In Eight Yrs, Bush Never Set Foot In San Francisco - And The Loathing Is Mutual

[hatrack]

EDIT

Democratic consultant Garry South, asked about Bush's California legacy, agreed: "You can sum it up in three letters - M-U-D."

"He had no relationship with California. The only legacy is ... totally negative, all the way from the Bush administration trying to designate a landfill in Fresno as a national historic landmark," said South, referring to the 2003 naming of the Fresno Sanitary Landfill, a former Superfund site, by the Department of the Interior as a national landmark. The widely criticized move, South argued, "says everything you need to say" about Bush's deepest Golden State impacts.

"You have an administration who sued us over our global emissions, the first administration since the Clean Air Act was passed that denied our waiver request (to impose first-time greenhouse gas rules for cars), tried to open up oil and gas drilling in the Los Padres National Forest and relinquished the presidential directive on offshore drilling," said South, a former senior adviser to Davis. "There's nothing positive whatsoever that happened - and it was purposeful."

Barbara O'Connor, professor of political communication at Cal State Sacramento, said the shaky Bush relationship with California and the president's unpopularity in the state was underscored by the two major defeats Bush suffered in California, in 2000 and 2004, and both by more than a million votes.

"Californians don't much like him, they haven't voted for him, so he never had to come here to solidify the base," she said.

So Bush leaves office with a sense that his policies "set the frame for all our budget discussions, for draining infrastructure, for health crisis, an environmental crisis. Even the (Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger), who is in his own party, has been sticking it to him in terms of global warming," she said.

EDIT

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/05/MNAP151TM3.DTL

[bluestateguy]

1. Yet Bush has visited Detroit which voted against him by a bigger margin than SF

I don't think SF is in any hurry to roll out the welcome mat for "President" Bush.

[populistdriven]

2. the hatred is apparently not enough to pass the ballot measure naming the new WWTP after him

[david_vincent]

3. Vermont is proudly the only state that AWOL

never visited during his imposture. Even the Republicans here don't like him. In fact, there's a rumor going round that he's responsible for rock snot, which is invading Vermont rivers and lakes.

[napi21]

4. Have other Pub Presidents visited SF? I suppose Reagan did, ay least

when he was Gov, but Pubs in general have never been very popular in Ca. so it's no surprise that the Pubs ignore them.

[diane in sf]

5. don't forget the great Rethuglican energy ripoff of 2000-2001, billions...

[XemaSab]

6. He set foot in Redding

:banghead: