I supported George W Bush twice. The Iraq War, in particular the idea of bringing democracy to an Islamic majority dictatorship, was perhaps the most ill-informed, ill-advised, disastrous foreign adventure in the history of the United States. Many might say it really became disastrous after Obama took office. That is a cop out, it lost the support of the American people long before that - it helped elect Obama - and the concept of establishing democracy there had been shown to be as ludicrous an idea as feared at the outset. In the back of my mind is another common theme of the day - that Bush was trying to correct an oversight of his father, and avenging his father for Saddam's assassination attempt. That it was "family business" and he used the U.S. Military and the themes of democracy in the Middle East and WMDs to finish his family's grudge.
It was one of two monumental failures of Bush that must leave him,in my mind, as a complete and utter failure - a disastrous failure unlike any other Republican president, perhaps including Nixon and Hoover. Bush had his failures of domestic policy like No Child as well as a few successes, but his domestic policy will be forever tainted by him taking his eye off the tremendous, disastrous dysfunction building in the U.S. Economy in his second term. After pulling the country out of the relatively tame dot com bubble in his first term, his administration completely missed, ignored even, the monstrous dysfunction building from derivatives and years of shoddy loan practices in the home mortgage market. It is like Christie and his bridge screwing with commuters, if you have an epic fail where people live they will make you pay at the ballot...and they did by turning to a far leftist because they were sick of him and his party.
