PrintOctober 16, 2010
If George W. Bush Had...
If George W. Bush had doubled the national debt in one year, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within ten years, would you have concurred?
If George W. Bush had criticized a state law that he admitted he never even read, would you think he was just an ignorant hothead?
If George W. Bush joined the country of Mexico and sued a state in the United States to force that state to continue to allow illegal immigration, would you question his patriotism and wonder whose side he was on?
If George W. Bush had put 87,000 workers out of work by arbitrarily placing a moratorium on offshore oil drilling merely because one company had an accident, would you have thought this was disproportionate and harmful to American workers?
If George W. Bush had forced a change in your health care coverage even though the majority of people did not seek or approve of these changes, would you begin to worry about an abuse of power by the executive branch of the government?
If George W. Bush continually bashed the United States and seemed to side with known dictators, would you feel comfortable?
If George W. Bush had been the first president to need a teleprompter installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how linguistically inept he is?
If George W. Bush had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take Laura Bush to a play in New York City, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had reduced your retirement plan's holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have endorsed this move?
If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have chuckled with approval?
If George W. Bush had given British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, would you have considered this shabby and not befitting proper presidential protocol?
If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky?
If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have been taken aback?
If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the nonexistent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?
If George W. Bush had filled his Cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current with their income taxes, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had stated that there were 57 states in the United States, would you have said that he is an embarrassment?
If George W. Bush had flown all the way to Denmark to make a five-minute speech about how the Olympics would benefit him, would you have thought he was a self-important, conceited, egotistical individual?
If George W. Bush had been so Spanish-illiterate as to refer to "Cinco de Cuatro" in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the 5th of May (Cinco de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, would you have winced in embarrassment?
If George W. Bush had misspelled the word "advice" and mispronounced the word "corps," mistaking it for a dead body, would you have wondered about this man's ability to articulate English and represent his country?
If George W. Bush had burned nine thousand gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded he's a hypocrite?
If George W. Bush's administration had approved of Air Force One flying low and then sending in a jet fighter in downtown Manhattan, thus causing widespread panic, would you have wondered at the lack of sensitivity displayed by the Commander-in-Chief?
If George W. Bush had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest, with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans during Katrina, would you wonder if this lack of assistance had racial overtones? Clearly you would have been incensed by the gross incompetence -- wouldn't you?
If George W. Bush had created the positions of 32 czars who report directly to him, bypassing approval by the House and Senate, would you have begun to wonder if American democracy was being trampled?
If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though the president has no constitutional authority to do so, would you have worried about the moorings of this country and the abuse of power?
If George W. Bush had ignored outright voting rights violations and did not recommend that the Department of Justice render justice, would you begin to wonder if the man was the president of all the people or just some of the people?
So what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive? He's done all this in fifteen months -- and we still have another two years and nine months to go.
Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com
Hat Tip: Susie M.
