There are times I think "woulda, coulda, shoulda". The libertarian I am today would never have voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004; I certainly wouldn't have voted for Gore or Kerry, probably would have voted LP. Why did I then? Bush had been a highly successful, popular, bipartisan governor of Texas. It's hard for people to understand today. Former Democrat John Tower. who won LBJ's old seat when he was elected on the 1960 Kennedy ticket, had been the first major Texas GOP statewide officeholder since Reconstruction. and Bill Clements followed as first governor, with non-consecutive terms about a generation later. I was a traditional Southern Democrat during my college/young adult years and in fact never voted for either man.
I left the Democratic Party during Reagan's second term. On the national level, I had been been turned off by the partisan divide, particularly nauseated by the fights over SCOTUS picks Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. When I supported Bush's candidacy, it wasn't so much his political platform as perhaps unrealistic expectations of how Bush could take his bipartisan leadership in Texas and apply it on the national level, especially after Gore's failed attempt to contest the 2000 election in Florida, key to Bush's election and the fact the GOP lost their majority in the Senate (although VP Cheney tentatively left him in control of the Senate). Jim Jeffords (R-VT), however, dealt the young Bush Administration a blow: unhappy over the first Bush tax cut and other issues, he turned independent and flipped party caucuses, giving the Dems control of the Senate. This exacerbated the political divide. I don't think Bush ever got a good start out of the gate, but perhaps my expectations of bipartisan leadership were unrealistic. He also made some puzzling decisions, starting with his pick of Cheney as VP and his ill-prepared attempt to reform social security. (I'm absolutely convinced his attempt to privatize part of social security contributions was definitely a step in the right direction, but he seemed unprepared for the Democrats to sow FUD over the third rail of American politics.)
I don't think Bush's second term ever got back on track after social security reform went down in flames. Ironically I thought his first real bipartisan attempt (in my opinion), immigration reform, was the most promising, but Obama and Dorgan kicked out the legs of bipartisan compromises negotiated by Kennedy and McCain.
I was appalled by the events of 9/11 but was deeply troubled by Bush's decisions to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. It wasn't so much the need to respond to the Al Qaeda war crime against humanity but the nature and extent of the response. I think one Woodward book I had bought, The War Within, confirmed my own concerns about Bush's mismanagement of the wars and occupations. (It had nothing to do with the phony Dem talking point of Bush "lying" built around Wilson/Plame; there were legitimate Western intelligence failures.) Bush's gut feelings were tragically misguided: what did he seek to achieve in Iraq that his own father wisely balked at in the First Gulf War, to expand the mandate by finishing the job on Saddam Hussein; his father had realized that there were sectarian issues in Iraq, and if he broke it, he owned it. In Afghanistan, the US was in a bad position that even the USSR regretted getting involved with just a generation earlier, and the USSR was much closer geographically and logistically than the US to engage in serious war activities.
No, the Taliban was never a serious military threat to the US and constitutionally there is no basis for US meddling there. Does that imply that I approve of past Taliban crimes against women and culture? No. Do I think the US has a moral obligation to resettle targeted allied Afghans like translators? Yes.
But when Bush tries (cf below clips) to reinvent the reason for fighting and staying in Afghanistan, to save women and children from Taliban repression, go away, George! There are a lot of governments which do things we don't approve of. But the Constitution puts our military in the interests of American self-defense, not humanitarian endeavors. We are not the world's policeman. We have 4.5% of the global population and a fraction of its resources and economy.
I have become a stronger critic of Bush in recent years: nearly doubling the national debt, his handling of the economic tsunami (including his signing TARP legislation), his unpaid for Medicare expansion, etc. But he's got the blood of thousands of American soldiers on his hands from the wars he started. Not to mention countless war widows and destroyed property and homes his military, drones and other planes are responsible for. It's long past due for us to stop the madness. The recent departure of the last military commander from Afghanistan is a good step. In another 6 weeks, we'll finally end America's longest war. Biden will finally do something his 3 predecessors couldn't or wouldn't do.
