Who is he: George W. Bush was the 43rd president of the United States. Sworn into office on January 20, 2001, he was re-elected on November 2, 2004. Prior to his presidency, he served as governor of Texas.
Some of Bush's notable legislation included the No Child Left Behind Act, which demanded rigorous testing at public schools across the country. Today it is widely held to be a failure, has thrown the public school system into chaos and greatly expanded corruption and cheating throughout the system.
Bush also passed a costly Medicare drug benefit for up to 40 million seniors and attempted to blur the line between religious charities and other voluntary service providers by trying to gain approval for federal legislation that would have allowed government funding of such efforts.
After 9/11, Bush seemed to cease interest in such programs and concentrated mostly on foreign and domestic security issues. Through the PATRIOT Act, Bush seems to have transformed America from a quietly authoritarian country into an overtly authoritarian one.
Under his watch, American freedom eroded and much of the authoritarian burden that the US struggles with today can be laid directly at his feet. Bush apparently cannot travel abroad for fear of being arrested for war crimes.
Under George W. Bush, The Posse Comitatus Act was eroded. This legislation, passed in the 19th Century, was seen as a significant impediment to the use of US military forces on domestic soil. Not only did Bush basically end Posse Comitatus, he also supervised the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, a gigantic government corporation that amalgamated numerous US security agencies.
Today, Homeland Security is known primarily for its operation of the Transportation Security Administration, an agency that is supposed to keep Americans safe from domestic terrorism. In reality, the TSA has proven mostly adept at terrorizing innocent Americans, confiscating dolls and other toys because of their putative ability to be weaponized, and providing genital touching for all those who refuse to allow themselves to be irradiated by the TSA's apparently dangerous airport body scanners.
Bush conducted two unsuccessful wars, one in Afghanistan and the other in Iraq. He launched these wars after the 9/11 attack, a tragedy he did not initially want to investigate at all. Even today, 9/11 Commission members themselves disavow the results of the task force, claiming they were serially lied to by the Bush administration, the CIA, FBI, etc.
It can safely be said that the Bush administration was marked by a kind of authoritarian incompetence and sociopathic militarism that helped destroy what was left of America's "exceptionalism" as a civil society and free-market culture. It was perhaps fitting that George W. Bush presided in 2007 and 2008 over the greatest peacetime implosion of the mighty US economy since the Great Depression.
Bush's defiant inability to shift America from its increasingly authoritarian course, his inept support of federalism and its incompetent and ruinous expansion of various economic and military programs, along with his hands-off approach to corruption and abuse all combined to provide him with an exceptionally low approval rating by the time he left office.
It is very difficult to think of a president that was as proactively horrible as George W. Bush. He never got to the bottom of 9/11 and his legacy thus remains a vastly increased police state, a glorification of military incompetence, two failed wars costing trillions and, finally, a global economic meltdown that began in the US.
Bush proclaimed himself a "war president" and stated that he came into his own after 9/11. Bush no doubt believes that he was a "war president." Others might look upon him as someone who was simply blind to the damage he did to the country, its prospects and the very fiber of American freedom.
American liberties were enfeebled before Bush. After his presidency, they were in a sense almost entirely eroded. His legacy is surely an enlargement of the imperial state and the flowering of the American Empire.
Background: George Walker Bush was born in 1946 in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the oldest son of former US Presdent George H. W. Bush and the grandson of former US Senator Prescott Bush. In 1948, the family moved to Midland, Texas where Bush spent his childhood and young adulthood. The Bush family itself has a long and checkered history as an enabler of elite, one-world-government plans. It can be said that what Bush did as President greatly empowered the Anglo-American conspiracy and the coming "new world order."
By eroding America's last significant freedoms, emphasizing the military as the defining efflorescence of the state and by further weakening economic and entrepreneurial freedoms, Bush further laid the groundwork for world government. The Bush family is among the elites and Bush's actions illustrated that situation emphatically.
Obfuscating the reality of what he intended to accomplish, Bush willfully emphasized all that was bad and unfree about US society while ignoring and undermining what was good. His compassionate conservatism certainly did not extend to the Afghans and Iraqis whom he irradiated, shot and generally blew up in the name of a free society that he neither believed in nor backed.
Since leaving office, George W. Bush has maintained a low public profile, probably for good reason.