I think the above video more closely represents his biggest failure. Here’s the link to the article.
Former President George W. Bush signaled on Thursday that he sees not privatizing Social Security as his greatest failure from the eight years he served in the White House, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The unpopular Republican leader made the suggestion while speaking at a trade conference in the Windy City, where he discussed his legacy and also offered a glimpse into what readers can expect from his forthcoming memoir, Decision Points.
“I would like to be remembered as a guy who had a set of priorities, and was willing to live by those priorities,” explained Bush. “In terms of accomplishments, my biggest accomplishment is that I kept the country safe amidst a real danger.”
Bush poked fun at himself in addressing how his thoughts will be delivered in his memoir.
For Republicans – failure is the new success. Stupid is the new smart.
NOT using my kids’ college fund to buy more Enron stock was my biggest failure.
Haha, too funny!
Social Security was the only piece of the government that Dubya had NOT burned to the ground by his incompetence and mismanagement.
Oh wait, maybe that’s what he wanted in the first place, and he views it as a failure to not have razed the ENTIRE thing to the ground!
>> Guyver said, on October 22nd, 2010 at 2:04 pm
>> he tries to blame his failures with the previous administration.
But the current crappy economy _IS_ Bush’s fault.
In all your dodging and swerving, you somehow missed that.
#19
Music played from the heavens while you wrote. The New Deal is one of the supreme achievements in the history of governance.
The modern media idea that the truth lies equidistant between the polar views is completely wrong. An advanced and dynamic society without a robust social safety net is not possible.
NO! His biggest failure was sending all our jobs overseas which caused the housing failure and the deficit.
People seem to forget that jobs bring in taxes which lower the deficit and make privatizing Social Security unnecessary and foolish.
I’m beginning to hate selfish rich people…
#37
Baloney. The current crappy economy is the fault of Congress (thus their 11% approval rating which is overly generous if you ask me). If you want to blame Bush for ’08 meltdown, then the current economy is Obama’s fault since he’s the one in office and he’s the one that has made it worse.
Wall street already has a system to control your retirement funds. They are called IRA’s and they have been around since the 70’s. And they are 100% voluntary. If you really want to give all of your retirement investments to Wall Street, then open an IRA and go crazy.
#39
NO! His biggest failure was sending all our jobs overseas which caused the housing failure and the deficit.
FFS. Put down the glaucoma medicine. What drove jobs overseas is more efficient communication channels, improved infrastructure overseas and cheaper overall costs. Want to bring jobs back? Make it cheaper to move jobs here than to keep them overseas.
People seem to forget that jobs bring in taxes…
Yep. So when a business determines that it is cheaper to move its operations overseas than to stay here, we lose a ton. Not only do we lose the income tax revenue from its employees, we lose the corporate tax revenue. The only way to change that is to make it more enticing to move jobs here. Do you feel bad when a company moves its operations from one State to another because it is cheaper? You get the same effect on tax revenue at the State and local level. Is the solution to penalize the company or to entice companies to change their mind and move to your State?
… which lower the deficit
You wish. The reality is that if Obama had a new influx of tax revenue, he’d piss it away like he did with Stimulus bill instead of using it balance the Federal budget.
and make privatizing Social Security unnecessary and foolish.
There are ways of moving SSN out of the greedy hands of politicians but still make it required and invested in safe investments. Put it this way, what happens to the safety of SS when the t-bill becomes worthless?
Speaking as someone who is generally as a free Market kind of guy FUCK PRIVATIZATION!!
That being said, GROW THE FUCK UP We don’t have a social security trust fund anymore. It’s been spent on other shit a long time ago.
Reconstitute it and make using that money it for reason other than social security punishable by castration.
And for that matter force circumcise every fucking member of the government!
We do have two good examples:
1. O’Donnell thinks she won the debating point on whether or not the Constitution requires seperation of Government and Religion ((for you Bushtards this is exactly the same as debating whether or not the Constitution requires the people be allowed to have guns: “The constitution never says you can HAVE ] GUNS.”==Yes, the argument is that literal and literally that stupid.)) And after seeing the response to her retardedness-she blames the media for not understanding she won.
2. And BushtheRetard doing the same thing with SS.
Recall the thread a month ago or so on “When people are presented facts that disagree with their position, their position often will only get more hardened.” Two good examples of this are above.
Followed of course by those supporting Bush on this thread. SS doesn’t “work” by your evaluation so get rid of it? Why not fix it? Privitization will not fix it==only fund continued Wall Street Skimming. As Algore lost his election on the issue: put it in a lock box. And he was ridiculed for saying the simple truth.
You stupid f*cking morons DESERVE exactly whats coming straight at you/your kiddies==but we are all the same train to destruction.
Republican vs Democrats. Who is the lesser evil “on average?”
When you people vote, are you voting for governance or for “values?” Silly to vote for values: in the main, these are determined by the Sup Ct not Congress or Pres.
Governance: Congress = Fiscal. Pres = War. With lots of give and take between the two.
Republican Voters: can you see you are being played on the values issues? Can you see you are being played on the fiscal issues? Are you so rich that you personally benefit by the widening gap between the Super Rich and the rest of us? I know you are being HURT by it but you think it is a form of personal freedom to be robbed? Silly.
Yes, Dem and Pubs both corrupt and incompetent playing politics by offering no solutions and blaming the other side.
But who every once in a while gives you a scrap from the table? Pubs = Never. Dems = not enough, but every once in a while.
Do you really want a life without healthcare, medicare, minimum wage? If you are ok with that, how about your kiddies?
THINK for fuck’s sake. STOP cutting all our throats while aiming at your own.
Stoopid Hoomans.
What an ass he is. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and the others of his complete and utter failure of an administration should be in court for war crimes.
#2
[I]”His biggest failure was not stopping the Democrats control of the Fannie Mae generated sub-prime mortgage disaster. Thanks for destroying the economy Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.”[/I]
I keep hearing this from Conservatives, but as far as I know not a single piece of legislation was passed that forced any company to give out sub-prime loans. Companies made the choice to use sub-prime loans as the means to be in compliance with what the Democrats at the time wanted. It was NOT the only way they could have done this. Therefore it is these corporations fault for choosing to do what they did.
What is sad is with all the intelligent people in the US we elect to the highest office some real winners. I am talking both Democrat’s and Republican’s. Its like nobody with any good ideals wants the job anymore. Can’t say I blame them.
Cursor it is actually 12%, as the employer pays another 6.2%
>O’Donnell thinks she won the debating point on whether or not the Constitution requires seperation of Government and Religion ((for you Bushtards this is exactly the same as debating whether or not the Constitution requires the people be allowed to have guns: “The constitution never says you can HAVE ] GUNS.”==Yes, the argument is that literal and literally that stupid.))
This would be a valid analogy only if in the late 1700s and early 1800s the government was banning guns. The so-called separation of church and state did not exist back then.
If he had done that no doubt somebody would have looted the funds while the people who were supposed to be giving oversight didn’t.
Of course we kept it safe and Congress looted the funds.
Sometimes life bleeps.
>Maybe it creates surpluses.
There’s no maybe about it. It takes the benefit liabilities off the government books. Whether the stock market crashes or prospers would then affect people’s personal accounts, but not the government spending.
Yes there is more risk to the public, but then there is also the risk of the tens of trillions that the government may or may not pay. Perhaps you get no benefits at all from SS because the government has spent it all.
Mike==I believe you think that is a winning argument. Puts you right in league with O”Donnell and BushtheMalignantRetard.
If I could, I’d give you a cookie.
Yeah, I guess his one real regret was not killing hundreds of thousands of people in war for oil, based on lies. Bush’s one regret is that he wasn’t able to steal the REST of the money for Wall St that Soc Security represents. The bail out that his admin constructed was the biggest heist in history, but I’m sure not being able to steal the Social Security funds in their entirety, is a real sore point.
And for all those dummies out there who still support privatization – yes, you might be making less with SS than with a private account (provided the private account survives). What the trade-off is, is SECURITY. Social Security will only fail completely if the government fails completely. Unlikely, but possible.
If your SS funds had been privatized by Bush, you probably would have lost them in the rigged stock market crash. If you didn’t lose them in THAT crash – you’d lose them in the next one. Wall St would engineer another bubble – probably takes 5-10 years – to part the fools from their money and then CRASH. No more pensions, 401ks, investments or whatever private replacement you have for SS. Tens of millions of elderly, or soon to be elderly, Americans would fall into destitution while Wall St laughed its collective ass off.
I have a private pension and Soc Security that I’m waiting another 10+ years or so to collect. I think it is far more likely that Social Security will survive than the private pension.
#33 “For Republicans – failure is the new success. Stupid is the new smart.”
For Democrats there is nothing new about it.
He’s biggest regret should have been his assumption he was competent enough to do a decent job.
He should be ashamed to open his mouth, much less say anything.
#29 Blind Stevie said, “This of course will never happen because it would require Congress to close the cookie jar on its own hand. Sad.”
The best solution to fixing Social Security I have read. I have known of successful trusts managed this way since the depression. Of course it will not stop Congress from looting the fund and “safety net” champions like BlowBoy from wanting more “entitlements”.
#7 If the physical evidence and video recordings of who did what didn’t prove you are absolutely incorrect about the fact that the Dems in Congress helped set this up and were in control of Congress the last 4 years of the shrubs term with the people named being the major players I could agree with you.
This of course doesn’t let those Republicans who supported the same programs off the hook but but the guy was right about who was in charge and what party they belonged to.
If you don’t like what the did I suggest you act on that rather than going delusional.
#37 Well it was when he was President but he isn’t President.
It is the Presidents job to act in a reasonable and prudent manner providing leadership regarding such things after they take office and for this President and this Congress that seems to have meant spending the better part of a trillion dollars on whatever pork seemed attractive at the moment with the promise that if people voted for this monster before they read it unemployment wouldn’t reach 8% which is what they said would happen if we did nothing.
If they were right doing nothing would have been a bargain. Our unemployment would be lower and so would the national dept.
We say safety net like it’s inherently a bad thing. SS was designed to be a safety net. And at some level there is a societal need for one. A lot of the financial woes are from the things that Congress has added on during the almost 80 years the program has operated. And the way Congress has handled the trust. It is large and very important progam. I don’t expect to see it completely disappear. It expect it will continue to exist in some form for some time.
Whether you agreed with what Pres Bush said on the subject or not, he should be given partial credit for at least bringing the topic into a larger national debate. I think almost everyone in America is agreed that the current ss system needs fixing of some kind. We have many opinions on what those fixes should look like but the nation is starting to face up to the fact that something has to happen. That was not happening 10 years ago.
And a national debate IS going on. Whether you liked Mr B or not, if you are honest about it, you have to give him credit for helping to move the ball forward long term in that respect. It’s perhaps the most dangerous topic a politican can talk about. Looking back, I don’t think he gained much politically from it. Honestly,it is better that we’re finally talking about these fixes here in the USofA. Gotta give the man his propers for having been part of that.
As I mentioned in a previous post, any fixes the nation decides it wants will require Congress to take some pretty improbable actions. There’s the real practical problem. How do we get Congress off its crack habit and get responsible management for our money? Because it is our money or it was when wage earners put it into the trust.
If any prefessional money manager, acting as a fiduciary for clients, were to handle funds by taking out cash and replacing it with his own personal IOUs, the SEC would lock him up. Eventually. Is the way Congress has managed the SS Trust Fund much different than that example?
#51 Social Security is an insurance pool, similar to a private insurance company. They pay benefits out of payroll receipts. Does your SocSec contributions rise 10-20% each year like medical insurance does?
Most of the fiscal problems for retirement benefits deal with Medicare, because medical costs are so out of control. If Obama had the nuts to nationalize healthcare this would have been a vanishing problem.
The retirement funding problem is caused by PRIVATE INSURANCE, not public insurance.
To be clear, the Constitution does require a separation of church and state, but not to the extent that phrase is understood today, and that was ODonnell’s point.
“If you truly love your money, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.”
–Bernard Madoff
Mike==very good. Too bad she didn’t say that, during the debate or in days after. It must frustrate you that you are too smart to run for office as a teabagger?
What current interpretation of the separation of church and state do you think is incorrect?
the only ones I can think of are those that extended tax free status to them and the failure of the Gov to monitor them and revoke their tax status when they become political sub-units.==ie, if the law/constitution were applied/honored as intended MOST churches/religions would not qualify for non-tax status. I’m actually disappointed that more churches just don’t go ahead a pay whatever minimal tax would be due ((ie==zero if profits were spent on good works)) and fight the needed political fights mandated by their dogma.
But the don’t.
They serve mammon, not god.
MikeN, you are a F’n idiot. Thomas Jefferson wrote in commentary that there is a wall of seperation between church and state, and that is the intent of the first ammendment.