I think we should try to determine when, exactly, the Bush presidency jumped the shark.
I know it seems as if it was just a long stretch of escalating incompetency, and there’s a temptation to say it jumped the shark when the Supreme Court handed him the keys to the kingdom. But of all the screw-ups, remarkably bad photo ops, incoherence (as Ariel pointed out, when you can make a 365 day calendar consisting of one stupid thing every single day that one guy said, that’s pretty bad), was there one moment frozen in time, one particular instance, where his administration–clad in trunks and hurtling forwarded pulled by a motorboat–vaulted over a pool of sharks and never came back?
PAD
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There are two options. The first is when he snubbed Senator Jeffords, which caused him to leave the Republican party.
That was early on in his first term, and it proved Bush was not a uniter, he was indeed a divider. But I think after that, people still had hope. Especially after 9/11, that Bush’d do the right thing after…
So really, we all know the true moment where he jumped the shark. In fact, he did more than jump the shark. I propose he did a brand new thing that will forever be named after him.
He held a press conference on a aircraft carrier.
My vote: The Mission Accomplished banner. Ok the banner wasn’t his fault and the banner wasn’t ment to be seen as the war was won but taken in as a photo op it perfectly sums up the complete failure of nearly every thing that he did during his watch.
Part of me would like to say when he continued to read the book after the first plane hit, but i think when he first started the shift to Iraq claiming weapons of mass distruction.
Though the Mission Accomplished banner is a key moment.
See, I would think the JTS moment came in a seven word sound bite:
“Brownie’s doing a heck of a job.”
PAD
Katrina. “Brownie’s doing a great job”.
I agree–Katrina was the point of no return. Not just a screw up but a genuine missed opportunity. You had a democratic mayor and governor who were on the left end of the competence bell curve, it would not have been difficult to look better but he didn’t and, in fact, looked worse. Everyone and his brother had ideas on how things could have been handled better. When that happens, when that level of trust is lost, you’d have to cure cancer to get it back.
In retrospect? Probably “My Pet Goat.” But from the perspective going forwards–that is, when I knew it had happened as it happened–I’m on board with “Mission Accomplished” or else “heck of a job.”
In retrospect? Probably “My Pet Goat.” But from the perspective going forwards–that is, when I knew it had happened as it happened–I’m on board with “Mission Accomplished” or else “heck of a job.”
The invasion of Iraq without a UN second resolution while the team looking for WMDs were still carrying out their operation.
Or for just blind idiocy, it has to be “Bring it on.”
When he said the highlight of his Adminsitration so far was catching a big dish.
But try this, speaking of Katrina:
Ex-Bush aides say he never recovered from Katrina
Full article here – the paragraphs about Cheney are priceless, and worth reading it just for that.
Katrina is about the worst, but he started getting up to shark-jumping speed with “Mission Accomplished”.
Depending on who you talk to, though, is exactly when he started building up for his shark run. Some folks think it was when he first put his hand on that Bible.
Miles
Katrina is about the worst, but he started getting up to shark-jumping speed with “Mission Accomplished”.
Depending on who you talk to, though, is exactly when he started building up for his shark run. Some folks think it was when he first put his hand on that Bible.
Miles
I’m not really concerned with when the Bush presidency jumped the shark. I am concerned with a larger picture: will his re-election in ’04 be considered the JTS moment for the United States.
Mike Weber, I read it.
I’m not sure if this bit makes me like the Bush administration a little more (because they were not religious fanatics, actually) or makes me like them even less (because they’re cynical hypocrites)
Hey, the Bush gang actually think the religious right is a pain in the butt! I have something in common with them, after all! Oh My GOD! We only disagree about the “had to be accomodated” part.
I have to go with Katrina. It was bad from beginning to end, but the “heckuvajob” comment symbolized his deliberate detachment from reality.
There’s plenty of other stuff, like reading the story book after the first plane hit the tower or the Mission Accomplished banner, but the Katrina disaster was different. Those other things angered the people who already didn’t like him. The response to Katrina made a large chunk of the people who supported him give up.
When he attacked Iraq.
Most people finally caught on that Bush was a failure when Katrina hit, but it was when he invaded Iraq. (Only a small number of people were against attacking Afghanistan.)
But this administration really started going off the rails the day it took office. You have a three-year-old-emotionally child trying to please his father, and failing, so much so that the father broke into tears in an interview.
For a detailed look at this presidency, check out An Oral History of the Bush White House at Vanity Fair.
http://www.vanityfair.com/
I’m going with Katrina. I mean, I’ll always get to look back on my teenage years and think of Georgie, which isn’t comforting. There have been a lot of stupid moments and a lot of slip ups, but I think the crowd started to really turn on him after Katrina.
Like, it was really lame when on “Star Trek: ENT” they started involving the Romulans, but when they based a whole season off the idea that the Legion of Doom was trying to make Albert Einstein build a Death Star… they lost the only audience that they had watching.
1 Dubya was jumping sharks long before he was given the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania. When he asked Ðìçk Cheney to find a person highly qualified to be his vice president and Cheney came back with himself as that person and Bush accepted that answer without question is the defining moment of eight years of failure.
With the exception of Bush standing at the site of 9/11 saying “We’re going to get whoever is responsible for this act,” everything up to that point was meh, mediocre, or bad. My JTS moment came when when Bush started sabre and broadsword rattling towards the country his daddy didn’t invade; it was cemented upon the invasion and occupation of Iraq while the US was still looking for Osama in Afghanistan. Which we’re still doing.
When he referred to fighting terrorism – with Iran and Iraq as part of his ‘Axis of Evil’ – as a crusade.
I believe that was the ’02 State of the Union Address.
There’s a quote from March 2003 that I keep taped to my computer monitor at work, that pretty much sums things up. However, I’m not at work today (university shut down for break), so I’ll have to try to come close by memory. This was three days before the shooting started.
“Some say there’s a chance things will get better without the need for military action, but that’s a risk I’m not prepared to take.”
His intended meaning was, “I’m not going to gamble that leaving things alone will work.” His stated meaning was, “I’m not going to risk losing my shot at starting a war by letting things improve.”
Hmm. I’d say he started bad — slew of failed businesses in his wake, dodging military service — and you can only jump the shark if you were good and turn bad. However, since the topic is when he *did* jump said shark…
I’d say either when he told the terrorists “bring it on” (almost daring them to attack us) or telling the world “you’re either with us or against us” (setting up his “we’re right and everyone else is wrong” mindset that was so pervasive).
For me, it was the invasion of Iraq, the idiocy of which made my head spin until my neck hurt, and no one in Congress dared say No. My second vote would be whatever day they officially made him a “winner” in the 2000 election. We should have known THEN. But, for most people, I would have to say Katrina as the moment he lost all respect and the jeering became open and world-wide. When third-world countries send US aid, we as a nation should hang our heads in shame.
Can’t we have one of those neat little British Vote of No Confidence clauses, so we don’t have to wait until the economy utterly collapses to remove a decerebrate imbecile from office?
I distrusted the Bush administration from day 1, but I was willing to give them a chance, especially after 9/11. I finally realized this administration was corrupt and cynical far, far beyond normal politicians when they wouldn’t let the UN inspectors back in to find the WMD’s after we “won” the Iraq war. Why wouldn’t you do that unless you knew they wouldn’t find anything? That’s when it became clear to me that they knowingly waged a war on a lie — which I previously would not have believed any administration was capable of. Since then, this president and his cronies have consistently exceeded my most pessimistic expectations.
For the public at large, Katrina was the tipping point.
If I was a historian looking back, I would date the jump-the-shark moment to August 6, 2001, when Bush dismissively ignored the presidential daily briefing “Bin Laden determined to attack inside the US”, and seemed peeved that anyone would interrupt his extensive vacation to draw his attention to it.
Katrina, at the latest. I (and a lot of other people) thought that Iraq was both immoral and a disaster in the making, but it wasn’t OBVIOUS incompetence for a while. Katrina was obvious incompetence from the outset, and “heck of a job” cemented that in the eyes of a significant majority of voters.
TWL
mike weber: When he said the highlight of his Adminsitration so far was catching a big dish.
Now I’d have to agree with the person on NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and defend Bush’s view here. I think his catching a big fish was the best thing he did while President.
Day one, dude.
Day one, dude.
Alan Coil: You have a three-year-old-emotionally child trying to please his father, and failing, so much so that the father broke into tears in an interview.
There was some point, when talking about Saddam, that Bush said “He tried to kill my Dad.” I don’t remember the rest of the context, but that one sound bite summed things up pretty well for me, gave an interesting lens thru which to view Bush’s goals and policies. Not going after Saddam because of any sound national policy, but because “he tried to kill my Dad.”
i’m going to start with trading sammy sosa to the cubs. really, who does that?
seriously, “mission accomplished.” it was literally spelled out on a sign above his head and something you expect to have the word FAIL superimposed on it. people say that wasn’t his fault and he didn’t know but i sure as hëll bet if someone had a banner that said “we might pull this off” some aid or something would said “take that crap down.” it isn’t like he had no control over what he’s standing in front of. oh yeah, and the flight suit? did anybody mention the flight suit?
I find it interesting and perhaps the truest indication of how abysmal Bush was, the evolution of conservative consensus about Bush.
In the start, Bush was the greatest President ever, that returned honor and integrity to the White House.
Later, he wasn’t so good anymore, but still a good man that made some mistakes and was still “a whole lot better than Clinton”.
Later still, he was considered a mediocre President, plagued by occasional incompetence and missed opportunities, but still basically a good guy.
And finally, he was acknowledged by conservatives themselves as a bad President throughout, but still not the worst, just a politician as usual, bad as all politicians are (you can feel their deception), and not better than Clinton anymore (Jimmy Carter has been used as Democrat bogeyman lately, as many conservatives implicitely accept Clinton as better than Bush).
I wonder if conservatives will finally take the last step and recognize that this administration was not only bad, but exceptionally bad?
It seems that according to Condi Rice the Bush shark remains unjumped….
Rice: People will soon thank Bush for what he’s done
I guess maybe she kind of has to say that or something to that effect. I wonder what her idea of “soon” is…
I suppose it’s not really so far-fetched, though, now that I think about it. Why heck, just last week a fine Iraqi gentleman was so overcome with gratitude and humbled by thankfulness that he willingly and enthusiastically offered the shoes right off his own feet to President Bush!
“You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.”
Now I’d have to agree with the person on NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and defend Bush’s view here. I think his catching a big fish was the best thing he did while President.
I don’t recall whether that was Roy Blount Jr. or Tom Bodett (I think the former) — but either way, the man was wise. Nice call.
“Was there one moment, frozen in time…”
Nope, just lots and lots of moments like snowflakes on a mountain slope before the avalanche.
Maybe there was a sense of disbelief at how bad he was, maybe there was hope that things could only get better, maybe some sense of loyalty in the face of insanity, but whatever he did in the first term you re-elected him and have yet to censure him in any tangible way.. (Just as we did with Tony Blair, so no moral high ground for me in those comments)
No offense, but talking about JTS almost trivialises the last eight years and all that has happened.
Cheers.
I’m not sure that his JtS moment was with his “Mission Accomplished” moment. All that did was tell everyone what we knew before the first shot was fired. He wanted to take down Saddam and did it. I’m going with “Brownie’s doing a heck of a job.”
That moment was just so out there and the entire Bush take on the mess that he had his people try and sell us was so messed up that it wasn’t even close to funny. I think it even showed even a number of his supporters how disconnected he was from reality.
As a bush supporter, the moment I lost faith in him is when he tried to appoint his personal attorney to the Supreme Court. Don’t even remember her name, but that was the beginning of the end of our relationship.
9 August 2001.
Let me take you back to a pre-“9/11” world: Survivor was still a hot property, Marvel Comics was capable of putting out a comic with enough pacing to tell an actual story in a single issue (!), and a young Canucklehead was preparing for his second, equally disastrous first year at University.
The stem cell debate raged between (please pardon my bias), rational pragmatists who saw the potential for seriously advancing medical science, and emotional absolutists who see any biological material from a human as life on its own.
Bush’s solution: allow research funding for existing stem cell lines (allowing the opponents to claim that the state was sanctioning murder), but refuse to support the creation of new lines (ensuring that research would have one hand tied behind its back).
Total dìçk move, pardon my language. Don’t have the balls to stand up for your “moral” position that Life Begins At etc., but also fail to stand behind the march of reason. Political moves without principle, actions without intellect.
He was always a useless President, he just got a broader canvas to screw up thirty-three days later.
9 August 2001.
Let me take you back to a pre-“9/11” world: Survivor was still a hot property, Marvel Comics was capable of putting out a comic with enough pacing to tell an actual story in a single issue (!), and a young Canucklehead was preparing for his second, equally disastrous first year at University.
The stem cell debate raged between (please pardon my bias), rational pragmatists who saw the potential for seriously advancing medical science, and emotional absolutists who see any biological material from a human as life on its own.
Bush’s solution: allow research funding for existing stem cell lines (allowing the opponents to claim that the state was sanctioning murder), but refuse to support the creation of new lines (ensuring that research would have one hand tied behind its back).
Total dìçk move, pardon my language. Don’t have the balls to stand up for your “moral” position that Life Begins At etc., but also fail to stand behind the march of reason. Political moves without principle, actions without intellect.
He was always a useless President, he just got a broader canvas to screw up thirty-three days later.
Not sure this counts as jumping the shark, but the handling of the spy plane collision on April 1, 2001 was the first real sign for me that this was going to be a troubled presidency on the foreign affairs front.
I can with all seriousness say never. I think he was a very good president and eventually will be remembered as such. It is others who just can’t stand things not going their way that can’t handle it.
Care for a refill on that Kool-Aid you’re drinking, Gram? It looks a little low.
Justin above beat me to it, but I would say the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. That was the moment when even those that supported President Bush through all the other stupid things he did thought he was doing something dumb and silly.
Not sure of the exact date, but pretty much the week or so before 9/11/01. He had all the information there in front of him about an impending attack on the USA and how it was supposedly going to happen. (it wasn’t exact, but they knew it involved airports and possible highjackings.) He ignored it. He blatantly freakin’ ignored it.
And then on the day it happens he sits on his ášš reading a book while another 2 buildings are hit, looking dumbfounded the entire time.
January 20th cannot get here quick enough.
Gram with all due respect, if you feel he’s never jumped the shark what’s your response to: “Mission Accomplished and Brownie’s doing a heck of a job?”
Are they mistakes that he made? Do you feel he is being judged too harshly for those remarks/occasions?
Because when you say It is others who just can’t stand things not going their way that can’t handle it. Do you mean the people whose lives were ruined by Katrina?
I’m not sold on the jump-the-shark analogy for Bush. Bush’s presidency was more like Fonzie broadcasting the dissection of a shark Al Capone kept in a tank and finding nothing. Cue the sad horns; wanht, wanht, wannnh.
This is obviously a Darrin-switch, where the role of the president was recast with Ðìçk Cheney.
When I first read the Bush Doctrine, I knew we were in deep, DEEP trouble.
When I first read the Bush Doctrine, I knew we were in deep, DEEP trouble.
When I first read the Bush Doctrine, I knew we were in deep, DEEP trouble.