President George W Bush Clueless to the Bitter End

by Philip Fernando in Los Angeles for Lanka Guardian

(January 11, Los Angeles, Sri Lanka Guardian) The colossal bill for George W. Bush’s clueless administration would be $ 10.3 trillion according to conservative estimates. His eight year tenure saw every component of the economy in dire straights. Annual budget deficit, trade deficit and national debt spiraled beyond belief. Over 4 million manufacturing jobs vanished and more than 5 million Americans are additionally without health insurance. The final nail in the coffin was that nearly one fifth of Americans are likely to owe more on their mortgage than they are actually worth. A recent military estimate announced that the ultimate price tag for the Iraq war would reach $ 3 trillion.

Recently George Bush announced like Rip Van Winkle just out of his slumber “I have decided today that we are in a serious crisis.” How hilariously clueless can a President be?

Most analysts agree that it would take a generation to recover from the Bush legacy. Iraq was a tragedy but the shame of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib and the senseless erosion of civil liberties cannot even be comprehended by many. The downturn in the economy and the 7.2 percent unemployment rate would take years to get over. A talk show host once said that the dollar is so week that a cup of coffee in London or Paris—or even the Yukon—becomes a venture in high finance.

The tragedy is compounded in education. The output of engineers and scientists is very low. America will have a hard time competing with India and china very soon. Our basic research methods have suffered too. We have not been investing in the kinds of basic research to the extent we did eight years ago. And to cap it all, during Bush’s watch the dependence on coal and oil have deepened.

Bets are being taken in Vegas that Bush would beat Herbert Hoover as the worst president by at least five points. Up to now, everybody thought Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on favorite for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. But the debacle that George W brought into being would take a decade of reversal planning and recovery. It is a sad fact that even the next generation of Americans will still be living and struggling with the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.

\What happened to the roaring nineties that saw a boom under President Clinton? Productivity gains, which had averaged about 1.5 percent a year from the early 1970s through the early 90s, had approached 3 percent. During Bill Clinton’s second term, gains in manufacturing productivity sometimes even surpassed 6 percent.

Remember the presidential debates in 2000 between Al Gore and George Bush, and how the two men argued over how to spend America’s anticipated $2.2 trillion budget surplus? Bush acted in such reckless abandonment that many were visibly shocked. The 2001 massive tax cuts were reckless -those with incomes over a million got a tax cut of $18,000—more than 30 times larger than the cut received by the average American. The inequities were compounded by a second tax cut, in 2003, and the rich were made filthy rich said one cynic. As for the financial Wild West theories of Bush we need not waste our breath because unrestricted laissez-faire capitalism got crushed under that regime. Bush was not even aware of the nature of the collapse.
His foreign policy failures got amply recognized when the Iraqi journalist ruined Bush’s final photo op in Bagdad by sending a pair of boots his way. That sealed the Bush’s legacy. The gravity of what happened during the past eight years may have to be dealt with another time. Bush would be relegated to the dust bin of history for good. The failed Neocon nightmare without end came crashing down as rank consumerism and materialism took the better of America of George W Bush. - Sri Lanka Guardian