re: #254 suchislife

The left believed that the Bush administration had forced them into a war pointing to one rationale, while really being motivated by other reasons. They believed that Bush politized the political institutions like the DoJ and appointed clueless people to crucial positions to please the religious right, resulting in incompetent officials in crucial positions. They thought that the administration, driven by Cheney, relaxed the standards on torture and on the rights of habeus corpus and concerns of privacy. They believed that the governement botched the handling of post war Iraq and the aftermath of Katrina. And they thought that Bush was pretty stupid and not really up to the job of governing America. And all the while for years after 9/11, all critics were liable to be called traitors in all the major networks, leaving them to rely on the internet and the daily show.
One can argue these points, but I don’t think one can argue that if someone saw evidence of these things, they would be justifiably mad.

All true, at least for me. However, it took me a while to really get hopping mad at Dubya. When he first took office, I didn’t think much of him, having had him as governor here in Texas, and I just hoped he wouldn’t do too much damage while in office. Heck, I even gave him the benefit of the doubt in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, since the country had been attacked.

I don’t think I hit any real, lasting anger at his administration until the Katrina debacle. Oh, and the Schiavo meddling made me hit the ceiling, though that was more general anger at the GOP than anything that Bush did on his own.

What will always stick with me about Bush’s presidency is that after 9/11, he had a very real chance to unite the country— or heck, the world— behind a common cause and to affect real change for good, but he threw it all away in such a thorough and profound way that it *still* boggles my mind. I don’t think I’ll never understand it at all.