I was going to write something like this up over the weekend, but it appears Dave Koehler beat me to it. It’s a great look at Bush “by the numbers.” Here are some highlights:
Poverty Rate
2000: 11.3% or 31.6 million Americans
2003: 12.5% or 35.9 million AmericansStock market
Dow Jones Industrial Average
1/19/01: 10,587.59
1/19/05: 10,539.97Value of the Dollar
1/19/01: 1 Dollar = 1.06 Euros
1/19/05: 1 Dollar = 0.77 EurosBudget
2000 budget surplus $236.4 billion
2004 budget deficit $412.6 billion
That’s a shift of $649 billion and doesn’t include the cost of the Iraq war.The Debt
End of 2000: $5.7 trillion
Today: $7.6 trillion
That’s a 4 year increase of 33%.
Don’t forget; as Bush insisted during the campaign, results matter.
Just to add to the fun, here are two more numbers I’d like to add to the list:
* Weapons of Mass Destruction found in Iraq: 0.
* Overall job growth during Bush presidency to date: negative 500,000
I would assume that Bush’s defenders would respond by arguing that there are reasonable excuses for all of these failures. But those same supporters should ask themselves: If the numbers were reversed, and all of these policy issues had improved under Bush’s leadership instead of having worsened, wouldn’t the Republicans be bragging and insisting that Bush has been a success?
If so, for the sake of intellectual honesty, it’s hard to avoid assigning responsibility to the leader who promised results but didn’t, or couldn’t, deliver.