Bush as FDR?

[ilpostino]

Broder summarizes Jonathan Rauch on Bush as FDR:

Excerpt:

We can't yet know how Bush's experiments, bold as they may be, will work out either substantively or politically. Rauch ends his essay with a chilling scenario in which a mythical historian writing in 2019 recounts how it all unraveled for Bush by the middle of his second term.

Nothing in his script -- an America isolated from traditional allies and increasingly preoccupied with unfinished foreign interventions, its economy hobbled by runaway budget deficits as the demands of its retiring baby boomers mount -- is entirely implausible. But none of it is inevitable, either.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21977-2003Aug5.html

[CBGLuthier]

1. Bush is FDR

FDR = Fucking Dumbass Republican doesn't it?

[maha]

3. LOL n/t

[maha]

2. Makes me gag

to think of Shrub compared to FDR. (Broder did say that FDR's programs were successful, at least.) Let's hope Shrub unravels before the 2004 election! No second term!

[1monster]

4. Hahahahahahahhohohohohhhoohhoheeeheeehheehhehhhawhawahhhh

gasp hahahahahaha oh oh please! That headline has me laughing so hard it hurts.

Bush isn't an FDR! Heck he couldn't even play FDR on television even if he stayed at a Holiday Inn the night before.

Heehhheee hhahhahaha hohohohhhooo ohh :D }( :+ :7 :evilgrin: :silly: :crazy:

[tom_paine]

5. Bush also shares the self-confidence of Hitler

And while, for the moment, the Emperor* is much "kinder and gentler", the structure is being developed in which that could cange at a moment's notice.

Bush, especially in terms of repetitive lying, meaningless promises, and overall propaganda strategy, shares MUCH MORE in common with the man his grandfather financed than with the man who defeated the man Prescott Bush financed.

[ProfessorGAC]

6. I Read That Yesterday In The Chicago Tribune

The very attempt to compare the two is unconsionable. Broder should be dipped in honey and anthilled for repeating this ridiculous claim.
The Professor

[grasswire]

7. you should read the underlying essay

I did a little while ago. It's very interesting.

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2003/0725nj1.htm

And then I wrote a note to the writer to tell him what he had overlooked.

[dorktv]

16. Thanks for the link...

I can not believe this guy thinks that it was FDR that made America into a superpower...We became one after the Spanish-American War in 1890's that created our "Empire." And that was ALL Theodore Roosevelt and pals.

[CBHagman]

8. Notice how Broder implies Homeland Sec. Dept was Bush's idea

In fact, the concept of a Homeland Security Department was something Bush FOUGHT AGAINST for nearly a year and then only got behind when he demanded a good many limitations on worker rights in the new department. I think Joseph Lieberman was one of the first to suggest the actual department.

Now, lapdog-like, one Post reporter or columnist after another implies or openly reports that Bush sought the Homeland Security Department. Every time one does so, an alert Post reader corrects them.

I've already sent my e-mail to Broder on that. Have you e-mailed your WP toady today?

[grasswire]

9. here's what I sent to Rauch

Thank you for your nuanced insights into the presidency of George W. Bush. Two thoughts stayed with me as I read it several times.

First: there didn't seem to be much consideration of the reality that the "visions" and policies and the guiding principles of George W. Bush are not really his at all but, rather, ideas generated by a group of others with more education and experience in strategy and policy. The collaborated and produced George is not the same as George himself.

Second: there was no consideration of the suspicion held by many (including professionals in the field of psychology and psychiatry) that George W. Bush's rigid black-white thinking, his "bold" risk-taking and his punitive "big stick" both domestic and foreign are more related to certain personality disorders than to positive personality traits. A reading of the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder sets Bush's actions in quite a different light; those hard-nosed actions and mannerisms are quite understandable viewed through that lens.

I believe the historian of 2019 will record many of the events you imagine. But I fear that history will also show that much of the world came to view him as a tragic accident for democracy: a weak and flawed and oft-failed man appointed to supreme power against the expressed will of the people by friends of his more accomplished father; a man flattered and manipulated by those with grandiose and (some would say) insane ambitions for world dominion; a man in the White House only through deceit, thuggery, racialism, cronyism, the quashing of lawful votes, the twisting of the formerly immutable rule of law, and the tainting of the judiciary for personal and partisan gain. His tenure was anti-democratic in nature, attacking the balance of powers and the sanctity of the vote and imposing secrecy and repression as the domestic "stick."

I could go on, but that is the general theme. We Americans are living a drama no Greek tragedian could embellish. God help us all.

[0007]

11. Very good!

The historians will also show that the driving force behind junior was the Carlyle Group headed by his daddy and
James Bker III.

Halliburton is Dick Cheney's turf but hell Halliburton is listed as a small business, so I guess that doesn't count.

[meow2u3]

10. Bush is no FDR

He's more like a Mussolini..er..Busholini :evilgrin:

[w4rma]

12. Bush = Hoover whose policies helped put FDR in office

[CBHagman]

13. Whoa! George W. Hoover!

Thanks for the chart.

[dorktv]

14. You know...I keep telling people

the last time we had a New York Dem in the White House things turned out pretty darn good. And now we have another one running for President, Dr. Howard Dean, so maybe having Bush's totally insane policies is going to make our lives better in the long run. Sounds silly I know.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

15. What a joke.

If I were to compare Bush to any Democratic president it would be LBJ another Texas shithead.

[CBHagman]

17. LBJ at least had Head Start, Medicare...

...the Great Society, advances in civil rights, etc. Whatever LBJ's sins, there was genuine progress in his administration for John and Jane Q. Public, and his legacy has touches of greatness.

In Bush II, we have false claims about racial "quotas" in affirmative action, false claims about WMDs, a good deal of assistance for the rich (including the desire to abolish the estate tax), an attempt to dismantle Head Start, and murmurings about privatizing Social Security. In short, we are being raped repeatedly, and the legacy is doom.

Bush isn't fit to shine LBJ's shoes.

[Cocoa]

18. this is a keeper!

classic whoring, the "dean of Washington journalists" telling the masses how nice Emperor Bush's new clothes are.

Helen Thomas told us the truth: "Worst president ever."

[Julien Sorel]

19. This whole thing is crap.

As Rauch notes, FDR's political heir, Lyndon B. Johnson, seeking to match or outdo his mentor, "pushed the system and the public too hard" and left office a badly broken man.

LBJ actually knew what he was doing, and was the architect of his own presidency. Bush is a fucking clown, who is little more than a passenger -- the neocons and tax cutters run Bush's show. He's far too much of a void, far too arrogant, and far too stupid to be 'broken' as LBJ was. LBJ actually cared, on a personal, not just political, level about the soldiers dying in Vietnam; Bush is obviously looking at everything with a politial calculus. LBJ was a self-made man who ran his own presidency; Bush is a stuffed shirt who's had everything in his entire life handed to him. Such people do not 'break,' because the bedrock of their lives can never be touched by the decisions they make. Bush's policies hurt the poor? So what. He was never poor, will never be poor, and has no idea what living in poverty feels like. Bush's policies result in the deaths of soldiers? Nobody from Bush's social stratum will be killed. People are broken when they have a personal stake in a certain outcome; Bush does not and can not. Take his money and inheritance and he'll break like glass; saddle him with a failed presidency, and it's just another in a long line of failures for this guy. He's used to it by now, and besides, he still has his money.

[susu369]

20. Let's compare apples to oranges

Bush is nothing less than a puppet of corporations: banking, oil, etc.

As a fellow DU'er expressed:

"AWOL has never, ever done one single thing right in his entire miserable existence."

Jacobin