Who was worse, George W. Bush or Donald Trump?
Just watched the Boy Boy video on George Bush’s Masterclass, and they made me think about which U.S. President was actually worse.
Just watched the Boy Boy video on George Bush’s Masterclass, and they made me think about which U.S. President was actually worse.
Trump. He tried to overthrow our democracy.
Don’t forget exposing national secrets. From satellite and submarine capabilities to nuclear capacity.
Trump is a traitor.
And we still have no idea how many people from the second and third world have had access to all of the top secret documents kept at Mar-A-Lago.
It may take a team of forensic investigators a decade to uncover how many American lives have been and might still be being lost directly because of his actions.
Okay but Bush actually stole a presidential election.
If Trump was competent, he'd have been much worse.
He tried to start a war in Venezuela and failed.
I think their administrations likely had equally bad intentions. The incompetence of Trump’s administration just means they acted more erratically. They were also much worse at getting press on their side and worse at covering up their actions.
What?
Bush sued to stop a recount in Florida that would have likely led to Gore winning the 2000 presidential election. A conservative Supreme Court majority sided with Bush and stopped the recount. It makes Trump’s whole “STOP THE COUNT!” look amateurish in comparison. Bush actually was able to stop the count and got away with it.
Gore didn’t want Americans to start questioning the legitimacy of our democracy so he conceded. The rally around the flag effect after 9/11 helped quash any further criticisms of how Bush came to office.
The electoral college stole them both an election, neither of them actually won their first term popular votes. With Bush it was just more screwed up because of it all coming down to a handful of votes in FL and however many recounts with the court eventually calling it quits. One of the few times where the popular and electoral votes didn't agree but 2 withing 4 presidential terms isn't a good sign. At some point we need to get rid of that arcane getup. Land doesn't vote but those guaranteed 2 electors that every state gets ends up with places out in the middle of nowhere getting more votes per capita than actual population centers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_popular_vote_margin
The same assholes were involved both times. Roger Stone walking free is a symptom of national failure.
People like to say this, and I get it, I get the controversy, and I get why, but Florida was a statistical tie. A thousand recounts would have ended at the same spot of more infighting. The supreme Court was conservative leaning and decided in favor of the conservative to no one's surprise. If the supreme Court was 5-4 liberal, Gore would have won.
The whole issue is so much more two sided than people realize. For example, the person who invented the butterfly ballots was a Democrat politician.
I am not personally in favor of the court's ruling, I wish Gore had won. The world would be a MUCH better place without GWB having won the presidency.
Well, your democracy is already at its end
I see you're from feddit.de. Didn't Germany have to prevent a planned coup by literal Nazis in the military, government, and police in 2022?
I am not aware of anything really serious in Germany like with Trump in the US. What I alluded to was that in the US you only have the choice between bad and very bad in terms of parties. There are certain terrible things that nobody seems to be able to influence anymore like the problems with three-letter-agencies or gun control.
His handling of Covid and literally willfully allowing it to become a pandemic is far far worse than a failed insurrection.
That is a good thing though. America is trash, and so are you.
Oh no. Lemmygrad is leaking.
That's a you problem, War crimes are bigger than you.
What until you hear about the war crimes of authoritarians. Just recently we have Assad gassing his own people, Russia stealing children, stealing land, and filling mass graves in Ukraine, Saudi Arabia murdering a journalist with a hacksaw. Bush may have started an illegitimate war, but the US military is comparatively very good when it comes to avoiding civilian casualties.
War in Ukraine stated in 2014
Way to downplay warcrimes and actual wars 👏👏👏
Nobody who understands what Bush did thinks Trump is worse.
Edit: ITT- People justifying senseless wars
Bush did a hell of a lot more harm with his war on terror and basically lying about why we wanted to go to war , but Trump single-handedly paved a very dangerous road for the US to become fascist and have crony capitalism (or at least, make it much more apparent and much worse).
Dubya was an asshole politician who wasted thousands upon thousands of lives for oil - and I would still say he’s less bad than Trump because Trump wanted to make the US into something more akin to China and Russia.
Don't act like US didn't want it. Almost half the population voted for it, dum dum. War crimes causing millions of deaths are a little important than your binge internal politics.
23% of the nation said true patriots will have to use violence to restore democracy last week. a non trivial chunk of this country has lost its mind
Blind unwavering nationalism is a cancer. The (North?) American Dream is one of individualism and corporate reliance. It's slowly seeping north of our common border, too.
With a military as big and armed as the US, you can absolutely argue that our binge internal politics are actually worth taking into account for these sort of things. The fact that seemingly half of the US population voted for it (whether they were actually for it, or were just voting not Democrat to “own the libs” is another conversation) is fucking terrifying.
The reason I would say that Trump is worse than Dubya is because of the potential and horrific shitshow that could happen if the US became more like Russia or China. To help put it into perspective, imagine if Putin was in charge of the US army. It’s not too crazy of a stretch to say that he would probably invade all of his small surrounding neighbors and absorb them as Russian territories or make them become part of Russia itself. Take this example a step further - he has access to the US arsenal of nukes. How long would it be until he would fire nukes at other nations and invade them?
That’s not to say Dubya is better - like I said, starting a 20-year war for oil but masking it behind “removing WMDs” and “God told me to do it”, wasting lives pointlessly for greed is fucking disgusting. But it would legitimately pale in comparison to the damage somebody like Trump being in charge of a fascist US can and would do to the world for years to come.
Wait... you think Trump didn't commit war crimes?
With a few thousand victims. Bush put at least a million on the already staggering US death toll.
But he also created a new quality, with running Guantanamo as a torture prison camp.
If it wouldn't be for the military and economic power the US would be openly referred to as the shithole country it is on the international stage.
I think Trump did worse things than Bush did, but Trump's rise to power would have never happened without the actions of Bush Junior and Bush senior and Reagan, so for me it's kind of hard to say who did worse.
No one is downplaying what Bush did, we're accentuating how excruciatingly bad Trump's actions were. See you comprehend that Bush's crimes were horrible, you're simply incapable of understanding that Trump's were much, much worse.
Many executives get their countries embroiled in foreign conflicts. Few actively attempt to subvert their own government upon their dismissal; they literally are the worst of the worst, and your inability to fathom this is either feigned or revealing.
How can what Trump did be worse than killing a million civillians, running torture camps, invading foreign nations, commitingto extrajudicial killings, and giving rise to the IS, who again killed hundreds of thousands of people, destroyed millenia of human history and culture and commited all imagineable atrocities?
Because Trump would normalize invading countries, running camps (he already kept kids in cages!), trying to get the government to commit extrajudicial killings, and idolizing tyrants like Putin, Orban, Kim, etc.,
This isn't hyperbole, there's examples plenty of each.
Bush did all of this 20 years ago. To be fair though invading other countries, putting fascist regimes into power there, extrajudicial killings and camps all have been part an integral part of american history. It became a new quality with Bush though as the world progressed to a more humane standard at the time and the veil put around these things by Bush was much thinner, than by his predecessors.
Still Trump is ultimately just continueing the work of Bush. It is just more noticeable as he is very loud and brazen about it, where Bush was only outspoken about it.
thanks for your stellar analysis, it's factually incorrect and bereft of insight nuance or critical thought. keep trying to tie them together, it's pointless but obviously keeps you very entertained.
The US deserves to fall, and I'm glad trump did so much damage on his way out.
lol someone just turned 13. that's cute lil' edge lord, your future is fucked regardless of politics.
Others have said that it depends on exactly what your standards are for defining “worse”. Broadly speaking, it seems to come down to whether you’re emphasizing foreign or domestic policy. It’s not necessarily because people don’t understand or are downplaying atrocities.
The question is vague enough that it’s entirely possible for informed, compassionate people to come to different conclusions. That’s why this is an interesting discussion.
Yeah, except a fascist US would be farrrr worse internationally and domestically than anything bush did in 8 years.
Right now it's easy to say bush. 5 years from now, I'm not so sure
Yeah, it depends on perspective. Trump was probably worse for Americans but Bush was worse for those in the countries he invaded and ravaged.
I'll say the same thing to you as I did the other guy.
What until you hear about the war crimes of authoritarians. Just recently we have Assad gassing his own people, Russia stealing children, stealing land, and filling mass graves in Ukraine, Saudi Arabia murdering a journalist with a hacksaw. Bush may have started an illegitimate war, but the US military is comparatively very good when it comes to avoiding civilian casualties.
Everyone with a brain KNOWS trump is worse.
This shows their priorities. They don't care about war crimes.
I think it’s more a reflection of the media people consume. It’s easy for people to forget Bush’s war crimes when he’s been rehabilitated in part to make Trump look like an exceptional threat.
I feel like while bush was a much worse president then most people realize, with some of his policies and things like the patriot act still in effect and gumming up the works, trump did more damage in erroding the facade of democracy and empowering fanatics
Exactly: Bush pushed through evil policy that eroded rights and committed war crimes and such, but Trump attacked the very structure of the government.
Bush was bad in the way most world leaders and governments are, trump was impeached twiced and faced no consequences.
It's pretty clear from all the responses here that the view is massively different depending on if you're from the US, or not.
I'm not from the US - and Bush massively and irrevocably messed up a lot of things for me. And I'm just in the EU, not directly getting bombed by US military.
With Trump the consequences were pretty much all inside of the US, any fallout we felt over here were still from the Bush era, or to some extent Obama. Given all the damage that was done by those two maybe the structure of your government over there is shit and should be attacked - my hope from over here was that the whole Trump situation would lead to finally stuff getting fixed. It won't be pretty for you guys - but from the outside I'd rather have someone incompetent like Trump mess up your stuff until the pain is big enough to actually do something than someone halfway competent break things on a global scale again.
Isn’t the Patriot Act void back in 2020?
I believe so. However, the NSA’s mass surveillance programs still are authorized under section 702 of FISA which is another Bush era law.
Which is a good thing. Liberals pretending Bush wasn't so bad, is what is going to allow fascism to win.
Speaking as a Canadian, the Bush presidency was certainly wince-inducing. I was genuinely surprised he got re-elected after that clusterfuck of a first term. By the end of the 2nd, I was fairly convinced the best days of America were behind it.
But the difference between him and Trump is the wounds were more self-inflicted on the country with Bush. Still not great for Canada, whose fortunes rise and fall on what happens on the other side of the border.
But Trump had a genuine animosity for freedom-loving, democracy-respecting American allies and a love for oppressive dictatorships. He tore up trade agreements, levelled tariffs, etc. against Canada and Europe while advancing diplomacy in person in the likes of North Korea.
And on a more social level, he poisoned public discourse and stoked right-wing authoritarianism all over the world. I have family members I can't talk to anymore. And the lunatic fringe came out of the woodwork under his term. We even had a mosque shooter here in Canada who was quite candid about Trump being his inspiration.
Within the US, Americans hate Americans with a passion. What a mess. Another civil war is not out of the question. As such, I am coming down on Trump being far, far worse.
Thank you for your perspective.
“no brainer” said one paper the morning after.
Even worse, George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection was the only time a Republican president has won the popular vote since the Cold War.
Bush was like a bad bout of alcoholism, bad, but treatable. Trump was like doing two kilos of fentanyl at once.
I agree with lots of what you said, but lots not pretend like Quebec doesn't already have an existing culture of Islamophobia and racism.
I think all those things are good. Trump didn't cause any of those, he exposed them to naive liberals like you.
Reagan. He set the conservative party and the USA on a dark path where Bush and Trump were the inevitable result.
I would argue Nixon really started that path with his Southern Strategy. Reagan, Bush 2, and Trump were all consequences of Nixon
Watergate overshadows how Nixon's Vietnam War inflation started the death of the American middle class. In 1968, a High School graduate with a union job could expect to buy a house and a car with one salary. By 1976, two incomes was the norm for lower income families, and it was enshrined by the time Reagan/Bush Sr. were done.
Agreed, but Reagan popularized the ideas that it is elitist to expect a president to be competent, that complex legislative topics should make sense at the dinner table, and that government is the enemy of freedom. Both Nixon and Reagan were willing to trade in bigotry for political gain, and both were the sort of cynical "me-first" conservatives that taught boomers to mortgage the future. But Reagan had the charisma that Nixon lacked.
Reagan for the USA and Thatcher for us in the UK. The things they did still have impact to this day.
Well said. A product of the past.
Great answer
I think Trump will have done the most damage when the dust settles. We've had almost 20 years to see the effects Bush had on our country but only about 3 years since Trump left office. He packed the Supreme Court, made people proud to be racists, destroyed our electoral system, gutted the EPA, sold our secrets to our enemies, and made fascism popular.
Bush started a war in which US massacred over 6 million people. It's absolutely incredible how Americans absolutely don't give a shit about all the atrocities their deplorable regime does around the globe
https://bylinetimes.com/2021/09/15/up-to-six-million-people-the-unrecorded-fatalities-of-the-war-on-terror/
According to the WHO, nearly 7 million people worldwide have died to date due to COVID-19. Aside from just mortality, COVID-19 has caused massive shockwaves across economic systems across the world that irreversibly impacted hundreds of millions of people. I won't pretend all of COVID deaths were caused by Trump, but you can bet your ass that a significant number of them, my personal extended family included, died because he politicized the virus and treated it like it was no big deal.
Blaming covid on Trump is quite the stretch given that there was no tangible difference between the approach that Trump and Biden admins took towards handling the pandemic. The media just stopped reporting the deaths on daily basis when democrats got into power. US deaths account for around 1.1 million, and a large portion of those deaths happened under democrats.
The reason people died was due to lack of a social safety net, lack of sick days, lack of free healthcare, and so on. Saying that people died because Trump politicized the virus is frankly nonsensical.
I agree with a lot of what you say but our electoral system was fkd way before him. People were already proud of being racist he just gave them a microphone. The EPA still gets me though. We have been moving more and more to a fascist government for years now since the event of 2001 when we gave up privacy for security.
I think it's more what happened under the cover of Trump, ie what Republicans do, which is where the damage was in Trump's presidency. He was basically a smokescreen and scapegoat for all manner of interests, but as an individual almost completely vapid aside from his narcissistic drive for attention, which all mainstream politics was more than happy to provide him with.
After Bush's presidency I thought "Phew, glad that's over. I bet that's the worst president I'll experience in my lifetime." After nine months of Trump in office I was longing for the good old days of Dubya and Chainsaw Cheney.
This also leads me to believe Trump is the worst American president we’ve seen so far.
Exactly. Imagine how bad it would have been if he were competent. Someone who combines his ideology and rhetoric with actual competence is undoubtedly festering somewhere.
Bush was an absolute monster, but Trump literally broke brains. America will never be the same.
Not an American but Trump was far more embarrassing to your international reputation than Bush. They're both 2 of the worst presidents you've ever had but Trump is a whole different level of shitty. He's like fascist shitty, whereas Bush was neo-con shitty.
Also not American. People who were anti-bush had at least some kind of greater belief about capitalism, politics, etc. Literally everyone knew trump was a buffoon.
As an American, Bush is so much less bad than Trump to me that I find this question confusing. It's so obvious that Trump is the worst thing that's ever happened to the US. He literally attempted to overthrow an election to stay in power.
No other president has come close to that. It's an absolute joke that Bush is considered in the same breadth.
Another Trump term could very likely be the last presidential election we have or it could result in another attempted coup. How fucking scary is that?
Bush actually stole the election lol
There's at least a veneer of legitimacy over the Florida supreme court deciding to award the state's votes to Bush in 2000. Does it suck and should it be fixed? Yes. Was it illegal and dangerous to democracy? No, or at least not as bad as Jan 6 and the other crimes Trump and friends committed to try to steal the 2020 election.
Found another liberal who thinks decorum is the most important part of the political system. The veneer of legitimacy is MUCH worse then the obvious flailing of someone who lost.
Yeah but he didn't incite an insurrection like Trump did.
Found the liberal. Sorry the worst thing to have ever happened to you was trump being mean on the internet. I'm sure Millions of Iraqis understand your pain.
Corporate would like you to find the difference between these two pictures.
Look they both don't fall far from the shit tree, but the political philosophy nerd in me still does think there's some key points of difference. And these points of difference are useful in recognising and responding to fascist ideology because it's inherently parasitic and spreads by latching itself onto other ideas. That's why you can have things like eco-fascism and atheist fascism, which don't traditionally align with conservatism. Umberto Eco actually outlines the specifics of fascism and how it's a uniquely shitty ideology that can work it's way into any dark corner of complex human societies.
Bush was the worse president, Trump is the worse person.
I can see a lot of potential presidents in 2001 act the same way as Bush did, especially any other Republican. Even Gore would have gone to war in Afghanistan. Unless of course we go down the rabbit hole of could he have prevented the 9/11 attacks. The Iraq war probably would have been avoided under Gore.
But I don't see any other president doing the same damages that Trump did. While the current status of the Republican Party has many people just as bad as Trump, I don't think they would have the same traction today without Trump.
And let's not forget the worst of Trump was prevented. If his coup would have succeeded, he would even be the worse president.
Disagree. For all his faults and for all the Iraq fiasco I truly believe that George bush respected the office of president. There was a line even he wouldn't cross. He wouldn't attack democracy itself. I think he would have resigned if Kerry had won. That alone is massive
Trump has no respect for the office beyond what it can get him personally. He will trample every vestige of the Constitution if it makes him a dollar
I don't believe Bush was really running things and deferred most decisions to Cheney who is about as deplorable as one can get.
The respect for the office is worth very little the million Iraqis killed and millions of people suffering under the IS terrorists that raise thanks to Bushs invasion of Iraq.
Also it showed to another generation of people that the US does not uphold international law and order. Instead they commit the most heinous of atrocities if it helps to funnel money to their oligarchy.
Also fiscally Bush turned the US away from reasonable fiscal policy into incurring ever more debt without investing into the future of the country. The current republican party wouldn't be half as bad if Bush didnt open the floodgatey.
Now watch this drive
Yeah, the worst of Trump isn't limited to what political actions he took as President, but also the wider cultural impact he directly spawned, escalated and continues to propogate even outside of office. He contributed so much to this cultural shift that has provided legitimacy to crooks, crackpots, and literal nazis. And worse, he's pushed the Republican party to coddle those people, capitulate to their whims, promote their voices, and endorse their views and elections. Not that the Republican party had been respectable in a generation, but 20 years ago, they weren't publically allied with open fascists, far-right militia groups and domestic terrorists. They are now, though.
Trump tried to start a civil war, overthrow democracy, and install himself as king. Trumpism is tearing the country apart and trying so very hard to burn it all down. There's no contest.
*Another different way to word it: Bush made terrible decisions. Trump wants to burn it all down.
Potentially? Trump. Factually? Bush. However, to be honest, the American political system seems to be fucked up to the point it doesn't resemble a democracy. Currently, their population suffers from this situation with poverty, addiction to drugs, a corrupt healthcare system, inability to own a home, shitty jobs, etc. So, it really doesn't matter too much which one is worse. Biden or nobody else can fix this from within. But yeah, a second term of Trump would be definitely catastrophic and would compete with Bush's levels of destruction. Right now, the only thing containing Trump is his short term period in power.
The most depressing and convincing theory I've read about the state of American democracy is Sarah Kendzior's book "They Knew".
The tl;dr is that the US is ungovernable. The ruling classes don't have the will to fix the economic and cultural divides that split the country and there's an unspoken understanding between them all that the only way is down.
So they're letting it run its course, letting the weakest fall into the gears and skimming off what wealth they can, to insulate themselves from the inevitable chaos.
I like Gaslit nation.
Bush was worse for the world, Trump was worse for the US.
That remains to be seen. Ukraine is largely Trump's fault, and flushing all the progress made with Iran will have consequences for decades
How is Putin deciding to invade Ukraine (which he started in 2014 btw) largely Trumps fault?
I'm genuinely curious.
The most likely argument I see is that Trump severely strained diplomatic bonds both between North America and Europe and also within North America and Europe. Additionally, he heralded in a new degree of isolationist policy and created doubt about the resilience of NATO. Furthermore, he tried to blackmail the Ukrainian government.
In summary: Not his fault directly but his politics led to a situation where Russia/Putin saw it as likely that they could invade without facing significant backlash from Europe + North America. That probably would have worked out as well if Ukraine had folded within the first couple of weeks. The argument is essentially that by convincing Russia that they could get Ukraine without significant consequences, his administration contributed to the invasion happening.
Make of that argument what you will. Personally, I think it's a bit of a stretch to say "Trumps fault", but reasonable to think that another administration might have been able to deter the invasion.
So, Obamas fault?
One attacked an innocent nation, the other attacked their own people.
It’s hard to say. Bush Jr. gave us both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, both of which stretched into decades and cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, however, I’n not sure that any other Republican wouldn’t have done the same. Within 48 hours of 9/11, it seemed like they were already discussing how to tie it to Iraq, which made it seem like it was the plan all along. 9/11 just provided a convenient excuse. Those conflicts also stretched across multiple presidencies, Obama didn’t actually end either one.
Trump, on the other hand, could potentially spell the end of the US as we know it. The court cases against him give me some hope that he himself will be stamped out, but even without him, his followers are still just as dumb and malicious and they’ve infested every nook and cranny of the government like maggots.
The deeper problem is the Russian propaganda machine that helped a dipshit like Trump rise to power in the first place, which is what makes Ukraine so important. If we can break Russia’s back, we can potentially disrupt it at its source, but maybe the vacuum would just get filled by some other foreign power looking to destabilize the US. Trump is a symptom of a deeper issue in America, that someone like him even had a chance in the first place. If anything, we actually got lucky he’s as incompetent as he is and that we’re not already living under a dictatorship.
It's not just Russian propaganda unfortunately.
Conservative media as a whole is in a self destructive feedback loop in which -> the craziest lunatics and the angriest ideas get the most market engagement -> thus the media gives them the biggest platform, so they can make the most money -> thus those guys get elected and get talk shows-> thus rewarding both politicians and media companies for spreading anger and madness -> that made us money -> DO IT 10 TIMES MORE -> we found even crazier, angrier lunatics to run for office and host talk shows -> repeat. I'm not sure how to break this. It's profit driven, like so many of our problems that we can't solve.
Meanwhile, there are literally well funded, well organized conservative conspiracies to take over the world. NOTHING like that exists on the left. I wish it did. I wish we had an alliance of monied interests on the left who were like "We need to fight these assholes!"
Wow mate, let's not go so far... Maggots are at least good in some situations, as they can remove rotten flesh and speed up recovery, saving people's limbs and sometimes lives under the right circumstances. If anything, I would say we need maggots in there, to get rid of the rotten ones.
They were planning to invade Iraq way before 9/11 actually. When bush told the Saudis and even Tony Blair that Iraq was behind this (were talking September 12th) they were super perplexed.
Memos came out in early 2000s showing that post-saddam Iraq was already planned for.
Yeah, I remember watching a documentary video that showed alot of the discussions that were happening in the administration right on and after 9/11. Iraq was brought up pretty quickly, within 24 hours of the Towers coming down. It was pretty clear that while the rest of the world saw a huge tragedy, the Bush Administration saw a huge opportunity.
Depends on the metric. Direct threat to democracy, increasing violence and dangerr for millions of Americans, harming economic futures for Americans, etc.: probably Trump.
Sheer body count: maybe Bush, but don't forget about all the people who would still be alive or more healthy if Trump had not actively sabotaged COVID response.
Okay I'm back to Trump.
Worst for the world was Bush (so you could say Bush was more immoral) but worst for America was Trump (so you could say Trump failed at his job harder.)
Bush's actions killed a staggering number of people on flimsy evidence.
Trump changed phrases like "balkanization of the United States" and "Second US Civil War" from far-off possibilities and fun speculation to serious concerns.
That’s like asking what’s worse, herpes or an airborne and highly infectious strain of herpes that also causes cancer and melts your brain faster than syphilis.
George W Bush certainly caused more deaths, was just as decisive and is the reason Trump was allowed to happen. OK, so he's got a bit more of a charming personality and gives Michelle Obama candy sometimes, but that doesn't absolve him. Doesn't absolve Trump either, he's a loud mouthed buffoon who tried to start a Civil War. He has followers who will literally do anything he tells them to do. The idea of him having a second term absolutely terrifies me.
Also... No other POTUS has fucked up so many diplomatic relations as Trump did.
When George W Bush did it you at least knew it was part of a planned strategy....
That's debatable. Trump's handling of the pandemic was atrocious. >1 million Americans dead under his watch. Worse than any other 1st world nation.
Bush is objectively worse on every level. They’re both terrible and the people in their administrations were both soulless gouls. However, Bush’s administration was far more effective in carrying out their repugnant agenda.
People will say Trump tried to steal an election. That’s true. But Bush ACTUALLY stole the election in 2000. Bush also gave us 2 wars which killed in total over a million people and led to the rise of ISIS. Trump’s admin tried it’s best to get the US into a war with Iran but couldn’t make it happen. Bush’s administration also helped get the US into the Great Recession from which the American working class has never truly recovered. Trump doesn’t hold a candle to the kind of damage Bush inflicted on the US and world.
How did bush steal the election?
Bush's campaign asked the Supreme Court to stop the Florida recount that Gore likely would have won (winning him the overall election). The conservative SCOTUS did what they asked.
I was pretty young at the time, so my memory is hazy, but I thought there was more to this. Didn't they recount several times? What was going on that made it so difficult for them to count?
The ballots had "hanging chads" which are basically hole punches that failed to completely tear away from the ballot. Bush tried to claim that these ballots that weren't fully punched were invalid, his brother Jeb was governor of Florida of the time and agreed, so they basically 'recounted' until the got the winner that they wanted.
Thank you for such a clear explanation. As a non-American I've always been confused by the "hanging chad" thing. This has put so much context around it and made it super understandable.
Adding to the other guy's answer: Roger Stone staged a riot that stopped the final recount. Continuing violence and threats against election workers are more of the same shit from the exact same assholes.
Having lived through those times, there were questions about recounts, and it went to the supreme court, which called it a state issue (how a state handles its electors is a purely state issue), and the state courts ruled the counting be finished in a manner that helped Bush. I remember how civil it all was… there was anger and disappointment, but we all went through it quietly proud how the process was solved in a civil manner.
Different times.
There were issues. There’s feelings that R members of the Florida govnt helped push the outcome. Some counties went in less than 200 votes. The fact that Bush was led by the nose by an unscrupulous cabinet into 2 wars, not to mention a lot of bad policy that played out over years, did not help with how people look back.
For the US, Trump tried to destoy democracy so that's hard to top. And if he gets elected again, he will certainly succeed. For the rest of the world, both are clowns with nuclear weapons so equally dangerous. Trump just didnt had enough time to make as much damage, but what Trump did that Bush didnt, is inspiring right-wingers around thw world, with is deinfornation tactics.
The interesting thing about how this question plays out in my mind is that it seems obvious Trump is worse, but I feel more annoyed and offended about Bush than Trump, and I think, given I'm not even American, part of why that is, is that a similar feeling lingers with respect to the Australian Prime Minister during Bush's term. A man for whom I feel special kind of hatred, John Howard.
I really fucking hate John Howard despite some of the conservatives that came after him being arguably dumber and more embarrassing and making even crazier decisions. I don't think we ever had our Trump moment despite some spectacularly shit tier leaders since, but nevertheless they were their own special kind of ridiculous. It's a toss up who our closest equivalent is but I'd say probably Tony Abbott followed closely by one of his successors, Scott Morrison.
Where I'm going with this, and how it relates to Bush v. Trump, is that in their case and in the Australian context, it feels like they're responsible if so much of the bad stuff that's gone on since. It's Prime Minister John Howard's fault that we later got Tony Abbot and after him Scott Morrison, and it's John Howard's fault that we got mixed up in Iraq for no godamn reason, and John Howard's fault that perverse cruelty came to be regarded as political courage and strength and also the only viable path towards electoral success.
The thing with Howard, as with Bush, is that they feel to me like they represent the people we got, right at the crossroads point in time when it was still possible to pull back from where we've ended up, and they both failed utterly, seemingly instead to hit the accelerator. At a certain stage when you hear about Donald Trump doing something stupid or asinine or brazenly corrupt, I almost can't summon the will to be mad at him personally. It's now just par for the course and it would feel like getting angry with a chimpanzee for throwing faeces at the wall instead of making sound policy decisions. Yes it's galling that the decisions are so poor and irrational, but at the same time, it's a chimpanzee that somehow got to hold political office so honestly, what did we expect?
I'm not sure exactly when the shift occurred but it feels like somewhere post-Bush and post Howard, we stopped having politicians who, while we won't always agree with, we can assume are acting in what they at least think are everyone's best interests (even if we believe them to be wrong). Instead we moved to no longer even having real candidates with actual goals, just personified contempt and rampant self interest. It's like frail, fallable and flawed human beings, for all their faults, got replaced instead with joke cartoon characters, so it's tough to keep holding them to the same standard because they're not even real candidates just cruel jokes.
This feeling kind of makes me so much angrier with Bush and Howard that they were the last people that could have done something and instead they just let this happen because at least they got to win. The lasting effects both in terms of policy impact and just the overall cultural landscape that they have wrought upon the world are the seeds of every psychopathic lunatic that has since followed them. Tony Abbott, and Donald Trump were basically grown from seeds sown in the nursery of fucked up self interest that those assholes cultivated.
I think Dubya hands down if we're reducing to the presidency. To me Trump represents the absurd spectacle American politics has become, but the worst thing about Trump winning was that the Republicans were able to pass legislation. Trump as an individual wasn't very successful as a politician once he was in power. Trump, Hillary, and Biden are so widely unpopular in general, and Trump barely losing to someone like Biden after one term really drives the point home how meaningless so much of these politics are right now apart from the spectacle they provide. Trump was the spectacle in a pure form, and when the mainstream liberal media was covering him as a frontrunner in early 2016 and reacting to every tweet, that was my first realization this presidency could potentially happen.
Bush and the post-9/11 world I view as the sort of last doubling-down towards the political situation we live in today, and Obama represented the best we can hope for within this system. While Obama was insanely likable as a personality and speaker I never really supported the politics he stood for. Adolph Reed Jr. had the best take on Obama in 1996, now an infamous article since it was really validated post-Obama:
The decrepit political landscape today is a perfect fit for Trump but I don't think he controls it, he's just a mirror that reflects back on itself, it's what goes on in his shadow that's the real danger. I think progressives being so enraptured by Trump's terribleness is another serious issue because of this. Just being "not Trump" has allowed the Democrats to be lax on anything that would upset their donor base. Biden was always a darling of the Israel lobby for instance (why Obama picked him as VP) and we're seeing the effects of this right now. Bernie was a real mobilization and hope for the left and the attacks about him being soft on race etc from liberal progressives was basically an indication of where the Democrat party is. They want the "do-good" version of the same economic system the Republican's want to hand to the barons, and there's no political alternative to this system being offered, just the form it takes. Now there's hope in the increasing labor actions and strikes, an encouraging trend as people are pushed further and further being offered nothing by mainstream politicians.
Worse for the world? Bush. Worse for America? Trump. But I don’t really care about America so Bush from me.
I'll just leave this here:
Obama administration left Trump administration with a pandemic response plan that was largely ignored.
Covid global deaths: 6.5 million (aside from the million+ in the US I doubt Trumps handling caused more than half)
War on Terror: 4.5 million deaths in the wars. 38 million people displaced/refugees.
I stand with the assessment that Bush was far worse for the world.
You also have to consider that 100% of the war deaths were actively done with intent while spreading COVID was more passive and the result of a lot of idiots ignoring good practice. One is negligence, while the other is malice.
When world leaders like Trump (1) ignore pandemic planning, (2) lie about the seriousness and gravity of the situation during the crucial early days and weeks of the pandemic, (3) turn pandemic precautions and public safety measures into just another pointless item in their culture war, and (4) spend just about every waking moment scapegoating scientists, fomenting conspiracy theories, and intentionally muddying the waters, it's can no longer be considered "negligence".
Right from the guy at the top, the Trump administration made calculated political decisions and came up with talking points that actively made COVID-19 worse, and we are still feeling the effects of it today. The pandemic may be "over" when it comes to public policy, but an incalculable number of people all over the world are still having health problems as a result of the virus (which is now endemic to humanity), and we are still very much in the middle of the economic fallout with still no end in sight.
Whether COVID was worse than the War on Terror is debatable and subjective (I'm not exactly a fan of either, frankly), but there's no doubt in my mind that the effects of COVID on global health and economics were much more wide-spread.
How is trump guilty for covid deaths in other countries?
Listen, I'm not really into quantifying human suffering like that, so let's just suffice to say that both Trump and Bush were fucking terrible human beings who did lasting damage to the world.
It's also very much worth noting that Trump was a willing and active participant in American wars in the Middle East, and he did so with impunity and with less accountability than his predecessors. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/22/obama-drones-trump-killings-count/ (Plus he assassinated an Iranian general in Iraq without the knowledge and consent of the Iraqi government, which is arguably a war crime and could have easily escalated into a war with Iran.)
Yes I’m aware of this. But most of the world fell down on the response plan. He just fell down harder.
Also, it’s such a uniquely North American thing to downplay the invasion of other countries. They went in after 9/11, using a terrorist attacking as an excuse to use war tactics known as “shock and awe” MOAB bombing to make the CITIZENS feel helpless while they literally went and privatized their entire resource economy so that it would go to foreign businesses. Do you understand what that means for a country? How absolutely fucked up that is?
(a) I'm not downplaying the invasion of other countries, so right off the bat you're mischaracterizing what I'm saying.
If anything, you are downplaying Trump's involvement in American wars in the Middle East, which he may not have started, but he was certainly a willing participant in them. Droning people with impunity and less accountability than ever before, and even assassinating an Iranian general in January 2020--an act that could have very easily escalated into a direct conflict with Iran and its allies.
Also it's funny that you bring up the MOAB, because from what I remember it was Trump, not Bush, who dropped the MOAB on Afghanistan in 2017; resulting in the largest single explosive attack by America since the dropping of the atomic bombs during WW2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017\_Nangarhar\_airstrike
(b) Downloading invasions is very obviously not a "uniquely North American thing". See: Russian downplaying of the invasion of Ukraine, Japan downplaying the history of their invasions of Asia, British attitudes towards imperialism and the pillaging of cultural artifacts from all over the world, Chinese annexation of Tibet and the literal filtering of information regarding it, and so on for all of human history.
Trump and Bush were both awful presidents and human beings, but I maintain that Trump was worse for America, for democracy, and for the Earth.
Having lived through both presidencies I'd say people thought Bush jr was as dumb a president you could get until trump came along and said hold my beer and made an absoloute farce out of politics
Bushisms were way funnier than Trumpisms IMO. Although that doesn't blind me to how bad both were.
This is a tough question, because trump did lead an attempted coups to overturn democracy, but I’d say Bush W. The forever wars cost so many lives, far more than were killed as a direct result of trump’s actions. While trump’s failure to lead during Covid cost many lives as well, I think the net death toll is still considerably lower compared to Iraq/Afghanistan. And all for oil at that, also not known to be amenable to healthy living.
We joked about W and Cheney cancelling the election. "Bush 2008 - why should the law stop us now?"
The Idiot was responsible for a failed coup.
The part where an angry mob invaded the capital, held back by precious few law enforcement officials, with the entire federal elected government hiding in one location? That was the lesser part. That was the visible mushroom emerging from the mycellum organism that permeated his turd of an administration. In the year leading up to that violent assault on the American government, he'd openly suggested "delaying" the election, on account of the plague he also insisted was fake. He had the Postal Service destroy the literal machinery of democracy with the explicit intent of vilifying and preventing mail-in voting. He extorted a foreign ally in hopes of committing fraud, and just about ruined the State Department with his narcissistic tantrums about getting caught doing those crimes.
George W. Bush was an intolerable authoritarian moron who openly betrayed the ideals of the nation and his duties to its people. We spent seven years constantly terrorized by our own government's vague-but-menacing warnings and gleeful overreactions to attacks they failed to detect.We still have people trapped in an offshore torture prison because of that motherfucker. He was the worst domestic threat the United States had faced since the Business Plot. There was no excuse for ever electing anyone so brazenly corrupt and dishonest ever again. And then The Idiot was worse. The Idiot was orders of magnitude worse, on every possible front, without one god-damn iota of ambiguity or disguise. Republicans nominated and installed an incompetent criminal fascist.
They are trying to do it again.
The party is complicit and must be dismantled.
Public opinion was very much in favor of the war in Afghanistan after 9/11. Maybe not so much Iraq, but it's hard to blame Bush squarely for those wars when they had bipartisan support.
Bush is done doing damage to our country, and might actually be considered a voice of reason compared to today's Republicans.
It's definitely already Trump, and he's not even done doing damage yet.
Even if Republicans elect someone who is identical to Trump in his words, views, and actions, that person would still be better for the country than Trump. It's critically important for the justice department to hold him accountable for the insurrection and trying to overthrow our democracy, or it WILL happen again.
You should dig a little further into the run up to the Iraq war. If you like podcasts checkout the first season of "Blowback". Pretty in depth history. Trump was awfull in other ways but the Bush administration has the blood of hundreds of thousands on their hands.
I didn't have a problem going into Afghanistan. I had alarm bells going off in my head before going into Iraq but I didn't say shit. that's not going to happen again.
The "good war" is always an alarm bell for me, the real losers are always civilians, and what America did in Afghanistan and Iraq dwarfs what's going on in Gaza now.
You had me up to here, I disagree. Either case would be a disaster. If it walks like a Trump, and quacks like a Trump, it's a Trump.
Bush was bad. But Trump was dangerous.
Like, if Bush were somehow to be elected again I wouldn't be alarmed, I'd be annoyed.
Dangerous to who though?
To the peaceful transfer of power, for one.
Bush was literally put in through a coup
Al Gore, Dec. 13, 2000
"For the sake of democracy I concede to the judicial coup"
Trump couldn't even manage that.
Yeah, much less competent fascist than Bush
Yes
Bush may have started devastating wars that lasted for decades, but I blame Trump for the war in Ukraine. There have been no worse war since WWII. And it may have been prevented if Ukraine would've received the military assistance during his Presidency they were asking for before Russia invaded.
17,000 civilian deaths in Ukraine vs 280,000 in Iraq. What is your definition of "worse"?
Russia invaded in 2014
of the two, Trump did more damage while he was president and had the bigger riot when he lost the popular vote, but Bush's legacy of damage lasted from when he launched his forever wars in 02 all the way into the Biden administration
Thanks for the thoughtful answer. It seems the consensus is Trump.
Definitely Trump. Tried to subvert democracy, wholly unprofessional attitude as president (in my opinion the first president to not even attempt "rising to the office" at all), handled the economy with the tact of a middle schooler, and (allegedly) divulged / kept classified documents. He is also a civilly liable rapist. All of this I think makes Trump the third worst president of all time, behind James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce.
George Bush is easily the second worst president in modern history, his initial response to 9/11 was a highpoint, but afterwards he started a useless war and, although he incorrectly wouldn't see it this way, bent at the knee to terrorism by subverting constitutional rights for the purposes of mass searches and seizures of information without a warrant or reasonable cause. (i.e. Patriot Act). It's been a while since I hashed out a whole list, but I believe I had Bush somewhere between 7th and 12th worst or so.
Both are absolute pieces of shit.
Bush was literally put in through a coup
Bush. But most people will say Trump simply because its more recent.
Bush was worse internationally, Trump was worse domestically. If he got one more term, who'd know?
Especially galling was "W" making a "funny" video where he pretended he was looking for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Quite the pos in retrospect.
ETA: Found it, sorry quality is so poor. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T5YgJx8VGRA
Bush, but he had a more classy kind of dumb evil. The kind where you keep your mouth shut. Dumb evil + mouth that won't shut up is just unbearable in the moment. But looking back historically I think Bush's actual actions as a leader will appear the most fucked up in recent history. This is like comparing unstoppable diarrhea to constipation so bad you are vomiting shit though.
Trump, hands down. Bush at least tried to be a president.
Bush was much worse in effect, because his administration was much more competent. Our most recent former President was a worse person and an awful President domestically, but was largely ineffective at actual bad governance.
George literally succeeded at doing a coup through the Supreme court
Woodrow fucking Wilson. Worst. President. Ever.
https://youtu.be/hLiI6kXZkZI?si=6y30QFjWbyNEaEFO
Andrew Johnson
Oh he's my number two, with Andrew Jackson taking third. Then we get to people like Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Mango Mousolini.
I think a lot of the worst presidents basically embodied the historical time they were in and were just the ones at the helm of the presidency. Other's like Johnson, I'd say with the issue of reconstruction specifically, that was a true hinge point that just went to absolute shit and we're still living with it.
Coming in hot. Didn’t he imprison Eugene Debbs?
That appears to have been Grover Cleveland
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs
During the first red scare. Thanks.
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This question is probably worth revisiting after 2024's election, since Trump may still have more mileage. A second term might be more dangerous than the first was. Assuming he doesn't win, then his legacy will mostly be all of the weird and slightly hard to measure changes to American culture, specifically conservative political culture.
He generally seems to have made more dangerous ideas popular but also to have made getting a governing coalition together to actually enact those ideas more difficult by eroding the Republican party. Bush's foreign policy decisions seem to have been far more dangerous so I think I'd vote for Bush being the worst as of right now.
That said, Trump still has a non-zero chance of bringing real American fascism into power so that would change things.
I assumed he wouldn't get in the first time. I really hope people don't make that mistake in 2024. Voter turnout should be through the roof - because if there's one thing the republicans hate more than the Democrats, it's a high turnout.
Bush is/was a better person but had a worse presidency. He got swept up in the popular sentiment post 9/11 and enacted unconstitutional law and bad foreign policies. That said I'd rather get lunch with Bush than with Trump. Plus Trump's legacy probably won't be as big as Bush's was.
Clearly trump done the biggest long term damage, what will lead to more serious problems in usa, and not just in usa... putin was encouraged by trump's direction of making US stop being world police... however trump was just servin his master 😆
Edit: i see tankies are here
Anyone who says trump was worse should not be taken seriously about politics, all they care about is feeling good about their country and being able to ignore politics. Bush killed half a million Iraqis in service of oil company quarterly earnings, it's not even close.
1: A million 2: COVID. 3: Trump would have glassed the entire Middle East on 9/11. He's called for it this year.
He's just too stupid to make it happen.
Is that actually better?
I usually use half a million, as that's the undisputed number. I agree though that it's most likely a full million. Why would you believe anything trump says? And Trump's response to COVID is not nearly as bad as what bush did in Iraq.
At some point it's like asking which is worse between Charybdis and Scylla.
More like gonorrhea and herpes
You can’t be serious.
Bush was way worse, he only made me laugh like twice. Trump was rolling on the floor riot laughing, especially when he brought out his little accordion. What a legend.
Trump started WW3 by initiating covid lockdowns and trying to use enormous money supply expansion to somehow offset the predictable economic ruin from the lockdowns.
Biden’s continuing what Trump started, but Trump started it. In fact, I’d say the covid lockdowns were a bipartisan effort to start WW3 (not on purpose of course just total negligence that they pretended not to understand how things work).
So while Bush’s actions ended the American Way, Trump’s actions may just end our civilization.
Imagine thinking quarantine during a pandemic is what caused WW3. And the US did not even implement anything close to an actual "lockdown".
You are crazy and need a reality check
If Trump leads to the end of America and it's sham democracy, he will be the greatest president the world has ever had. But liberals can't stand to call America the bad guy.
Trump: Started 0 wars. Caused 0 economic crises. Bush: Started 2 wars (Iraq, Afghanistan). Caused the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
If you can’t even mention the failed coup, it’s obvious who you still support.
If it happened in any other country, it would have been called a coup or insurrection by the media, for sure.
Tried to start 5 wars*
I'm not sure how you can claim with a straight face that Trump caused 0 economic crises when we're still in the process of recovering from a economic crisis tied to a massively bungled initial pandemic response. Remember how Trump and his cronies came out every day for about 4 months and pretended that there was no pandemic, that it was under control, and that it would magically disappear by easter 2020? That cost the world a lot of money and, much more importantly, a lot of human lives.
As for war and war crimes, Trump removed all transparency around drone strike operations that had been in place during the Obama administration, so...
Second source: https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/trumps-secret-rules-for-drone-strikes-and-presidents-unchecked-license-to-kill
Unlike every other country that handled it perfectly right?