies you disagreed with, just ignore problems and keep on going? That Clinton shouldn't be held accountable at the time because you can't possibly understand the true consequences of his policies until later? Bush's economy has lost jobs, wages are lower, social security is in trouble, Homeland Security, according our own commissions (9/11) is woefully underfunded, Afghanistan is a an uncompromised mess, Iraq is a quagmire in which the U.S. is universally despised and the country is churning out new terrorists, etc. etc. Need I go on? Should we IGNORE these problems?
Quote:
He has not backed down on his foreign policy decisions and I admire him for it.
|
Too bad they were, just about every single one, the wrong decisions. Why is not changing course after making a mistake admirable?
Your arguments, except for the tax cut statement, have no specifics. They boil down to, well, the economy may be in the toilet and our foreign policy doesn't work, but I admire the Prez for not changing his failed policies.
Man.