stevo:
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A polling of historians is hardly a random sample. Its perhaps as biased a sample as one could get. Most historians are self-proclaimed liberals and anti-war to begin with
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first off, your statement about historians comes from the history news network article itself, and so hardly constitutes an insight. in my experience amongst this peculiar group of people, americanists who would likely be polled for this kind of project would not be among the more left-leaning of the profession. that said, the results are kind of surprising on the surface: but i cannot see how you can possibly argue otherwise. have a look at this list of "achievements" noted by the writer of this same article:
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Presided over the loss of approximately three million American jobs in his first two-and-a-half years in office, the worst record since Herbert Hoover.
Overseen an economy in which the stock market suffered its worst decline in the first two years of any administration since Hoover?s.
Taken, in the wake of the terrorist attacks two years ago, the greatest worldwide outpouring of goodwill the United States has enjoyed at least since World War II and squandered it by insisting on pursuing a foolish go-it-almost-alone invasion of Iraq, thereby transforming almost universal support for the United States into worldwide condemnation. (One historian made this point particularly well: ?After inadvertently gaining the sympathies of the world 's citizens when terrorists attacked New York and Washington, Bush has deliberately turned the country into the most hated in the world by a policy of breaking all major international agreements, declaring it our right to invade any country that we wish, proving that he?ll manipulate facts to justify anything he wishes to do, and bull-headedly charging into a quagmire.?)
Misled (to use the most charitable word and interpretation) the American public about weapons of mass destruction and supposed ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq and so into a war that has plainly (and entirely predictably) made us less secure, caused a boom in the recruitment of terrorists, is killing American military personnel needlessly, and is threatening to suck up all our available military forces and be a bottomless pit for the money of American taxpayers for years to come.
Failed to follow through in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and Al Qaeda are regrouping, once more increasing the threat to our people.
Insulted and ridiculed other nations and international organizations and now has to go, hat in hand, to those nations and organizations begging for their assistance.
Completely miscalculated or failed to plan for the personnel and monetary needs in Iraq after the war, so that he sought and obtained an $87 billion appropriation for Iraq, a sizable chunk of which is going, without competitive bidding to Haliburton, the company formerly headed by his vice president.
Inherited an annual federal budget surplus of $230 billion and transformed it into a $500+ billion deficit in less than three years. This negative turnaround of three-quarters of a trillion dollars is totally without precedent in our history. The ballooning deficit for fiscal 2004 is rapidly approaching twice the dollar size of the previous record deficit, $290 billion, set in 1992, the last year of the administration of President Bush?s father and, at almost 5 percent of GDP, is closing in on the percentage record set by Ronald Reagan in 1986.
Cut taxes three times, sharply reducing the burden on the rich, reclassified money obtained through stock ownership as more deserving than money earned through work. The idea that dividend income should not be taxed?what might accurately be termed the unearned income tax credit?can be stated succinctly: ?If you had to work for your money, we?ll tax it; if you didn?t have to work for it, you can keep it all.?
Severely curtailed the very American freedoms that our military people are supposed to be fighting to defend. (?The Patriot Act,? one of the historians noted, ?is the worst since the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams.?)
Called upon American armed service people, including Reserve forces, to sacrifice for ever-lengthening tours of duty in a hostile and dangerous environment while he rewards the rich at home with lower taxes and legislative giveaways and gives lucrative no-bid contracts to American corporations linked with the administration.
Given an opportunity to begin to change the consumption-oriented values of the nation after September 11, 2001, when people were prepared to make a sacrifice for the common good, called instead of Americans to ?sacrifice? by going out and buying things.
Proclaimed himself to be a conservative while maintaining that big government should be able to run roughshod over the Bill of Rights, and that the government must have all sorts of secrets from the people, but the people can be allowed no privacy from the government. (As one of the historians said, ?this is not a conservative administration; it is a reckless and arrogant one, beholden to a mix of right-wing ideologues, neo-con fanatics, and social Darwinian elitists.?)
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now you might object to some of the drift in rhetoric in the above, but as a basic list of problems, it is not bad.
you might not like these problems, you might prefer to pretend they are not problems, but it is apparent that this is not understood universally as a compelling position.
and given that the above is little more than an outline, it seems to me that you need to be a virtuoso of denial to not see significant problems with the bush regime.
one thing i can say in defense of historians insofar as you can say anything about them as a porfessional group based on this one article, is that they do tend to look at questions like bushworld in broader terms than is generally allowed if your main infromation source is television. in this space, the ideological frame conservatives put around themselves to limit their intake of information simply does not obtain. you might wonder about this in terms that are not simply self-confirming--maybe the problem is that this framework is simply not compelling in itself to folk who traffic in information. maybe it is simply not compelling in space where there is a degree of autonomous thinking. maybe it is simply not compelling.
i do not see in time magazine's goofy "person of the year" competition anything like an evaluation of the administration in terms of actual "achievments"---i do not see anything beyond a curious understanding of "importance" measured most probably in terms of mentions/citations....it would be like trying to determine whether an audi was more or less important than a humvee in world-historical terms by counting the number of times each has appeared in advertisments.