Well it's not at the White House, but Monticello.

Bush made his 4th of July speech and citizenship ceremony and he was heckled. But it's not surprising, he has a 23% approval rating, the same as Nixon when he resigned.

Bush should be hiding his head in shame at what he's done to our economy, the national debt, our good name in the world, our credibility in human rights causes, our constitution, our troops, wasting our tax dollars while enriching his oil buddies, lying to the American people.

But he's out there making speeches, making a fool of himself.

YouTube - Bush Heckled During July 4 Speech

To be fair to poor old Bush, his approval rating of 23% is from only one poll. If you average things out he's at a solid 28%.

What I don't get about him and his team is that they seem to make precisely the wrong decision concerning practically every decision. When it was bad in Iraq they were like, "Stay the Course", and now that things are about as good as they'll get while America is there, he remains "Stay the Course". It's like tax cuts with this guy; there's never a bad time to have one. A terrorist attack on US soil? Tax cut time. A downturn in the economy? Tax cuts. An upswing in the economy? Tax cuts again. Two simultaneous wars that can't be paid for? You got it........tax cuts once more.

In one fell swoop, if Bush decided to deliver an exit strategy from Iraq and start pulling troops out and reconfiguring things in Afghanistan, he would simultaneously: 1) take the thunder from Obama, 2) deliver the thunder to McCain, and 3) his dismal popularity would at least get somewhere back up to 40% or so by the time he leaves.

Why doesn't he do it? Because he's cynical. And because like the rest of us, he has absolutely no idea what might happen. If chaos ensues, he'd be blamed for it, so he's going to pass it on to the Democrats and let partisan people spin it like the Dems lost the whole war. Mark my words. It's so predictable.

And the really funny thing is that the Bush team has made so many bad predictions on Iraq, that they can't even see that things would probably stay exactly the way they are now since the White House began appropriating money to go to nearly 100,000 former insurgents for their new security details.

If you look at his presidency from a level gaze and tally up the achievements and the failures, it's hard to come up with many achievements. He's about to leave office having overseen an economy that had gained 23 million new jobs in the previous 8 years with an economy now that has created very few or no jobs in this 8 year cycle.

I remember when he got into office and I was actually okay with it. I wanted Gore to win, but Bush kept projecting a sense of old-time conservatism like his dad where he wouldn't rock the boat on social issues, and he would keep the gov't lean and the budgets balanced. He kept talking about a "humble foreign policy" and "no nation building".

Indeed, in his first 8 months of office, he passed his tax cuts and then pretty much vacationed the rest of the time. America was really respected around the world, even if a few people thought that American foreign policy had a way of meddling in others affairs sometimes.

After 9/11, I didn't support the idea of taking the military to Afghanistan. I supported a policy where special-ops or "black-ops" would get into the region along with the support of allied muslim nations. I thought the best way at the time was to get people on board who were muslims that wanted to get this guy and to get those people on our side. We weren't fighting another army, which the US army is built to do, but fighting people who look like the rest of the citizens in that country who do bad shit, and then retire with the wife and kids at night in the cave. Bill Clinton couldn't get the co-operation needed from Pakistan along with the Republican controlled congress after the USS Cole bombing (Clinton and his people wanted to go after Bin Laden immediately along with help from Pakistan, but the new Pakistani President Musharraf, who had just been anointed leader with the west's help, thought it would destabilize the region, and the Republicans at the time were sick and tired of Clinton's adventures in Somalia and Kosovo and in the Oval Office with Monica). All Clinton had for a couple of years there was his "black-ops" people after the embassy bombing in Africa, and they got as close as anyone to Bin Laden ever since.

Nearly 7 years later, I've been proven right about Afghanistan.

Who knew that Bush was going to react this way after 9/11? It seemed like the appropriate thing to do at the time was to start an initiative right away to ask for Americans to make a sacrifice. Annul the tax cuts until after Bin Laden is captured, and begin an immediate plan to conserve energy, and invest in renewable energy sources like wind and solar that could get up and running within just a few months or so. Instead, he asked nothing of the people and cut taxes further.

In his first year in office he tore up the ABM treaty with Russia, and completely disregarded the work-in-progress that had been achieved with North Korea while pulling out the UN inspectors so that America would be left in the dark to wonder if North Korea was up to anything. They had shut down more than half of their nuclear reactors up to that point, but to the Bush team, they were simply evil. Case closed.

Who knew that the moderate leader in Iran, who was more favorable to the west than any previously elected Iranian leader, would be swiftly defeated by Ahmathingamabob, who was elected precisely because the Iranian people got really scared by Bush's tough "Axis-of-Evil" talk?

Who could have predicted that Bush, who had capured half a million votes less than Gore, would rule like a supreme leader or dictator and swing hard to the right with plans to privatize social security, pass an amendment to the Constitution to ban gay marriage, and give even more federal handouts to faith-based initiatives? And who could have predicted that Bush was going to oversee the largest expansion of the federal gov't in decades with the failed No Child Left Behind, the increased subsidies for wealthy corporations and retro-active tax cuts, the increase in foreign aid to Middle East countries like Pakistan, and the completely irrelevant new addition to the bureaucracy in Washington, the Homeland Security Dep't? With all that expansion, along with two simultaneous wars (when's the last time America had that?), the debt went from nearly $9 trillion under Clinton down to $5; but then will clock in at an even $10 trillion over the coming months.

The odd thing is that I haven't even started complaining about Bush. I was just recapping!

On one hand it's been tremendously exciting to say we've lived through possibly the worst presidency in the history of the United States, and on the other hand, it's dreadful since the next generation or two will look back at us and wonder how it was that we were so stupid on so many levels.

There's a nut in every crowd.

I agree with much of what you say, except some of your points about the wars Bush started. While I DO believe we should have gone into Afghanistan (and so did much of the world), the Iraq adventure was wrong from the start. I don't recall ANY war being sold to the American people for MULTIPLE reasons before.
From WMD to terrorism to "Saddam's a bad guy", it appeared to be a list of excuses, delivered one by one in an effort to see which one the people would buy to support our involvement.
That's not necessary if the war is justified.
And the sale of the war on terror seems to have been handled similarly. terrorists have nothing better to do than try to destroy the mightiest country on the planet because "they hate our freedom"? Even if that were remotely true, Bush is such a poor salesman he couldn't make that stick. And he disregarded a BIG rule in getting the people to go along with what you want, which is to stick to ONE reason and hammer it home. His approach was more like, "well, the people don't like TAB, so lets change the nane to DIET COKE and see if they like it. (the problem was the Coke switcheroo WORKED)

I had high hopes for the man initially. Regarding Afghanistan, I felt he said all the right things and did what he was supposed to do and for that I was a BIG Bush supporter back then.

As for tax cuts for the very rich, his actions there should have been scrutinized a LOT more carefully. The logical approach would have been, as it is with ANY president, to just ask who this benefits. In this case, does the country benefit or some special interest group? Apparently, in this case, the country didn't benefit at all.

As for the LONG list of smaller issues goes, there are just too many to afford this president any respect, trust or obedience and more. And John McCain should know if he uses Bush's record to form his policies a lot of that will rub off onto him.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

the tax thing is, as usual mischaraterized..we have been here before, so forgive me if I don't add anything.

as far as the topic title, as Iam said theres a always a few and hey thats america.

He's not suppsoed to make speeches on july 4th? Okay. Is uhm, memorial day okay? Is any day?

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Obama-e fungis nati homines....

Are you referring to Bush or Jason Marcel? If you mean post #2, you'd need to defend Bush against the points raised, or at least why the poster is nuts.

Which would be a tough assignment, I figure. Without resorting to emotionalism or blaming everything on Clinton and Carter I don't see much of a defense forthcoming.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

I'm rather surprised his audience wasn't more carefully screened, more than anything else. Other than that, I don't put much stock in a speech from a politician.

And I do realize the OP was just a reason to take a few shots at Bush. But, speaking as a former supporter and "old-school" conservative, there ARE an awful lot of legitimate shots there to take.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

me niether but is part of th c in c's job....

dude, I am right there with you. He never really was a con. and I count myself among the mislead and that’s my bad. My only proviso is, I don't discuss it with folks who just shriek, don’t listen or parse and make an attempt at a genuine exchange. I don't always hold myself to it but I try...

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Obama-e fungis nati homines....

I'm sure Iam was referring to the heckler...most hecklers are just nuts...
I wasn't a fan of Carter's nor Clinton's, however, I've enough respect for the office of the president that had I ever met them during their presidency, I would have treated them with the utmost respect ONLY because of the office they hold, not the people they are.

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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"

Quite true. America's #1 cheerleader has always been an important part of the office.We were fooled, that's for sure.
And I agree about the temperament of people in general. They're basically all over the board. As with Bush supporters, you have the "yeah, he's OK" to "he's the greatest president in history".
And Bush's detractors run the gamut from "he's not a good president" to " he is the incarnation of evil itself".
As for myself, I just think he stinks on ice. He's either a decent, but marginal man who is WAY too easily led by his own subordinates or he's a shill for the political machine and/or a whore for those who paid his way to the WH.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

BINGO, give that lady a cigar.

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Obama-e fungis nati homines....

Or they are highly motivated by what they see as unrighted wrongs. I think hecklers, as any other group, come in all different flavors.
In any event, after rereading the thread I agree that he was referring to the heckler.I used to feel the very same way, but the last couple of decades of watching how this government works at all levels has changed my thinking on that.
I believe it is now all about what a politician DOES with (or to) the office he/she holds. My feeling now is a bad politician being given a pass because of the office he holds is the same as, say, a doctor who rapes his female patients getting a break because he holds the highly respected position of doctor.
I honestly fail to see the difference. In this case, when a president is elected by the people to do a certain job, and he fails miserably at that job, he shouldn't get any cover because he was elected to the position essentially under false pretenses.

In the past, a king was held in such high esteem BECAUSE he was the king, people would lay down their lives for him. But then some "pre-Americans" decided what the king DOES is more important than who he IS.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

I disagree, probably because I look at it a bit differently. No man or woman is above the law because of their position - no one - and that is a founding principle I hold sacred.

The office is representative of the people. They elected the person holding it. I respect the people; I respect the office.

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I am an American. That's the way most of us put it, just matter of factly. They are plain words, those four: you could write them on your thumbnail, or sweep them clear across this bright autumn sky. But remember too, that they are more than just words. They are a way of life. So whenever you speak them, speak them firmly, speak them proudly, speak them gratefully. I am an American. ...a tradition

hummmm. I agree, that he may have over reached. Each pres. has a niche, as a person according to their gifts. He may have done a great job at another time. Leaders are also judged on the advisors they surround themselves with, he has been mediocre in some, better in others and downright horrible in some, below the average I think. And when there have been flashes of brilliance, they have either been set aside or left on their own. Maybe I’ll start a thread on that somewhere else, hint hint.

Folks who READ, may have run across books and opinions that for instance paint Hoover in a much different light, and though he is forever scarred with the depression I think we both know it’s not that simple. More blame if we assign any, should be on Coolidge’s shoulders actually.

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Obama-e fungis nati homines....

I'm not saying that anyone should be given a free pass but there are ways to disagree or protest without showing disrespect to the office. You catch a lot more flies with honey anyway! Just look at this board as an example....the ones that write things like "stupid Republicans", "moron president", "idiot Democrats", etc. are often blown off because they incapable of discussing topics as adults. Hecklers fit in that same category, IMO.
As for kings, remember there was usually someone seeking to dethrone them!

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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"