Hennessey was one of bush's economic advisors and currently a professor at stanford gsb. I thought it was an interesting read but a bit over the top. I had always thought that bush was a lot smarter than liberals give him credit for. However, I have a hard time believing, as hennessey asserts, that bush has a deep understanding of policy or that he's smarter than almost every stanford gsb student.
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I believe it.
Are you serious?
Yes.
Knew it all along... sure he had advantages in life (like coming from a patrician Texan clan), but the guy definitely has quite a few achievements to his name that no one likes to talk about.
Hard to not enjoy those Bush-monkey correlation chain emails though...
Bush was a C-student as a history major at Yale. He's certainly smart, but not top-of-the-class-at-Stanford-GSB smart, I would guess.
Pretty much anyone who manages to become President of the United States is wicked smart. I think Obama is crazy smart, too, but I didn't think Obama was "qualified" to be President. "Intelligent" and "qualified" are fundamentally different concepts.
articulate =/= intelligent so it could be true.
I absolutely believe he's intelligent. I also think he performed as well as anyone could expect, given what he was handed.
Pre-9/11, terrorism was a fringe concern. We had not fought a comparable non-state entity before; even in the 90s Balkan conflicts, we had identifiable targets. We had never suffered an attack on the mainland US before.
He ultimately made the call to increase security (or the image thereof) at the expense of certain civil liberties. Although in hindsight measures like the Patriot Act and the creation of the DHS look like a power grab, I can't say I would have acted differently in the same situation.
He missed the housing bubble, but he was not responsible for economic policy. Greenspan et al missed it as well. While bailing out Lehman might have been the better move in hindsight, again, 2008 was a fairly unprecedented scenario.
Bush even tried to push through Social Security reform, for which I have to applaud him. On the other hand Medicare Part D is highly questionable, although not an inherently defective piece of legislation.
The only area where I feel it is fair to criticize Bush is his nation-building. Powell called it: Iraq is a quagmire. We are not going to fundamentally change the Middle East.
I don't agree with his social views (anti-stem cell research, anti-gay marriage), but I don't view those as terribly relevant. Obama hasn't done much for either.
I think his post-presidency approval rating (47%, I believe) indicates that history will have a more positive view of him than we did in 2008.
I'm not at all a fan of George W. Bush as I believe his 8 years set back the conservative movement 30 years, but Bush and the Bush administration attempted to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac earlier in his presidency, but this was immediately thwarted by Congress. As an ex-GSE employee, I can tell you that they are insanely politically connected and are basically untouchable.
If not for 9/11, I think the Bush presidency would have been radically (no pun intended) different. The budget deficits would have been small or non-existent and we probably would have gotten some form of genuine tax and Social Security reform; however, his political capital (and this is a real, although intangible, thing) was being gulped up by Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq/Afghanistan/nation building/no WMDs, Medicare Part D, budget deficits and No Child Left Behind set back the conservative movement decades, and Katrina simply destroyed any remaining political capital Bush had, which ultimately gave as Barack Obama, who has been nothing short of a disaster. As terrible as Medicare Part D and No Child Left Behind were/are, Obamacare has set the United States onto a path toward fiscal ruin. And for that, Bush deserves much blame for giving America Obama.
Although I phrased it differently, this is basically my view. I was trying to say that Bush wasn't personally incompetent, at least not more so than the average politician. I think we would have gotten a similar outcome with any president in the White House.
I don't have your experience with GSEs, so I am just going by what I have read, particularly in "All the Devils are here". I think by the time Bush was elected, they were too entrenched to even be up for debate. And they had been basically working until then - after all, housing prices always go up, right?
He was not a true "states' rights" conservative, but he was certainly not a profligate spender out of the gate. As you said, 9/11 changed the debate. People were afraid. I hate the TSA, as do most liberals. But most people still need them to feel safe - there was a small uproar when they announced that small knives would be allowed.
So while the outcome of the presidency was nothing short of cataclysmic, Bush's actions were defensible when they were made (aside from a few issues e.g. Katrina was poorly managed, no doubt about it).
As a side note, the wreckage of the Bush presidency made Obama's marketing efforts in 2012 so easy. Obama would have likely won in 2008 just from the swing in the political pendulum, but Republicans might have held the Senate.
Obama was able to make so many claims in 2012 just because he was working off a terrible base. For instance, "Obama grew spending slower than any president in 60 years" - yeah, because his base year was 2008, and automatic stabilizers should fall off as the economy recovers. Or "the economy recovered under Obama" - really? It would eventually rebound even if the government did nothing, and our recovery hasn't been great by any means.
I'm glad somebody mentioned Fannie and Freddie
I love how you have someone who worked for and advised Bush during his Presidency and is now a professor at one of the best business schools (possibly THE best) giving a direct account of Bush's intelligence yet people still doubt it.
He did a lot of shit that was bad, but his Presidency was shaped by 9/11. I think he is no better or no worse than Obama or a lot of other Presidents.
Agree. I also think people don't give Cheney his due for the effect he had on the Presidency. Cheney was (is?) a massive player in the Republican party. I've heard it said that Cheney was the most powerful man in the country during the Bush presidency (I don't know enough about this to agree/disagree).
I just finished a book on the Iraq war, I believe it was called Collateral (could be wrong), and Bush was against going into Iraq. Then Wolfowitz got involved and Cheney got involved and the intel started coming and they really convinced Bush. I mean remember guys, Colin Powel basically was giving intel that was "the sure thing" which later turned out to be shit. Imagine what Bush was being fed on a daily basis.
Now hey, Presidents take the blame regardless and Iraq is Bush's mistake, but I think there is more to the story. And how is Greenspan not blamed more for the housing crisis as if Bush was supposed to lobby the Fed chief to raise rates to slow home ownership. Might as well hunt bald eagles and tax apple pie.
Yah, one of my professors was actually in the war rooms when those decisions were made (especially that particular one) and he told me the exact same thing. Bush was a smart guy; he was just fed really bad information and pressured by Dick.
Completely agree on Presidents taking the blame. Ultimately it is his call. That said, the President himself doesn't seem to have the most political clout in DC and on top of that, he's dealing with 100 different issues at a time. He's got to rely on his advisors and I have no doubt they push him into it.
Am I the only one who doesn't believe it??
I always thought he was 95th percentile or above. Whether he is 99th percentile or 99.8th percentile seems pretty irrelevant considering half of the dumbass shit we did while he was president.
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