George W. Bush, limp noodle

Despite all the macho rhetoric, George Bush is the antithesis of what a leader should be (never say that to his face, because antithesis has too many syllables, and he'll hurt himself trying to understand it). Time and again, he has failed to show bold leadership on just about any subject, unless of course it is totally wrongheaded. Staying on message only shows an inability to adapt, not courage. Let's look at some examples of his complete lack of spine.

9/11 !!!!!  While trying to sound out the big words for a bunch of school kids he was reading to on 9/11, Bush was interrupted by an aide who informed him of the attacks in NYC. He sat there, stunned before t he cameras, then continued reading before he finally got off his ass. He then promptly DISAPPEARED. So did Cheney. No leadership, just invisibility. Richard Clarke, a security guy who was screaming about Al Qaeda for quite a while (and who was roundly ignored on the subject by Condi Rice) was the one who ordered the planes out of the sky, and in general ran the situation, whle Bush and Cheney hid. Later, Clarke was thrown under the bus by the hypocrites in the White House.
 

Speaking engagements. This guy will ONLY speak in front of audiences that have been fully vetted. When he did his Social Security tour, people had to buy tickets and/or sign loyalty oaths in order to gain entrance. People who weren't fully trusted weren't allowed in, or, in Gestapo fashion, were hustled out. A lot of the problem is that he cna't get off message or off script, because he's such a mental midget, he can't be interrupted, since he'll never get back on track. 
 

Standing up to Congress. This Congress isn't always in Bush's pocket. In fact, as his approval ratings continue to spiral down, they separate themselves from his crappy policies. They're like a pack of wolves sensing weakness in the alpha male. For example, he's the first modern president to NEVER use a veto. Even when Congress has spent and spent and spent, he has rubber-stamped their outrageous pork. He told them to take billions out of the highway spending bill, and threatened to veto it. So what did they do? They made it bigger. What did HE do? He signed it. The self-proclaimed fiscal conservative has signed every spendthrift bill from a pork-minded Congress. He has not the balls to stand up to his own party. Who's in charge here?

John McCain proposed an amendment to an existing bill that would prevent the use of torture by our military. Bush threatened to veto THAT thing. Wouldn't that have been great? Won't veto runaway spending, even after threatening to do so, but he'll veto a measure to prevent torture? Of course, he ended up not touching that one either.

November 2005, Bush's new press secretary Tony Snow, while still working for Fox, wrote that Bush's "wavering conservatism has become an active concern among Republicans, who wish he would stop cowering under the bed and start fighting back against the likes of 
Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Wilson."

Snow also wrote, "The newly passive George Bush has become something of an embarrassment."  So Bush hired a guy who thinks he's a wimp.
 
 

Standing up to his conservative base. Bush put up a crap Supreme Court nominee in Harriet Miers, and he got spanked mightily by the right wingers. So to immediately appease them (and draw headlines away from the Scooter Libby indictment) Bush immediately put up the anti-Miers, Samuel Alito, a conservative with a long judicial track record (as opposed to Miers, with virtually no track record at all). he went COMPLETELY the other way, after getting slapped. It's not going along, it's kissing up, and it's pathetic. No balls at all.
 
 

The Axis of Evil. Bush stupidly screwed up some positive diplomatic initiatives when he labeled Iran (which had at the time been saying nice things), North Korea (which had been courting us as well) and Iraq as the "Axis of Evil."  He claimed Iraq was working on nuclear weapons, and we had to get rid of him. It turns out, as he already knew, that Iraq was the ONLY one of those three countries WITHOUT nukes. In fact, North Korea and Iran practically wave their nuclear programs in our faces. But he went after the only one of those countries that the USA could conceivably conquer. Iran's military is significant, and its terrain mountainous. North Korea will instantly destroy half of South Korea if we attack (they have tens of thousands of artillery pieces aimed at Seoul at all times). So Bush took the easiest path, and for no useful reason.

The nutjob in charge of Iran is constantly making threats and saying goofy shit. But Bush has no idea at all how to cope with him. Iran will be a problem that will simply be passed to the next poor dumb son of a bitch who inherits the rest of Bush's problems.
 
 

Social Security. It appears that Bush was pushing to fix a big fat hole in Social Security. He kept having town hall meetings and press briefings about it. But to get into one of his meetings, you have to sign a loyalty oath, and often times fill out a survey indicating you're already on board with the whole goofy scheme. He only wants the Anointed in on his meetings. A few other items to consider:

• He's completely avoiding the medicare deficit problem, which is far more pressing, and which he made worse with his three-times-more-expensive-than-advertised  drug legislation
• He says he'll listen to all options, but in the end, if they don't involve private accounts, which are another of his many giveaways to big business, he doesn't want to hear them .... without private accounts, which will make billions for the investment industry, there IS no Social Security reform under Bush
• He had the chance to fund Social Security well past the end of the century when he inherited a gigantic surplus ..... but he turned that surplus into a gigantic deficit, all because he wanted to give everybody a couple of hundred bucks NOW over a comfortable retirement LATER, and he wanted to line the pockets of all his rich friends, including Cheney

Alternative fuels.Bush effectively killed funded research into fuel cells and other alternate fuels the minute he took office. But when he started taking heat for high gas prices, suddenly he realized he ought to do something about reducing our dependency on fossil fuels, or at least SAY he was going to do something about it. Hey, W., where you been? His answer to the dependency problem is to drill for more oil, in environmentally sensitive areas. The expected oil output from these places won't be realized for roughly ten years, AND they will, in TEN YEARS, reduce our dependency by maybe TWO PERCENT. In the meantime, he's signed legislation providing tax breaks to business that buy gas-guzzling SUVs and Hummers, while killing off the tax break for purchasers of gas-SAVING hybrid vehicles.

Fall 2005, with gas prices out of control and the American people wondering why Bush can't do anything about it, he started pushing conservation. Hey, asshole, where have you been the last five years?

Which leads to.......
 

Gas prices. Bush said before his first term that he would travel to oil producing nations and work out agreements with them, based on our massive consumption of their product. But he didn't do that until he was into his SECOND term, and AFTER oil prices had gone through the roof. After the string of hurricanes in late 2005, the oil companies all started gouging the public, claiming that hurricane damage and increased demand had driven prices through the roof. Given their record profits, that was obviously a LIE. But Bush said nothing about it. Sadly enough, it was the Senate majority leader Bill Frist who proposed a windfall profits tax to set things straight. Gas prices came tumbling down, through no effort of Bush's. 
 

Assault weapons. During his first term, Bush said he would support the extension of the ban on assault weapons, saying that it was the right thing to do for law enforcement. But when the tiem came for action, he IGNORED the entire issue. He issued a limp dick statement that if Congress gave him a bill, he'd "look at it." But not once did he speak up on the subject, which was dear to all police officers and their families. When questioned about it at a 2004 campaign stop, the lady running the event IMMEDIATELY stepped between Bush and the press and said, "That's enough, guys." Bush hid behind a woman.
 
 

Stem Cell Research. Whenever presidents want to really sound macho, then threaten the veto. "If that bill comes across my desk, I will use my veto." Bush says veto like he means baseball bat. He enunciates when he says veto. BFD. As of November 2005, he's never vetoed a damn thing. When the GOP-controlled Congress pissed away our surplus on pure pork and created a gargantuan deficit, on TOP of tax cuts and the Iraq war, he didn't veto anything at all. Even his own party ignored his wishes to keep a lid on a highway appropriations bill, adding billions to the total price, because his veto threats are all hot air.

The truly hypocritical part about his veto threat against stem cell research, which is championed by many in his own party, and which passed the House despite his objections, is that while he says he opposes it on moral grounds, he actually supports it, as long as no federal money goes into it. Wel,, W., either you oppose it or you support it. You can't say it's ethical research if it's privately funded, but unethical if it's federally funded. Either it's right or it's wrong.

By the way, the Correct Opinion is that it IS ethical, it IS the right thing to do, and he SHOULD support it.
 
 

The judicial fight. May 23rd, 2005, and Bush speaks to another of his town hall crowds (it's amazing how often he has to stop and gather his thoughts ..... he never knows what he's going to say next), and he says that "we're finally makin' progress" on his judicial nominees. What's he been doing all this time? Sitting on his ass doing and saying NOTHING to make that progress happen. All he's done is let others do all the fighting, the talking, the negotiating. He's done nothing.

Bush nominated his own White House counsel, Harriet Miers, to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. She was a lousy choice, and he was utterly incapable of defending her, against Democrats or Republicans, and ultimately she disappeared. No sooner was she gone, then Bush spinelessly nominated Samuel Alito, somebody he knew the conservatives would love, because ultimately he's not his own man.
 
 

The gay hooker in the White House. When Jeff Guckert nee Gannon was caught in the White House briefing room with no true press credentials, having gotten secret information on sensitive topics, and having run (and personally staffed) a gay "military" escort service, Bush said not a thing. This guy was within feet of the president, having obviously never gotten any kind of background check. SECURITY BREACH !!!!! 
 
 

Hurricanes. When Bush finally got around to noticing the fact that a hurricane had kicked the shit out of New Orleans (which only came after his aides gave the very insulated dumbell a DVD of summarized news coverage), he started going down there. Over and over. He didn't bother getting into any details, and so he uttered that famous phrase, "Brownie, you're doin' a heckuva job," referring to the completely incompetent and utterly unqualified FEMA chief Michael Brown, who was in the midst of doing absolutely nothing at all. His helpers put up generators, so they could light up St. Louis Cathedral, in order to provide Bush with a nice looking backdrop, as he gave his live TV speech about how he was going to spend money the USA doesn't have in order to rebuild the city. Then Bush went away, without explaining where all this money was going to come from, the generator went off, and for many months later, New Orleans was monstly without power. No money was raised, nothing was really spent, the levees were sorta patched up, but that was it. 

Bush generated no buzz in Congress to fix New Orleans. A spending cuts bill put up by his GOP cronies was meant to slash some $39 billion in spending, but was to be coupled with $60 billion in additional tax cuts, mostly for the well-off. HUH? Let's save some dough, but give an even larger amount away to rich folks. In the meantime, New Orleans remained underwater and under-powered.
 
 
 

Mistakes. It takes a real man to admit mistakes. And Bush has admitted "mistakes have been made." But he'll never say that he made them, or that anybody else around him did so. He's very vague about those mistakes. And the biggest problem with not being specific in your admissions is that you never specify how you will FIX those mistakes.

December 2005: Bush finally admitted that most of the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war was wrong, and said the decision to go to war was his. Incredible. After five years of f___g up, he actually took some small measure of responsibility.