Eight years of Bush

The Pew report has just released a report on the state of America now and at the start of the Bush presidency.

You can read the full reportt here and there are few surprises.

For example

A mere 13% of Americans are now satisfied with the way things are going in the country, compared with 55% eight years ago. And while 61% applauded at Clinton's curtain call, only 24% approve of Bush's performance as he leaves the national stage.

and

By the end of 2000, concerns had mounted that the good times of the late 1990s were at an end. Still Americans were far less pessimistic about the state of the economy than they are currently. At the start of Bush's tenure, the number judging the economy as good or better stood at 46%. Now a meager 7% voice that opinion. About three-in-four Americans now see jobs as hard to find in their communities compared with 44% in 2000.

But after 8 years of a God administration it was interesting that there were 29 per cent compared to 12 per cent who thought there was too much expression of religious faith by their leaders but 36 per cent compared to 22 per cent thought the reverse

Hat Tip Mark Comerford

Farewell Bush

Do read Simon Schama's obituary on George Bush in this morning's Guardian.

Under the title "Nowhere man: a farewell to Dubya, all-time loser in presidential history he wonders

How is he bearing up,as the candidate from his own party treats him as the carrier of some sort of infectious political disease? How telling was it that the most impassioned moment in John McCain's performance in the final debate was when he declared: "I am not George Bush."

But he continues and this is a salient point

Whatever else his legacy, the man who called himself "the decider" has left some gripping history. The last eight years have been so rich in epic imperial hubris that it would take a reborn Gibbon to do justice to the fall.

But he continues

it hasn't really been all George Bush's fault, the stupendous American fiasco. He came to power armed with an ideology that was about to crash and burn; that was, years before the present tumult, already fatally disconnected from historical reality. It was on his watch that American government needed reinventing. It was responsible government that was needed in Iraq and Afghanistan; government that was desperately needed in New Orleans after Katrina, while all George Bush could manage was a fly-by. It is government that this most anti-governmental of all American administrations is learning that is needed now to save the United States from a second Depression.