I believe Bush was a good, well-intentioned president who was conned into doing things he otherwise would not have by people around him. His fatal flaw is that he wanted to be liked, and because of that he was controlled by the neo-cons whispering in his ear the whole time. Take the war in Iraq. He didn't pull the WMDs thing out of his ass, he was told by people who were supposed to be trustworthy that he needed to act immediately or disaster would strike. What was he supposed to do when people who should know what to do kept telling him to go for it? A lot of people who goaded him into starting that war later turned around and used it as a point against him. That's politics. When they changed the reason of the war to helping the Kurds, Bush really believed that's what they were there for, because someone told him that's how it was. From the relief on his face at the end of his presidency, I think at some point he figured out what was going on but was too in over his head to do anything about it. His use of pardons near the end showed how he was throwing off the yoke of his conservative "friends" and having one last flash of brilliance. Pardoning the border patrol agents but not doing anything for Scooter Libby was his way of telling Cheney to stuff it. If he had acted like that throughout his presidency, maybe people would like him a lot more. And that's perhaps the worst thing about Bush, the occasional things he did right showed so much potential that never got used.
I'm a Democrat almost all the way. When I first started talking about this with my friends when his second term was ending, I was accused of being a closet Republican for not thinking that Bush was actually the second Hitler. Now that four years have passed and another president has had his chance to run things with the same rhetoric, I'm wondering if heads have cooled down and I can start bringing this up without people leaping to conclusions about what I think or talking about conspiracies about the New American Century. I don't think Bush not being evil is as terrible a thing to believe as they make it sound.
I'm a Democrat almost all the way. When I first started talking about this with my friends when his second term was ending, I was accused of being a closet Republican for not thinking that Bush was actually the second Hitler. Now that four years have passed and another president has had his chance to run things with the same rhetoric, I'm wondering if heads have cooled down and I can start bringing this up without people leaping to conclusions about what I think or talking about conspiracies about the New American Century. I don't think Bush not being evil is as terrible a thing to believe as they make it sound.
This is more the fatal flaw of the whole political system; leaders are elected for doing what will make them popular rather than for doing the right thing.
I don't fully believe that Bush was tricked into going the Iraq War though. I think it's just as likely that he *wanted* people working for him to find so-called "evidence" of WMDs to use as excuse to invade (he so many reasons for wanting war with Iraq that it's more likely he wanted an excuse to go in rather than a reason). Even if he was tricked into war using false evidence, that still makes him a weak and incompetent leader if not a malicious one.