He may be a success in terms of whose coattail he got to ride on through life, but in terms of job performance he's a miserable failure. His administration has betrayed everything those who voted for him wanted. Fiscal conservatives were the first to be disenfranchised. All the campaign promises about fixing education have come to nought. Do you remember "My opponent thinks the army is made for nation building, I do not," ... we're now obligated to the reconstruction of two foreign countries in the heart of a region of people who would love nothing more than to work toward our destruction. All the talk of bringing democracy to Iraq is betrayed by Rumsfeld's incompetence - when you pin all your hopes on making an ally of a religious leader to control the population you want to mold into a democracy, you've already failed, and Sistani's will is already resulting street murders by police that we trained. The foreign policy conservatives have been betrayed by incompetence. Then there's the social conservatives [for the purposes of this rant, those who wish to make their personal conservative lifestyles into law], who haven't gotten the gay marriage ban they were looking for, thank God. Finally, the conservatives who are concerned with such things as integrity and justice have seen the Republican party become decadent and corrupt with scandal after scandal from devious campaign schemes to abuse of power to punish critics; in the meantime the USA PATRIOT Act has destroyed the rights of the American citizenry and the Attorney General who should be reigning in the government in such matters is the same man who suggested torture as a legitimate method to be used on detainees who have been convicted of no crime.
I supported him in '04 because I thought whatever damage the administration did to rights would be reversed by courts and he would handle Iraq better than Kerry. I don't know that Kerry would have done any better, but I know that the Bush Administration has failed me in more ways since then than I care to count. He has betrayed the Iraqis he swore to free, he has betrayed the Constitution he swore to uphold, he has betrayed the integrity of the office of President far more than Slick Willy, and most of all, he has betrayed the American people. I may still not have much love for Democrats, but it will be a long time before I'll be able to bring myself to vote for another Republican.
