Quite a year for Bush

December 23, 2005

Given what’s transpired, you’d think Bush and the White House would want to forget 2005 ever happened. From start to finish, the year has been an abject disaster for the president — Iraq, Social Security, Katrina, Harriet Miers, Plame scandal, warrantless-spying-on-Americans scandal, plummeting poll support, the list of fiascos goes on and on. It’s hard to think of any modern president who’s suffered so much over the course of a single year.

Unless, that is, you’re part of the White House spin machine. For the first time in Bush’s presidency, the White House has published a list of “accomplishments.” In one sense, it has a doth-protest-too-much quality to it. Reading it, you can almost hear Dan Bartlett saying, “No, really, it was a great year! Seriously! We loved every second of it!”

In another sense, you can also get a sense of the desperation. The very first “accomplishment” on the six-page document is the reauthorization of the Patriot Act — which, if you want to get reality-based about it, hasn’t actually happened.

Nevertheless, there are five broad categories under which the White House lists the president’s success stories: The War on Terror, the economy, “well-qualified” Supreme Court nominations, legislative victories, and helping the Gulf Coast recover.

Now, far be it for me to sound picky, but two of these five “accomplishments” were dismal failures for the Bush administration — the response to Hurricane Katrina and Bush’s belief that Harriet Miers is the most qualified person in the United States to serve on the Supreme Court, the latter of which caused his own party to turn on him. I’m not sure why the White House would want to remind the nation about these embarrassments, but hey, it’s their list.

Then there are the other three, which aren’t exactly subjects for Bush to brag about.

* When it comes to legislative victories, Bush only mentioned three bills for the whole year, one of which is a ridiculous bankruptcy “reform” law.

* When it comes to the economy, GDP growth isn’t a problem — but American wages are.

* And when it comes to the war on terror, the war in Afghanistan is barely mentioned in the document at all, while 2005 has seen conditions in Iraq deteriorate.

Given the circumstances, I can’t help but wonder which genius in the vaunted Bush political machine thought an “accomplishments list” was a good idea. For all of our sake, better luck next year, Karl.

I wonder if Bush mentioned how much his poll numbers have improved recently. Everyone seems to remember the good side of numbers and forgets the bad side. So if we created 300,000 jobs you can forget the fact that in the previous year you lost more than 300,000 so you are still behind.

Recently, Bush’s poll numbers have gone up a lot. Of course, they are up from a very low point. It shold be interesting to see if those ‘good’ poll numbers will stay the same, get better, or go back down.

  • I guess that they couldn’t put it on a list for the public, but the biggest accomplishment for this bunch in 2005 is staying out of jail.

  • How can he list these as his accomplishments? Easy, says calvin. It’s PR and marketing. calvin remembers the old Miller Lite ad campaign. You may recall, “tastes great, less filling”. Those were, obviously, the two worst “qualities” of this product. And, then, of course, we all know the motto of Faux News, “fair and balanced”.

    calvin has been aware for quite some time that this administration’s hallmark is smoke and mirrors. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

    calvin believes that it is his job to stand on the sidewalk as the emporer passes and point out his lack of raiment. He is also guilty of coughing up hairballs and shredding the drapes. And, don’t get him started on the topic of dogs.

  • I think it’s getting to be too much for the MSM. Here is Reuters’ take on the list.

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) – By most accounts, it was a tough year for President George W. Bush, marked by a drop in public support for the Iraq war, legislative setbacks on Social Security and arctic oil drilling and a politically disastrous initial response to Hurricane Katrina.

    But according to a White House fact sheet, 2005 was a year full of “accomplishments” — six, single-spaced pages worth distributed to reporters as Bush left town for his holiday break.

  • looks more like their list of grievences, against the universe at large… bring on the feats of strength… Dowd vs georgieporgie

  • I literally spit my mouthful of tea out when
    I got to “helping the Gulf Coast recover.”
    Fortunately, it’s not beer time yet.

    But there is one significant accomplishment,
    which marcus alludes to. This guy has
    survived every fiasco, and at the very end
    of the year, his poll numbers are on the
    upswing, and if I’m right about spygate,
    which I think is going to poop out, so
    you might call it snooper pooper, it’s
    all behind him now. Not a scandal in
    front of him as he charges into 2006.
    Utterly astounding. The guy got through
    what no other president could possibly
    have managed.

    Oh, maybe the Rove or Abramoff things
    may yet percolate, but sure as shootin’ he’ll
    get past them, too, and we’ll be putting those
    on the list of his 2006 endurance records.

  • Rovian repetition and message discipline wins the day again. Outlining “successes” a week before the end of the year, RoveCo sets the Mighty Wurlitzer in operation. As the Old Media chirpers crank out the traditional year-in-review pieces, they are helped to focus on how everything that happened in 2005 was really all about W.

    Iraq? Well, we’re all on the edge of our seats about how it affects W’s place in history. Katrina? Wasn’t that all about how W responded? And so on. Calls to the White House for their response? Not needed! Karl has provided a document, and all staff will be referring you to it, so give up. And Happy New Year, you sorry stenographer chumps.

  • A list of accomplishments?
    Carpetbagger…. I stopped reading your post right there.

    There is only one thing on the list of anybody who has a brain:

    1) Bush’s Iraq Mess

    BIM!
    BIM!!
    BIM!!!

    That’s the biggest fucking error ever committed by an American President. EVER!!!

    For that dog shit… Mr. CEO President has earned a

    F-
    F-
    F-

    Ya’all hear me? A fucking F minus.

    Somebody plese send Bush to back of the class.
    I mean really…
    Wouldn’t this dumb-fuckling be best employed back there… etching his name into the formica of a desk?

  • Hey… here is my new schtick…

    I was just in a room of people in which a Bush video clip was playing on the telly. As usual, the dumb-fuckling ® was having trouble reading the speech that someone else wrote for him.

    There was all kinds of mis-speaks, stutters, and hiccups.

    When he was done… I shook my index finger in the air… and said super loud:

    “That’s Harvard and Yale educated… mind you. Harvard and Yale educated!”

    I plan on rubbing the face of Bush in the value of a Harvard and a Yale education every chance I get.

    Wanna talk about the failure of public education?
    Fine.
    But let’s remember: Bush is private education’s finest product.

    And that friends and fiends is the…
    Worst. Product. Ever.

  • Way back, when I painted houses, we had a little saying: ‘You can’t polish a turd, but you can paint one.’
    I’m sorry if this drags the discourse of my favorite site into the gutter, but there’s no other way to say it. They are painting turds.

  • I guess they decided to forget about the criminal indictment of the VP’s chief of staff. And they forgot about the illegal bypassing of court oversight on domestic wiretapping. And they forgot about passing the 2,000 mark in deaths of American service personnel in Iraq. And they forgot about the discovery of bogus conservative White House reporter Jeff Guckert, or whatever the hell his name is/was. And the list goes on and on.

    Accomplishments? PLEASE! These people belong in prison, for crying out loud!

  • Bush was set up during his speech so that CIA and Plame could leak the covert CIA WMD program and mandatory training for all OOs, something they blamed Rice for. CIA used the war, which they fostered to sell off the covert WMD policy, and Bush for its own goals. Bush is just a rich x CIA Director’s son, something that CIA hoped to use to further their own political careers after retirement. It really ended up destroying those political careers becasue it shows CIA knows no limits and will use anyone, including the President and his advisors to achieve personal and political goals.

    Bush bad year after the speech and a war? WE TRAIN AND PAY CIA TO DO THIS ALL OVER THE WORLD. THEY JUST WENT AFTER US FOR A CHANGE. Not that using their training on their own is treason………………………..

  • Once again, the Bushites say “terrorism”, then proceed directly to Iraq. It makes me ill that the Bushites are allowed to shield criticism of the ridiculous Iraq war by shouting “terrorism” and “9/11” (oh, yeah, they’ve updated this talking point to “everyone’s forgotten 9/11”). I can’t remember the last time anyone in the MSM questioned the link between Iraq & terrorism BEFORE we invaded. A section on their accomplishments mentions Afghanistan twice, and then not even in the context of Bin Laden or Al Qaeda…of course, they have no accomplishments with regard to either, so why mention them?

    Is it just me, or does listing “Nominated Well-Qualified Candidates To The U.S. Supreme Court” make it sound like there was a really good chance he would appoint someone that wasn’t well qualified? Oh, wait…

    Hope 2006 is even worse for you W, you dumb-fuckling (check’s in the mail, koreyel).

  • makin a list
    checking it twice
    all those accomplishments
    do not suffice
    Democrats are comin to town
    ( wishing a festive “holiday” to all!)

  • I read your article titled Quite a year for Bush and found it interesting and informative until I came to this statement:

    When it comes to the economy, GDP growth isn’t a problem
    Journalist and bloggers that repeat this have unknowingly became part of the dreaded “White House spin machine”.

    Please pass this on to your research department:

    Go to this web site:
    http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/gdplev.xls

    Calculate the growth rate over the four year term of the last fourteen terms. That would cover the time from Truman’s second term (the GDP collapsed during the transition from war to peace) through G. W. Bush’s first term.

    You should get these results:

    21.00% _ Truman
    13.45% _ Eisenhower 1st
    10.91% _ Eisenhower 2nd
    19.86% _ Kennedy/Johnson
    21.81% _ Johnson
    12.38% _ Nixon
    10.62% _ Nixon/Ford
    13.67% _ Carter
    12.63% _ Reagan 1st
    15.98% _ Reagan 2nd
    08.81% _ G H W Bush
    16.53% _ Clinton 1st
    17.87% _ Clinton 2nd
    09.56% _ G W Bush

    If you sort these in descending order you’ll find that the only president with a lower growth rate than G W Bush is G H W Bush.

    While you have them in descending order note:

    Of the six Democrats all are in the top half.
    Of the eight Republicans seven of the are in the bottom half.

    There were nine recessions during this time frame.
    http://www.nber.org/cycles.html/

    G W Bush had the longest time between the end of a recession and the end of his term of any president and still was next to last in GDP growth over a term.

    Eisenhower had two recessions in his second term and still his GDP growth was better than G W Bush’s.

    Score card on recessions:

    Fourteen presidential terms and nine recessions.

    Eight Republican terms and eight recessions
    Six Democrat terms and one recession.

    Please do not allow your authors to make this mistake again.

    Thanks
    Arm Hayseed

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