Bush's first six months in office

[rusty charly]

Here is a list of George W. Bush's administration's work during the first six months of his term in office:

http://baltimorechronicle.com/bush6months_mar02.shtml

[Waya]

1. And it went downhill from there.................

:puke:

[waiting for hope]

2. I just got sick.....

He was being a good little soldier in preparing for a war in Iraq by "saving" all that money....we have been totally screwed.

[Sherman A1]

3. All that and a lots of vacation too!

Don't forget the vacations. It's tough at the top....

[madinmaryland]

4. OMG!!

I remembered most of that, but after a while you almost become numb to what has happened. And that was only the first month.

[underpants]

7. Don't forget about them apologizing to China for hitting our spy plane

The World Book Almanac officially lists the event with a note saying that the US apologized for the incident (They didn't cross translate their message back and forth before releasing it) so that is at least one version that will remain in history.

Oh and the campaign contributors piloting a nuke sub and then that sub killing 16 Japanese school kids.

I had forgotten about Havery Pitts.

All you need to know about everything that had happened and was to happen is spelled out in this letter to Ron Suskind by John DiIlulio - W's first Faith Based coordinator

http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2002/021202_mfe_diiulio_1.html

In eight months, I heard many, many staff discussions, but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues. There were, truth be told, only a couple of people in the West Wing who worried at all about policy substance and analysis, and they were even more overworked than the stereotypical, non-stop, 20-hour-a-day White House staff. Every modern presidency moves on the fly, but, on social policy and related issues, the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking—discussions by fairly senior people who meant Medicaid but were talking Medicare; near-instant shifts from discussing any actual policy pros and cons to discussing political communications, media strategy, et cetera. Even quite junior staff would sometimes hear quite senior staff pooh-pooh any need to dig deeper for pertinent information on a given issue.

This gave rise to what you might call Mayberry Machiavellis—staff, senior and junior, who consistently talked and acted as if the height of political sophistication consisted in reducing every issue to its simplest, black-and-white terms for public consumption, then steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible. These folks have their predecessors in previous administrations (left and right, Democrat and Republican), but, in the Bush administration, they were particularly unfettered.



Not only that, but it reflected neither the president's own previous rhetoric on the idea, nor any of the actual empirical evidence that recommended policies promoting greater public/private partnerships involving community-serving religious organizations. I said so, wrote memos, and so on for the first six weeks. But, hey, what's that fat, out-of-the-loop professor guy know; besides, he says he'll be gone in six months. As one senior staff member chided me at a meeting at which many junior staff were present and all ears, "John, get a faith bill, any faith bill." Like college students who fall for the colorful, opinionated, but intellectually third-rate professor, you could see these 20- and 30-something junior White House staff falling for the Mayberry Machiavellis. It was all very disheartening to this old, Madison-minded American government professor.

[leveymg]

5. Curtailed US counterterror program designed to track al-Qaeda in U.S.,

and took the seated counterterrorism head, Richard Clarke, out of the loop, so he was no longer told what Saudi terrorist suspects inside the country were doing.

See, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2105926&mesg_id=2105926

[HughBeaumont]

6. Kind of reminds me of the Onion's scary foreshadowing . .

. . .of Bush's entire term. Appease the rich, fuck the poor, steal the tax money and START THAT WAR!!