The W Admin talked as if Failure Wasn't An Option.

Problem was for the US and the rest of the world, Failure was the only Feature of the W Admin.

McKinnon has a point; there was a residue of suspicion from the recount (justifiably so). It didn't poison things beyond recovery, but it did exist, and denying it is inaccurate.

Just further proof that Scotty is a agent of Boy George II, trying to write the first draft of history to exonerate his [former] boss.

In short, another load of crap.

So much for the party of personal responsibility.

you can't change the tone under those circumstances

You certainly can't if you don't try.

A rational, reasonable person - knowing (as Total notes) that the recount was indeed an undeniable fact might have shown some humility, might have worked that much harder to earn the trust of those who doubted, might have reached out to mend fences and try to win enough hearts and minds to have a majority - however slim - of the country behind him.

Instead, the Rove-led Bush team bolted from the gate claiming a "mandate," thumbing their noses at the majority who had voted for Gore.

The recount didn't poison the well - the recount merely required that a good leader start cautiously. Bush and Rove poisoned the well all by themselves by saying a big "screw you" to the majority of Americans who voted for Gore.

No sympathy here. Try it on someone else, McKinnon.

Didn't Bush state that the 2000 election gave him a mandate?

The Bush v. Gore decision put a black stain on the Supreme Court that remains to this day. Rehnquist and the other four justices who endorsed that very political decision shattered forever the illusion that the Supreme Court was a rock of integrity and non-partisanship whose only interest was to defend the principles of the Constitution.

The Bush administration was in trouble from the beginning because Bush won with only 47.9 percent of the voters and actually lost the popular vote.

But as Mr. Benen points out, after 9-11 and through the invasion of Afghanistan, Bush enjoyed unprecedented popularity. Ultimately, though, the administration's arrogance, ignorance, incompetence and corruption became so obvious that even the corporate-controlled media couldn't cover it up.

Bush never said he had a man date and it's tasteless to suggest he did.

Actually the Florida recount mess gave Bush a chance to prove himself. If he had reached out to the Democrats by appointing a few to his cabinet and if he had demonstrated a little humility he would have done much to heal the wounds. He didn't. He adopted the arrogant 50% + 1 equals a mandate stance that dictated by Karl Rove. Big mistake.

"A good number of people in this country didn't believe Bush was a legitimate President. And you can't change the tone under those circumstances."

As they say, if the shoe fits...

I agree that this wasn't the source of Bush's troubles in office with the American people. But McKinnon should ask himself why Americans should have accepted Bush as legitimate when it was (and is) far from clear he actually won the election, and when a proper statewide recount was never conducted in Florida. McKinnon's statement would be like Angelina Jolie saying she has no idea why Jennifer Aniston doesn't like her.

Am I the only one who has noticed that everything Rove touches turns to poop. I wonder why the clown is still the darling of the press.

Mostly right about the key role of the later screwups ^ (n is large) but this statement is misleading: "This had nothing to do with the ridiculous circumstances ..." It had somewhat to do with it, since many people were indeed peeved (as they should have been!) about the conduct of the election aftermath. It might have affected their relating to GWB, so what and I can't blame them.

SteveT: Rhenquist of course is dead and OConnor retired, but the thought has often occurred to me how the remaining three feel about their unconstitutional decision to intervene in the 2000 election. Not only did they besmirch SCOTUS they bear some responsibility for putting the worst president ever into office. I say "some" because the odds are that the constitutional resolution of the 2000 election would likely have still put Dumbya in the White House. The irony is that Dumbya has ruined the GOP brand and if Obama can be just half way competent it could well be a lifetime before the GOP recovers. As to Al, I think you may be technically correct. I believe that Dumbya's comment after the 2004 election was that he had political capital and was going to spend it. Like the country Dumbya was soon broke.

three more weeks to watch the rats scurry!
caint hardly wait for all the memoirs...

(but please, jeebus, i want me some criminal trials...)

The administration was in trouble -- Bush was Bush.
There is no way to cleanse the history of this. Bush was a fuck up.

And poisoning the tone in Washington? Safe to suggest that both Bush and Cheney had major league, FU, attitude problems long before the recount. The tone would have probably been worse had they swept the election.

"Bush enjoyed unprecedented popularity"

After 9/11, Bush enjoyed the same level of popularity that most wartime Presidents did, at least briefly (cf FDR and the senior President Bush). Before that, he didn't.

"I say "some" because the odds are that the constitutional resolution of the 2000 election would likely have still put Dumbya in the White House."

Subsequent media recounts found that if every ballot in Florida was examined (something Gore never requested), Gore would probably have become president (although it's true that if the limited recount stopped by the Supreme Court had continued, Bush probably would still have).

I never trusted Bush because I knew exactly what he stood for and what he would do if elected, and he did it, and it was a disaster. De-regulate everything, tax cuts for those who need them least, cater to the religious conservatives, right wing judges, anti-choice, anti-labor, rape the environment for profit, increase military spending regardless of effectiveness, unnecessary military engagement--it all happened just as I expected it would, I just didn't realize the magnitude of the incompetence or how it all would come crashing down in such a big way and neatly right at the end of Bush's term. I mean it is truly amazing how he turned peace and prosperity into war and depression in eight short years, demonstating the failure of modern conservative/GOP ideology better than any Democrat or progressive ever could.

To paraphrase an old Matt Groening cartoon--"We always knew you would fail, just not quite so spectacularly".

Bush had a popularity rating of 89 or 90 percent in the weeks after September 11, 2001. (I believe it was one point higher than the first President Bush's rating after the Gulf War.)

I was living in Europe at the time and counted myself among the 10 percent. As many readers here can attest, it's a tragic thing to watch your own country lose its collective head. It certainly had terrible consequences.

If the Supreme Court hadn't intervened, there's a decent chance that Florida wouldn't have been able to certify electors at all. At which point nobody can get a majority, the Presidency goes to the House of Representatives (which would probably have chosen Bush), and the Vice-Presidency goes to the Senate (which would have had a nontrivial chance of choosing Lieberman). How's that for a stupid compromise?

Yeah, like Total said: Bush had lousy and sinking popularity until 9/11 fortuitously (in a sense ...) dropped into his lap as it were.

SOP-standard operating procedure. Everyone in the Bush administration takes cues from the top. Under no circumstances will they admit that they completely fucked up. It's always someone or something elses fault. Or just make shit up and say like Rice and Laura that George did a good job. My question is how did I get stuck in this alternate reality?

zeitgeist:

"Instead, the Rove-led Bush team bolted from the gate claiming a "mandate," thumbing their noses at the majority who had voted for Gore."

Actually, neither Gore nor Bush received a majority of the votes. But Gore did clearly get more than Bush nationwide. He received 48.4% of the popular vote, compared to 47.9% for Bush.

Setting aside the SC's historic blunder, Bush's problem can be traced to the 2000 (s)election. Bush was given a strong mandate to govern from the center. He flipped off the country and went on what was to become an eight year, right wing bender that very few people voted for.
The 'well' wasn't poisoned by the bogus election. It never was the 'well' they imagined.

How's that for a stupid compromise?

Your stupid compromise is my Constitution.

I'm sorry, bit I think Bush did change the tone. He changed the hell out of it. He just didn't change it for the better.

No amount of revisionist efforts will erase what George Bush did or did not do as president.

The "Well" was not poisoned when he took office contrary to whomever wishes to proffer such a canard!

Bush and Cheney poisoned our well of democracy by their secrecy in setting energy policy, promoting economic ruin through massive deregulation and the carving up of our tax policies to favor the rich, and by falsely committing our brave men and women of uniform to a costly war irrelevant to the hunt for the 9/11 perpetrators.

Above is a mere glimpse as to why Mr. Bush and his accomplice The Dick Cheney will be looked upon dimly by future historians and the families of loved ones forever sacrificed to the follies of these two men; and nobody else save their minions! -Kevo

ah yes, let the Ret-Conning begin.

Actually, I don't blame the nasty recount. I blame Al Gore for being in a rush to concede that night, then having to retract it. If he'd waited until the votes were counted, the whole story might have been different.

"A good number of people in this country didn't believe Bush was a legitimate President.

McKinnon is right.

Something like 40% of poll respondents in December of 2000 didn't think this then, and I doubt if many of them have changed their minds.

Historians will point to 12/12/2000, not 9/11, as the end of the American republic. We await only the Man on Horseback -- Obama is a good man, but is just the new Romulus Augustulus.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Bush's approval ratings soared to unseen heights

Not for me, they didn't. But I will say that I reserved judgement. I've read enough history to know that some men rise to great heights in extraordinary circumstances. I really hoped in the wake of 9/11 that George W. Bush would prove to be among them. But at the very least, I knew that was the time when we would find out what sort of person he really was.

And we did.

Bush was in thrall to the minority of fanatics that had hijacked the GOP. With the majority of the country and the planet behind him, he could have told that group to fuck off. But he didn't - because he was one of them. And for that group, having the country and the world behind you was actually a liability.

Bin Laden's plan was to goad us into doing more or less what we did. I will never forgive Bush & Cheney for taking what should have been the unattainable pipe dreams of a lunatic and turning them into reality.

And the recount has nothing to do with that.

Count me as one who never thought he and any of the rest of that cabal of criminals was ever "legitimate." BushCo was a fascist coup d'etat.

And given the fairly large number of people I know who weren't as extreme as me, who thought something "funny" had happened, but who believed we had to follow the system and were basically "hoping for the best," I'd bet that his 65% approval rating wasn't "real," that the real rating was something less than 50%.

After 9/11, even I wished the clueless putz well, but it only took the business of missing being able to grab Bin Laden in December to know that the incompetence that had been shown between January 20, 2001 and 9/11 was still there. And I think a lot of other people took notice of that, and filed it for future reference.

And then there was the invasion of Poland, done solely to give him a chance at a "legitimate" re-election in 2004 (which still required that they steal Ohio to do so).

So, when Katrina came along - which everyone in the administration with a brain and a sense of shame has called "the final nail in the coffin" - Bush had no reservoir of public belief in him and his adminisration left. We've basically been marking time since.

I hope the worthless drunk rides his goddamned bicycle off the nearest cliff as soon as possible after his can't-come-fast-enough departure.

What recount?

I seem to remember that Florida did not even complete the first count of the 2000 presidential vote!

Long time reader, first time commenter.

Last night on Rachel Maddow's teevee show Todd Purdum was trying the old blaming bad luck maneuver.

Rachel checked him right into the boards.

If the Supreme Court hadn't intervened, there's a decent chance that Florida wouldn't have been able to certify electors at all.

False. Either the recount would have been completed and certified and Florida would have electors chosen by the voters or the legislature, which had already geared up to do so, would have appointed electors (indeed, there was a nontrivial chance that the legislature would have done so even if the recount could be completed.)

These may have been outside of the safe harbor and therefore subject to challenge in the Congressional counting of electoral votes, which, if the challenge succeeded, would have resulted in a no-majority scenario, but even if the votes were outside of the safe harbor, there wasn't much likelihood of a successful challenge, and even votes given within the safe harbor aren't actually any more immune to challenge, since Congress' act in passing the safe harbor law can't constrain Congress' prerogative in actually counting votes.

TCinLA stole my post - right down to the invasion of Poland line.

To know there are still goat-fuckers out there who think that the unprovoked slaughter of innocents was a good idea is to realize that a certain segment of the populace is completely without morals.

Tom,

"I seem to remember that Florida did not even complete the first count of the 2000 presidential vote!"

Indeed. 18 of the 67 counties never even did the mandatory machine recount that was required by law. And it should be noted that when the rest of the counties did do it, Bush's lead was reduced from 1,784 votes to about 300.

I never accepted W as legitimate. He was selected by his daddy's justices in a blatantly political decision. He had been a fuckup all his life before that, with daddy's friends cleaning up the messes and picking up the tab. Being selected Resident didn't change a thing. Now his enablers scurry about cleaning up after him. Situation normal for the boy blunder.

Hurry 1/20!!

Remember one of the very first acts by Bush on Jan was to lower a veil of secrecy by signing Executive Orders that drastically curtailed the amount of government information that was to made available to the public.

Bush as President did not do a television address to the country until August 9, 2001 when he did his stem-cell speech from the "ranch" - of all issues, during a recession, he chose his only address in his first 6 months to spotlight an issue that was only of major importance to his base. He also, especially compared to Clinton, gave very few press conferences before 9/11. It was almost as if the people were being told that they weren' participants in the new Administration.

It's not that the tone couldn't have been changed "under the circumstances" - the Bushies never ever tried

Even if Bush vs. Gore did cast doubts on Bush's legitimacy, whose fault is that? These people are like the joke about the guy who murdered his parents and then pleaded for clemency on the grounds that he was now an orphan.

Allan Snyder wrote, To paraphrase an old Matt Groening cartoon--"We always knew you would fail, just not quite so spectacularly".

Or, as the Onion put it so presciently, "Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."

“The Well was fine�

Laura Bush thinks so too. After watching a news clip with Laura Bush detailing the legacy of the Bush administration to go down in history as a success was interesting. O.K., Like Laura Bush is going to sit around on cable news television with her hard southern drawl saying “My husband was an asshole wasn’t he�, not likely.

Laura in her own deep southern drawl saying the Iraq war will eventually go down in history as a big win for America. What’s really funny, for me, all the Neo-Con’s are predicting the same thing.

Especially after the great “Surge� which for me was nothing more than having to send in re-enforcements, because we stayed the course for about five years in a loosing streak that desperately needed a resupply of troops. As one ponders on the Iraq war America now given by Bush and Company along with the embedded media are in complete denial about the existence of a regional chaos of uncertainty Bush leadership placed America into.

My God we now have rockets flying over to Israel by the tons, Pakistan with nukes given by America, harboring Bin Laden factions on the verge of war with India with nuke given by America, Afghanistan in wide spread corruption, Turkish troops in intermittent border clashes, Korea in undetermined nuclear growth all tempered by the Soviets boating around Cuba and sitting on pipelines in Georgia with the best of the best Bush and Companies Arab friends trying to crank up oil prices. Some friends or allies huh? Now the decider deciding not to do nothing.

The real kicker here for me is all this barrowing from China and Japan the world market to support the Iraq war, while reducing taxes is the real slap in the face to Americans. Needless to say the screwed up bail out stuff that is conjured up from the Jekyll Island group through some unknown fears, our federal reserve the American Central Banking Ponzi scheme. All major auto manufactures going idle talks of hundreds of thousands of retail bankruptcies,

Laura has no clue as to the corruption complicity and out right profiteering that is translated before us by Mainstream Media and her Husband. Has America taken the real economic hit yet? It maybe still to come. Iraq, torture, secret prisons, mercenaries, trillions in missing unaccountable money, pentagon spending with trillions unaccountable, bail out money unaccountable, unemployment very accountable, No it was not “Mission accomplished� it was “Intermission to Disaster�.

Republicans never, ever, EVER take responsibility. For anything. They always see themselves as the victims.

It's EXACTLY the opposite of what they expect of everyone else.

"Hypocrites" is too weak a word to describe the Republican party.

"Rachel checked him right into the boards."

Now there's a "Hockey Mom" I can believe in.

I would play devil's advocate for just a moment. Before I start, let me say that I agree 100% that it's annoying to hear the stuff that's been coming out of the "Bush Legacy Tour" (as Maddow calls it). The recount poisoning the well? Rubbish, I say. Yes, perhaps it got him off on the wrong foot, but as you point out, his approval numbers were strong, especially after 9/11 (I'll admit I was even skeptically impressed for a moment). If he had been this great leader, as they are trying to claim, he would have used that approval rating to take us in the right direction. The recount may not have been poison, but, it did give him a bit of an obstacle. But, any reasonably competent person could have overcome that obstacle.

Devil's advocate part: for the sake of argument, a point could be made that he did overcome his obstacle (the recount), and with those approval ratings, drove us into the mess we are in now. After all, in a sense, we all let him get away with it. Oh yes, there were voices screaming, but, in the end, did the people stand up as one and say 'enough'? No. At least, not until the elections. I'm just sayin'...

Quite frankly, I'm just happy he's leaving. Inauguration Day cannot happen soon enough!

On a different note: during the elections, I was obsessively reading everything around. After the elections, I have had to limit my reading, in order to reclaim free time. Yours is one of three I've kept subscribing too. You're the best source for political news and commentary; and, even the comment section is enlightening, unlike some where it's nothing but people calling each other names. You've got a great place here, and I bow respectfully to your hard work.

since oversimplifications never go out of style...

when I was a teen my widowed mother started dating a kind and thoughtful intellectual. Though I kept a distance, it wasn't about not liking the guy, as he seemed OK. It was more of a wait-and-see.

Shortly thereafter, she fell head over heels for a bona fide SOB no one in her circle of family & friends really liked. It was a whirlwind romance & a quickie wedding (she was nearly 50 & he was in his 60s, so no, they didn't HAVE TO get married). The new step isolated her from as many of the disapproving family & friends as possible.

Like with my mom's other fella, I adopted a wait-and-see stance. No matter. The Step could've tried to engage my sibs and I. He could've tried to include us. He could've treated us with respect, knowing this was all new & a bit scary to us & make an effort to reach out and be a family.

Instead he took the opposite approach. He was heap big bwana top dog in charge. Our mom was his wife first, our mom second. Our house (one my father helped build) was now HIS house, & he's letting us live there & we should be grateful for it. Everything in the house was his. If he wanted to raid our piggy banks, throw out our records or burn our underwear it was within his rights to do so. Complain at your own peril. Within a few months, he was on disability from his job & in the house 24/7, constantly trying to start fights & flicking bottle caps at my head when Mom wasn't home & insisting everything we told her about him was a lie when she was.

What was there NOT to love?

By the time he was out of the picture, he & mom moved 1000 miles away, they were pretty much bankrupt, with a lot of the money my mom once had going to televangelists promising the Step the fast path to Salvation, and were it not for the compassion of her local church, probably would've been friendless. Supposedly, on his death bed, he harangued my mom about how we never gave him a chance to be our father, & my mom finally made it clear to him what a complete & total a-hole he had been. She was explicit & he was horrified, and finally repentant. Supposedly.

Perhaps stupid on my part, but Decision 2000 reminded me a lot of my personal history on a much more horrific tragic scale. America had a new stepfather who could've tried to unite us (after all, he said he was a uniter), make us feel like a family, only to find out his idea of unity was giving us the opportunity to either think he was awesome or learn to keep it to ourselves, because this was all his now. His house, his rules. God loves him & that's all that matters. When I think of the mileage he would've gained by just doing even a token gesture to those who regarded him with susicion...no matter. It was beyond Bush's abilities to reach out, just as it was beyond his abilities to govern effectively. He got his...and subsequently we got "ours."

One thing even diehard anti-Democrats have to admit, Obama's reached out. He's made it clear his decisions are based on what he thinks is best for the country, not doing what he wants for his buddies & screw anyone who bitches about it. The man's truly trying to unite.

The idea that Bush was hindered by those who saw him as an illegitimate President. He treated those who didn't vote for him as enemy combatants, he treated those who couldn't finance his campaign as worthless. He made it clear he didn't care whether the majority of us liked him or not, the 1 percenters and GOP base were all that mattered. Now 8 years later he's claiming he never had a shot at our approval. Unless the Secret Service bubble is all-comsuming, Bush is weeks away from finding out how revied he's been. He's lost huge swaths of his base. Even those who agree with his politics think he was a piss-poor leader. And I suspect that, unlike most other Presidents, he won't be so in-demand on the lecture circuit. He'll now have scads of time to find out what we thought of him, and why. Don't know if he'll ever become repentant. But he will know, like my Step supposedly came to know, the anger & loathing & disgust that came his way, he earned. Every drop of it.

Steve, Bush did start out with a significant number of Americans angry at him and therefore willing to expend time, money, and energy spreading any bad news that emerged. They broke the media monopoly.

If they had been the crackpots the media always portrayed them as, others wouldn't have listened. But, as you say, Bush governed badly, and there were a LOT of people willing to put in a bad word about him.

Also, if you check the numbers, I think you'll find that the approval numbers were more like 50% (NBC), 55% (USAT), or 60% (FOX)

Let's not forget Bush wasn't even on the same page with his own Secretary of State Powell who had to call a hasty press conference on the White House steps to reverse his position on the Korean Sunshine Policy when Bush humiliated the South Korean president in the middle of a photo op by renouncing it.

Then he called China a competitor not a partner raising hackles in Beijing just before the US spy plane collided with their jet fighter and was brought down. It was clear from the beginning Bush was spoiling for a fight somewhere and I guess he and Cheney had settled on Asia ignoring the threat from Al Qaeda.

"McKinnon has a point; there was a residue of suspicion from the recount (justifiably so). It didn't poison things beyond recovery, but it did exist, and denying it is inaccurate."

Actually, the extent to which Bush was considered illegitimate and by how many is totally irrelevant.....

Just look at the hands into which Bush put himself so very long ago....Karl Rove.

There is NOTHING in Rove's behavior or character that shows unity, compromise, respect, a desire to heal, etc....he has a 20-something year history of nothing but spite, bullying, lies, division, deceit, etc....If you thought he and Bush had ANY desire to change the culture in Washington, you're a fool....their crocodile tears now about how hard it was to change the tone are nothing but more bullshit.

I dunno... you can count me firmly among those who has never considered Bush a legitimate president based on the events of November 2000. It has made watching his bungling even more infuriating because I have never felt he deserved the position.

Bush poisoned the well before even taking office, appointing John Ashcroft as AG. As a Missourian who had voted for the dead guy, the late Mel Carnahan, that was really a poke in the eye. They never gave any quarter, they never tried.

For guys who came to office swaggering and blustering "Who cares what you think?", Bush's lackeys sure do seem to have become a bunch of sissies, don't they?