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
• 
Oops. Double-posting. Sorry.
Make that triple-posting?
Make that triple-posting. DEEP problems with our computer.
What year was it when he made a joke in his Christmas video about looking for WMDs under the couch in the White House?
“Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America’s great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.” — September 27, 2001
The inept way the spy plane fiasco with China played out. We were told the Administration was full of foreign policy gurus.
Yeah, right.
But then, remember that neo-cons have been positioning to fight China a decade from now when it finally surpasses the US.
“When he said the highlight of his Adminsitration so far was catching a big fish.”
As “wait wait don’t tell me” put it, “I think we should give Bush a little slack on this one. He was probably right.”
1 I think Bush will one day be remembered decently. I’m not a supporter but I do believe people in general always have a grass is greener mentality. Every single president has said that it’s the hardest and most thankless job ever.
With that said my jump the shark moment is “we are going to the moon” Actually using something we had already accomplished and spinning it not only as something new but also using it to take bad publicity off of him, he might as well done his press conference where the jumpsuit with a cape and on a motorcycle.
On another note I’d like to see a list of jump the shark moments for all fomer presidents.
Jasonk,
I am not saying Bush was perfect. I will never think that. No one is perfect. There has NEVER been nor will there EVER be a perfect President. Everyone makes mistakes, Obama will make them, Clinton made them, Reagan made them. Everyone does. The instances you stated were examples of mistakes, they were not monumental and should not be considered as such.
As for Katrina, that was in no way, Bush’s fault. It was the fault of the Governor and Mayor Nagin. I would even go as far as to blame the people who refused to evacuate. They knew a potentially serious hurricane was headed their way and they stayed. The Governor and Mayor had the National Guard and hundreds of busses at their disposal. They had the same weather data that the President and other governmental officials had. They needed to act, they did not. They did nothing. The President cannot micromanage, our system of Government is not set up for that to happen. That is WHY we have Governors and Mayors and other state, federal and local officials.
Katrina was bad, I would never say otherwise, but it wasn’t the fault of the President, the fact that people stayed wasn’t his fault and the fact that their local officials who were, in many many ways, more responsible for their safety than the President did nothing.
I do not expect Bush to be looked upon fondly by a lot of people, he let me down too. But I also do nto think Obama will be this super magical changer that he proposes to be. He was a media superstar, never vetted as others were and never truly researched. He has no experience and no real proof that he can handle the job he is about to begin.
That being said I am going to, and am more then willing to, give him a chance.
So maybe instead of looking back at a man who can do no more to upset people we shoudl be worrying and wondering about what lies ahead.
Time to let bygones(I worded it this way on purpose) be bygones. Nothing can be changed.
With respect to all,
Gram R.
Time to let bygones(I worded it this way on purpose) be bygones. Nothing can be changed.
With respect to all,
Gram R.
The problem with picking one moment is that there’s just too many to choose from. Katrina, Mission Accomplished, reading on 9/11, the supreme court appointment…
For me, the moment came right after 9/11, when the entire world was sympathizing and offering support. Bush could have turned that into the start of a massive anti-terrorism coalition and really brought about serious positive change in the world.
Instead, he goes off solo like a cowboy, ticks off EVERYBODY, and turns the entire international community against us. THAT’S when he jumped the shark for me.
After the stunning election in which he (apparently, at the time) won the Electoral Vote while losing the majority vote, it was clear how divided the country was. Half wanted the moderate Republican he presented himself to be and half wanted the centrist Democrat in Gore. Either way, he had tremendous opportunity to maintain this balance, and rule from the middle.
And on the day after the inauguration, he began his hard push to the extreme right by yanking the funding aimed at women in the third world, if those programs even *hinted* at the possibility of a woman’s right to terminate an unwated pregnancy. And it was all downhill from there.
It jumped the shark on Jan. 21, 2001.
Posted by Gram at December 31, 2008 03:17 AM
“Time to let bygones … be bygones. Nothing can be changed.”
I’ll have a large dish of ambivalence to go with that.
On the one hand, yes, we need to leave our behinds in the past or end up forever raking over old slights and who pìššëd øff whom, and how and when the pooch got screwed, which is not deeply contructive or helpful going forward.
On t’other hand, like the man said, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
And whatever did happen to that quaint old-fashioned nonsense about taking responsibility, owning up to mistakes and being accountable for the consequences of your actions?
I think it was Spider Robinson who pointed out that if you want absolution you have to supply at least some of the solution…
Cheers.
I’m not a supporter but I do believe people in general always have a grass is greener mentality.
In this instance, it’s an understandable mentality when the side you’re on consists of scorched earth.
PAD
I understand that when he first decided to run, he told Karl Rove he wanted to be President in the worse way…….
bu dump bump
For me, it’ll always be the invasion of Iraq.
Our resources of money, troops and aid, our place in the world, and most of all the safety of Iraq’s people all started jumping into the world’s biggest sinkhole as soon as the first troops landed in Iraq. It’s all been downhill from there.
Although, if the JtS moment is to be defined as the point at which he not only spent but actually torched the most political capital, that would probably be Katrina.
I don’t think the phrase even works with Bush. “Jump the Shark” is a phrase that is used to describe the point at which a beloved TV show peaked, or declined in quality. This doesn’t work with U.S. Presidential administrations, at least nowadays, because no administration is ever universally beloved; the country is always divided in half, with those in the President’s party obviously giving approval, where those in the other party do not. Using “jump the shark” implies that there was a time when everyone liked Bush, and no one did. While he wasn’t responsible for the confusing Florida ballots that caused numerous Gore voters to vote for Buchanan, there was no way he was ever going to be compared to a well-liked TV show, once Katherine Harris and the Supreme Court right-wingers had their way.
I mean, how do you apply concepts of “peaking” or “declining in quality” to an administration that was never a good one to begin with? You could argue it was when his a.r. dipped below 50%, I suppose, or when the Repubs lost the 2008 mid-terms, since I guess that’s when the American public made it clear that the Repubs had lost their momentum, but it doesn’t matter; Any metric you use is going to be arbitrary. Yes, you could cite the “Mission Accomplished” banner (hëll, even Maureen Dowd did), or Matthew Dowd’s (are they related?) citation of Katrina, since you would expect them to be fairly objective, since the former critcizes Dems and Repubs, and the latter was a Bush aide, but I still think that you’re using a different definition of the phrase “Jump the Shark”. “Jump the Shark” means when something that was once loved declined in overall quality in the eyes of its fans. To me, it doesn’t work with something that was hated from the get-go by at least half the populace.
His SOTU Address– 2004 … “We got a bunch of people workin’ hard…”
To bad you weren’t one of ’em , George ol’ buddy.
Bob Ahrens
The worst thing I ever saw on TV – the 2002 SoTU address. That’s when all the hope I had that we weren’t about to lose our national minds went out the window. So much fail in one speech. So much impeachable fail.
It was the 2nd 9/11 speech that lost me.
I remember the first one, on the day 9/11/01. I watched, really wanting to see this guy step up to what a President ought to be. I watched him staring out, looking frightened, and I wondered if he’d abdicate. A few days later, he produced the “official” 9/11/01 speech, dramatic and choreographed, and I wondered who he was trying to kid.
That’s my nomination for the Jump the Shark date — when he tried to pretend, after the fact, that he was the sort of leader that Rudy Giuliani was coming across as. (Giuliani might have been blowing smoke and mirrors,too, but he was at least convincing at the time.)
Birth.
I think Peter has created, or at least solidified, a new meme.
WD()JTS?
When Did (fill in the blank) Jump The Shark?
As in–
WDACJTS? (AC standing for Alan Coil, as I didn’t want to be accused of attacking a fellow poster)
By the way, did you guys read the Vanity Fair article? Very interesting. It’s a bit frightening when something you already thought was bad is shown to be even badder my people who were there, insiders of the Bush administration.
Apparently, the only good thing about this administration was Colin Powell. The funniest quote is “you don’t want to imagine what Bush’s first term would have been without Powell”, since he was the one that restrained somewhat the authoritarian tendencies of the others.
The portrait it paints of Bush himself is also scary, with the only good trait being his genuine warmth in personal meetings with ordinary people. The quote of one aide was very funny: “A President that doesn’t like to read? Oh šhìŧ!”
My favorite quote on Bush:
“The Bush administration is worse than you imagine possible, even after you take account of the fact that it is worse than you imagine possible”: Brad DeLong
I can’t pick a moment. I’ve hated him from the start and knew this was going to go badly. Though in 2000 I was predicting criminalization of abortion and a nationwide ban on gay marriage, if not flat out rights.
If only we know it would go *this* badly.
Kevin: I think Bush will one day be remembered decently. I’m not a supporter but I do believe people in general always have a grass is greener mentality. Every single president has said that it’s the hardest and most thankless job ever.
Luigi Novi: While it’s true in a general sense that Presidents are more easily assessable in the decades and centuries that follow their administrations, and that how they’re regarded by presidential scholars may in some cases be radically divergent from how the populace regards them in their own time (Lincoln and Truman come to mind), I think that even when that is taken into account, Bush is going to clearly be in the lowest ranks of U.S. Presidential history, simply by virtue of the criteria by which historians tend to view Presidents: By what they accomplished, by how effective their administrations were in what they set out to do, by the effect they had on the country, etc.
By these measures, what did the Bush administration accomplish? Can anyone point to any substantial achievement on its part? I’d be very curious to know the criteria by which even the most die-hard Bush lovers could consider his term to be anything but a catastrophic failure, even in the decades and centuries to follow.
osted by: Peter J Poole
On t’other hand, like the man said, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
John W Campbell jr once said “History doesn’t always repeat itself – sometimes it just screams ‘Why don’t you listen to what I’m saying!? and lets fly with a club.”
Posted by: geedeck
“I can’t pick a moment. I’ve hated him from the start and knew this was going to go badly. Though in 2000 I was predicting criminalization of abortion and a nationwide ban on gay marriage, if not flat out rights.”
As Homeland Security got more and more power and used it more and mre arbitrarily, i was expecting internal passports by the second year of the new Adminsitration if a Republican had won this year…
Seventy-seventh! 😉
Anyway, I’m gonna go ahead and agree with anybody who said “Katrina.” I know that’s a little lazy since you’ve got guy Matthew Dowd and Dan Barlett saying that already, but I do think it jumped the shark then.
If Katrina was Bush’s 3 AM phone call, Dubya rolled over, went back to sleep, and let the phone keep on ringing for several hours before picking it up. All of America saw it. Most of America realized that the “I will protect you” message he had run on was bûllšhìŧ, and they didn’t look at him the same way after that.
(Ðámņ, mike weber stole the coveted 77th spot from me and made me into a liar. Well, there’s always the next thread…)
As for Katrina, that was in no way, Bush’s fault. It was the fault of the Governor and Mayor Nagin.
For the sake of argument let’s say you’re right for a sec.
Bush’s message in 2004 was “I will protect you. If I’m in office, you won’t have to worry about being killed in another terrorist attack, like you will if that pussy John Kerry gets elected. Nobody else is going to get killed on my watch.” And so on.
He was implying, if not out and out promising, that everybody would remain safe as long as he was in office no matter where they lived, no matter who the governor of that state was, no matter who the mayor of that city was.
And, as we saw, that turned out to be complete bûllšhìŧ.
Yes, it’s kinda of strange to try to push the blame to local government when you had a President that was all about the concentration of power on his own hands.
Republican or Democrat, few Presidents can compare to Bush when it comes to accumulation of power. Only Lincoln and FDR can compare, and even those two had more respect for the other branches of government than Bush.
Bush was the guy that didn’t even want to talk to his opponents, domestic or international.
“I’d be very curious to know the criteria by which even the most die-hard Bush lovers could consider his term to be anything but a catastrophic failure, even in the decades and centuries to follow.”
Well, Bush’s self-appointed mission was to destroy Islamic terrorism. By force. His term will only be considered a success by historians if Islamic terrorism ceases to a problem someday AND the way this come to pass is traced back to Bush’s policies.
“I’d be very curious to know the criteria by which even the most die-hard Bush lovers could consider his term to be anything but a catastrophic failure, even in the decades and centuries to follow.”
I am hardly a GWB-lover, but I can concede that some of his administration’s policies–perhaps most notably its drastically increasing African aid, including AIDS and malaria treatment/education programs–should not be considered a failure, and might be the kind of thing that future historians will look back on kindly, depending on how the future might develop.
Still, IMO, there’s not enough good stuff like that to balance out the unpleasant stuff. But there’s a bit of good stuff (maybe only a tiny bit) that deserves to be remembered.
Rene: Republican or Democrat, few Presidents can compare to Bush when it comes to accumulation of power. Only Lincoln and FDR can compare, and even those two had more respect for the other branches of government than Bush.
Luigi Novi: Woodrow Wilson is up there too, at least in the sense of his attack on civil liberties, if not “accumulation of power” in the same sense as Bush.
The job of the federal government is to be a backstop, to handle problems the local authorities can’t handle.
Sorry, but that’s a sorry, inadequate excuse that should NEVER be accepted. Just seeing that is insulting to my intelligence.
Posted by: Luigi Novi
By these measures, what did the Bush administration accomplish? Can anyone point to any substantial achievement on its part? I’d be very curious to know the criteria by which even the most die-hard Bush lovers could consider his term to be anything but a catastrophic failure, even in the decades and centuries to follow.
Cartoon by ROb Rogers: http://tinyurl.com/7t9lvv
Posted by: Rene
Well, Bush’s self-appointed mission was to destroy Islamic terrorism. By force. His term will only be considered a success by historians if Islamic terrorism ceases to a problem someday AND the way this come to pass is traced back to Bush’s policies.
Hey – neo-cons are still giving Saint Ronnie all the credit for the fall of the Soviet Union…
For me it was his victory speech after reelection. I wasn’t crazy about the Iraq War (though not for the reason many people did– I didn’t think it was worth the cost, rather than a principled objection to unseating crackpot dictators). But I could live with that. The victory speech though seemed like a huge warning that someone in the Administration just Didn’t Get It. Even with a legitimate mandate, he had to recognize that just under half the country wanted him to lose his job the day before, and he needed to reach out. However, in the same speech he managed to proclaim an attempt at reconciliation, telling the other half of the country that he’d be their President, too, but also say that he had political capital and he would use it. There was no way those two concepts were ever going to be compatible, and at a moment I should have been thrilled, I was full of trepidation.
PAD,
I would suggest your premise is flawed. This is not a “ratings” contest. Yes, I know (since I travel almost yearly overseas) that America — and especially Pres. Bush — is not seen in a good light by the world. But I also look at the fact that there has not been a single terrorist attack on American soil since Sep 11. I look at the fact that stability does appear to be developing in Iraq. I look at the tax cuts that did spur the economy. And I would say he was not a great president, but he did many things right.
Iowa Jim
But I also look at the fact that there has not been a single terrorist attack on American soil since Sep 11.
Uh, Jim? Don’t you remember the anthrax attacks?
The Bush Presidency was great.
Wait, did I say great? I meant awful.
Jim said “I also look at the fact that there has not been a single terrorist attack on American soil since Sep 11.”
The question is how many attacks were actually prevented since 9/11? Rachel Maddow had a look at some of the attacks W. said he stopped and and Rachel pointed out that none of them ones bush listed could be considered credible threats.
There haven’t been any attacks, but have they even tried to attack? Imean on a level similar to 9/11 I think the answer is no.
So it’s like Bush has a rock that keeps you safe from Tiger attacks.
Posted by: Iowa Jim at December 31, 2008 11:26 PM
But I also look at the fact that there has not been a single terrorist attack on American soil since Sep 11.
“Why are you throwing those bits of torn paper out of the railway carriabe window?”
“To prevent attacks on the train by elephants.”
“But there are no elephants in Northern Scotland!”
“See how well it works?”
Iowa Jim: But I also look at the fact that there has not been a single terrorist attack on American soil since Sep 11.
Um, Jim? Could you please list any foreign terrorist attacks on the mainland US BEFORE Sept 11? (That is, Post-Pearl Harbor, and not counting domestic rogues like McVeigh or the Unibomber? I myself can’t remember any. And unless there’s a pesky history of them, your statement is moot.
For me, all 9/11 did was make me realize we are part of the global world, and we are just as much at risk of terrorism as the next country. I feel no more at risk today than I did on 9/10/01 – but now I am aware of the risk. And awareness of risk and actual risk are two different things. A parallel example: my quiet little town has an exceptionally low violent crime rate. Last year we had a particularly gruesome triple murder, so bad it made the cover of People and spawned at least one book and an HBO special that will not be released until after the trial. People went crazy with security measures, when in fact the perpetrators gained access through a simple unlocked door. No exceptional measures needed. The town took no crazy actions, because there are none to take, though the State is pushing for tougher laws. Did one murder in 50 years mean it was the start of a trend? No. The following day, we were back to low crime, and have been since. But townsfolk stopped living in their false bubble of security.
9/11 was not necessarily the start of a trend, just a painful bursting of our false-security bubble, and to credit Bush for putting us back at our pre-9/11 level of false security does no one justice.
So it’s like Bush has a rock that keeps you safe from Tiger attacks.
That’s how I’ve always seen it. Thank you Lisa–I mean, Jason. 😉
Iowa Jim: “But I also look at the fact that there has not been a single terrorist attack on American soil since Sep 11.”
I wouldn’t draw too many conclusions based on that one fact, Jim. Al-Qaeda first attacked the WTC in 1993. They didn’t try again until 2001, more than eight years later.
Iowa Jim: “I look at the fact that stability does appear to be developing in Iraq.”
Yes, but only after we unnecessarily created instability in Iraq at great cost to both us and them.
Iowa Jim: “I look at the tax cuts that did spur the economy.”
That economic expansion was built on a house of cards, Jim. It was a bubble fueled by greed and unsound investment practices. There used to be regulations in place to prevent such nonsense, and they worked very well for decades. Then the Republicans pushed their agenda of deregulation, an agenda embraced by the Bush administration, and the unregulated market took us over a cliff. Bush’s tax cuts accomplished nothing.
Susan O: “Could you please list any foreign terrorist attacks on the mainland US BEFORE Sept 11?”
9/11 was not the first attack on U.S. soil by foreign terrorists. As I mentioned in my prior post, the World Trade Center was attacked in 1993 by terrorists affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
Yup. I forgot about that one. Touche.
Susan O: “Could you please list any foreign terrorist attacks on the mainland US BEFORE Sept 11?”
Jan. 24, 1975: In New York City a bomb set off in the historic Fraunces Tavern killed 4 and injured more than 50 people. The Puerto Rican nationalist group (FALN) claimed responsibility, and police tied 13 other bombings to the group.
Feb. 26, 1993: In New York City a bomb exploded in basement garage of World Trade Center, killing 6 and injuring at least 1,040 others. In 1995, militant Islamist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 9 others were convicted of conspiracy charges, and in 1998, Ramzi Yousef, believed to have been the mastermind, was convicted of the bombing. Al-Qaeda involvement is suspected.
April 19 1995: In Oklahoma City* a car bomb exploded outside the federal office building, collapsing the wall and floors. 168 people were killed, including 19 children and 1 person who died in rescue effort. Over 220 buildings sustained damage. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were later convicted in the antigovernment plot to avenge the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Tex., exactly 2 years earlier.
* (There is now some debate as to whether or not they had help or support from members of a foreign terrorist group, so I’m including it on the short list.)
Sorry, didn’t mean to paste Puerto Rico’s FALN) in that.
Conservatives are so fond of comparing Islamic Terror to the Axis countries in WWII, so I wonder, would FRD and Truman be considered good Presidents if their greatest accomplishment was that Imperial Japan hadn’t made any other major attacks against the US, but continued as dangerous as ever, worldwide?
I think future generations and historians will not look kindly on Bush. I still think the guy spent valuable resources, political capital, and lives fighting the wrong war in non-fundamentalist Iraq, while Muslim Fundamentalism becomes more powerful in places like Iran, and major terrorist attacks are still launched against other nations.