George Bush Made Mistakes - Worst Ever?

In case you haven't put the pieces together yet, I am a Republican. However, I am not a complete partisan kool-aid drinker like some.

George Bush came to office as a fiscal conservative, won a mandate, had the highest approval rating a president has had in a long time post 9-11, and somehow stole defeat from the jaws of victory.

One of Bush's biggest strengths - his willingness to make controversial decisions and not waver despite criticism - turned into a liability, but not because he was wrong. Bush lost his edge when he failed at the important task of communicating and inspiring. He gave back his mandate with his secretive measures, an unwillingness to pretend he cared what others were saying, and generally because he failed to inspire. I believe the latter point was mainly because Bush took his mandate too far and forgot that he was elected as a fiscal conservative to carry on the Newt Gingrich budget balancing mantra that helped the Republicans regain their Reaganesque reputation in the 1996-2000 sessions.

Tax cuts can't be married with spending increases, and this was a terrible short-coming of a plan that, on its surface, had the potential to carry the economic prosperity of the 80's and 90's into the 2000's, and firmly change the tax and spend politics that dominated the 60's-80's.

The whole point of tax cuts is to limit the size of government, and Bush missed that side of the equation and as a result critics of supply side economics will spend the next 10-years using Bush as an example as to why. What Bush did was open TRUE FISCAL CONSERVATIVES up to unfair criticism. Bush was a Democrat in drag when it came to fiscal matters.

History will tell the story about Bush's legacy. Was Bush smart for invading Iraq and putting the world on notice that no one will step on our soil and live to tell about it? Clinton held a lot of hand shaking events on the Great Lawn, but failed to respond to attacks on embassies, the USS Cole, and decided not to take a deal in 1996 to take possession of Osama Bin Laden. There hasn't been an attack on American soil since 2001.