There are a million places to take this topic, but I don't think you get the popular collapse in trust for institutions - which gets you Trump - without Bush lying us into war and appointing blockheads like Chris Cox to mishandle the financial crisis.
The thing with "was Bush or Trump worse" is I feel like, we were at like a 7 out 10 in governmental quality when Bush came in, a 2 when he left, then Obama pulled us back up to like 4 out of 10 then when Trump came in he crashed us instantly down to 1.
Yeah this is the big one for me. Clinton had an actually talented FEMA director (James Watt? Don’t check) and Bush treated it like an ambassadorship to Monaco.
Right. Karl Rove really set the course with his "We don't react to reality, we make it" schtick. The seeds were there from Reagan, but Bush et alia really broke the right's commitment to a common set of facts and understanding of reality.
I think Obama’s justice department deserves a big chunk of the blame for giving all the bankers a mulligan on the whole “wrecking the economy and causing untold misery” thing
We have too many people who think about politics as if we’re all in a classroom. Some are geezers trying to re-fight the political battles of their youth — battles they were barely in, incidentally. “It all started with Reagan, Nixon, or whatever.” Well, it didn’t — not in ways that matter now.
Democrats are not off the hook here; led by Barack Obama, they saw the wreckage left by the GW Bush administration at home and abroad as an historic opportunity for….bipartisanship! But theirs was merely an error in judgement, albeit a serious one.
The bottom line is that Americans have never had to deal honestly with the baleful legacy of the second Bush administration. From national security to the economy to climate, it made nearly everything worse. Bush Republicans played their part in the degradation of Congress as well.
And Bush Republicans are still here. They and Trump Republicans are about the only kind left in the GOP. That’s why it makes no sense to noodle around about Nixon’s southern strategy or anything Reagan did. It’s Republicans in this century who damaged the country & its institutions.
I keep coming back to how big a scandal Watergate was a lot the time. So much hand-wringing about how it undermined trust in government.
It is completely unrelatable. POTUS outright lying is totally baked in now.
