HW, et al

[bralbovsky]

So, now that the solemnities are concluded, can we admit that HW Bush was a mediocre president with a long catalogue of malfeasance, and he looks great only by comparison?

I understand hagiography at the moment of passing, but can we eventually set the record straight?

This goes for all of them, from Washington on. I think we have a rare opportunity to understand that everyone who takes the office is just human, but that there are extra standards that are rightly to be applied, and there ought, at the end of their days, be a full and honest reckoning.
If this doesn't happen, we never learn anything, and are doomed as a culture and nation to blindly waltz to our rapid and ugly conclusion

[Kyle]

Yes. HW wasn't great. He wasn't loved much by his party, nor were his accomplishments great. He was a proponent of "trickle down economics" and resorted to race-baiting with the Willie Horton campaign ad, even though he was heavily leading Dukakis. In his later years he was sexually inappropriate with women. He was a one-term president for a reason.

Time seems to wash over all of that. We want to remember him as this guy that nobly stood up for his principles in the face of opposition- which simply wasn't true (watch the video footage of him signing a tax bill after famously declaring, "Read my lips, no new taxes.").

But I really don't care much if people want to lionize HW. What concerns me is how Reagan (who committed crimes much, much worse and with much larger implications than Trump) has been retrofitted to being the PERFECT republican president-- practically a saint now. Which is just garbage.

Don't worry, ten years from now we'll be hearing the stories of what a great president Bush Jr. was because of how he reacted to the 9/11 bombings, and we'll be force fed crap about all the great accomplishments he achieved (which are none).

[bralbovsky]

W had one positive: he reversed the policy of not funding HIV research and other AIDs initiatives, especially in Africa.

Otherwise, second worst president so far.

Absolutely agree Re: Reagan. Treasonous like Nixon, that was just the beginning.

[Kyle]

All of this makes us sound like disillusioned hippies. But I’m okay with that.

[Kyle]

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