Or that honor will go to Trump? I don’t know. One thing I do know is if past experience predicts future, it doesn’t look good 🙁 The only good news is as you can see from the google search, past experience doesn’t always predict future 🙂
The problem I see is we don’t have a consensus or criteria of a good president. Economy? When I came to the US in 1997, I do recall the internet just started to take off, and the Nasdaq were at all time high on 03-18-2000, and yours truly got a software engineer job offer on 03-20-2000. Many of my fellow Chinese graduate students took a few computer science courses and joined the IT/software job force in 1998, 1999 and 2000. That was mostly during Bill Clinton’s presidency. One can argue presidents don’t dictate economy and Clinton was just being lucky. And many of us remember Bill Clinton had the Lewinsky scandal and I recall some conservatives think that he tainted presidency because of his actions (this plus his dishonesty answering Ken Starr’s questions, and senate impeachment). And that probably played a factor between Bush vs Gore’s fight for the presidency. Bush won in a quite dramatic fashion.
September 11
Then #September11 happened in 9-11-2001, under George W Bush’s watch. I am going to skip the saga around the #FloridaRecount and Supreme Court 5:4 decision to stop the recount on Bush vs Gore. Because the W barely had a year since inauguration, technically less than 9 months between 01/20/01 and 09/11/01. I guess he can place some blame on his predecessor – Bill Clinton. Or the intelligence community, e.g., George Tenet, note Mr. Tenet famously said this – At a meeting in December 2002, he assured Bush that the evidence that Iraq had WMDs amounted to a “slam dunk case”, which is the point I want to make.
Iraq War
George W Bush is not the only politicians who are responsible for the Iraq war in 2003 because US congress (the house and the senate) voted for it (see Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002). But As the president he has the final say. He doesn’t have to listen to then Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld or VP Dick Cheney either. The end results are basically disastrous, both for the US and for the Iraq.
I do recall the W’s father, George HW Bush, said being president is a hard job in the case he (there is no she yet, if I may) has to make the ultimate decision. But my counter point is all the presidents signed up for the job voluntarily.
(Wikipedia) Casualties of the Iraq War
(Reddit) Is Iraq better off today than it was prior the 2003 invasion?
I guess probably similar things can be said for the “Arab Spring”, just by looking at Libya and Syria.
Hurricane Katrina
My recollection is that Federal response (Federal government response to the state of emergency) to Hurricane Katrina was not very good, at least initially.
Financial Crisis
It happened under his watch. Although his response seems to be okay.
“If money doesn’t loosen up, this sucker will go down.”
–George W. Bush
“I believe this was the greatest economic statement of all time.”
–Warren Buffett
PS:
Noam Chomsky said Obama is worse than George W Bush and Tony Blair in this YT video. He cited Obama’s surge strategy in Afghanistan – he suggested it made situation in Pakistan worse, and the potentials of Pakistan’s nuclear getting loose if a civil war breaks out. I disagree. President Obama didn’t start the war in Afghanistan. George Bush started it (although after September 11, because Taliban hosted Al Qaeda, the war got a lot support inside the US, as well as decent support from NATO allies). Obama was merely trying to finish the job. He was successful in terms of killing Osama Bin Laden. Did the surge help in that regard? It’s hard to say. Personally I feel President Obama’s biggest mistake is the Syria situation: and the most recent news there is not comforting either. For the US, it’s always or usually a sticky situation: the US tries to play a peace maker, or influence the country or the people there, and end up got sucked in. Amfghsnitan, Iraq, Libya and Syria are all like that.
Shortly after I wrote this, I noticed President Biden pardoned his son Hunter. On the surface it sounds a lot like Bill Clinton controversial pardons near the end of his presidency. But upon more reflection, I think it’s different situation: with Trump’s team on the horizon and they are almost guaranteed to punish Hunter Biden for revenge; Hunter is also Biden’s only remaining son. This is especially relevant considering Hunter lost his mom and his sister Naomi, when he was very young, and his brother Beau a few years ago. Also, from Politico – We haven’t seen a pardon as sweeping as Hunter Biden’s in generations.
On the “pardon” front, I recall Scooter Libby clemency controversy: I think in a sense the W has won the “integrity” or “honesty” contest among presidents Clinton, GWB (himself), Trump and Biden. This is probably one thing people liked him: I recall he famously said, “are you with us, or against us” (which is originally from the Bible). Another thing I noticed is since he retired, he rarely came out to overshadow his successor (Obama is his immediate successor, but he basically doesn’t come out during Trump and Biden presidencies too).
Tax breaks
Personally I do remember some tax cut during George W Bush years. I think same (or similar) can be said for Trump and Biden (tax cut or child credit). But all those are not meaningful to me or my family. If the government can reduce the debt, so that my kids can have less debt (as taxpayers), that will be better.