My First President
Dear President Bush,
There’s always something special about a first. A first word, a first smile, a first step, a first book, a first date, a first kiss. Regardless of how that first turns out—good or bad, a treasured memory or a regretted decision—a first is forever remembered, for better or for worse.
You were my first president...
Oh, not literally. I’m not under the age of eight. I was born when the Reagan administration was in office, finished preschool during your father’s term, and attended elementary and middle school with Bill Clinton as my president. But you were the first president I understood. I learned about your policies in my high school government classes, debated your war tactics with my friends, and discussed the implications of your educational and environmental acts with my parents. In 2004, I went off to college and your election became the defining event of my first semester. You were my high school years and my college experience. You were on the first ballot I filled out—and you were the first presidential candidate who I didn’t vote for.
There is an endless list of examples of your mistakes, missteps, and flaws, but nothing quite compares to seeing the wide-eyed idealism of the just-barely-old-enough-to-vote population crushed by eight years of bad policies and unsound ideology. In school, we were taught to believe in the ultimate strength of education, in the force of the United States as a world power, and in the justice of the system of democracy. Out of school, however, we received a different message, a message of failure, hate, and death. On the news, we watched Iraqi civilians killed by American soldiers, Afghan museums bombed into dust, and an entire U.S. city swallowed by natural disaster. We watched the other world powers laugh in disbelief, the dollar weaken, and the U.S. economy falter. We watched the ideals of compassion and acceptance to which we had aspired become threatened by a religious ideology that we did not share. Most of all, we watched a president, somehow chosen by the democratic process so highly praised in our government and political science classes, fail to lead.
We left college and fell into a failing economy in a country scorned by other world powers and led by a president approved by less than a quarter of the American people. We felt this crumbling economy acutely as we struggled to find jobs, just as we have felt the massive shortcomings of the No Child Left Behind Act and the loss and pollution of our precious environment. And where were you? Were you leading us through these trials? Hardly. Forget fireside chats, you didn’t even address a panicking population until several days after financial crisis had struck. You instigated the bombings and the environmental destruction, failed to provide the necessary policy decisions to support citizens after natural disasters, and continued to advocate for your backward and discriminatory views on science, medicine, and sexuality.
For my peers and me, you are not merely a first, but also an only. We have never experienced leadership that we trust. We have never been able to travel without feeling obligated to apologize for our president to our new friends. We have never been able to be, unequivocally, proud of our country. And for that, you will remain in our memory forever, never forgotten and never forgiven. You were our first and we will always remember you.
And when I cast my vote on November 4th, I knew that I would have a new first: helping to elect a president whom I can believe in.
Sincerely,
LC
Your "Reign of Terror" has almost ended.
Mission Accomplished!
What would you have done. Just reading all the hatred you all say on here is why our country is so divided. We allowed the foreigners to enter our country with the faith in them that they would follow our rules and they turned around, took advantage of us and tried to blow us up.
The best act of your presidency will be the leaving of it.
- - a True Texan
AMEN!
Sir,
It is with profound relief that I anticipate the end of your misrule on January 20, 2009. It is clear that most of the rest of the world shares my view.
Your policies, enacted by fiat, irrespective of laws and without consideration of consequences to billions around the globe, have, in the end, left you with blood on your hands.
Babies have died in gory dismemberment under your bombs, young African women have died from AIDS as a result of your abstinence-only family-planning policy, American youths have died agonizing deaths from cancers diagnosed too late under your support for an insurance industry run amok and people without resources died in a great American city under your determined inaction.
Your administration has lied to the American people and to the world, instituted torture as U.S. policy, shredding Constitutional rights and spied on U.S. citizens in contravention of laws of the land. You have attempted to concentrate all power in the office of the presidency and have usurped the legislative role of Congress with your signing statements.
And you leave the world in the throes of a global economic meltdown caused by the blind adherence to an economic philosophy which rewards greed and punishes those who work the hardest to provide food and clothing and shelter for their families.
Your tenure in the highest office in America has been a scourge on the nation and on the world.
It is with profound relief and not the least regret that we watch you go, your dreams of world domination defeated and your winner-take-all ideology revealed for the con game it has always been.
SW
The Dow, as Bush takes office: 10,587.59
The Dow, eight years later: 7,997.28
Dear Mr. Bush,
On a certain level I can feel great human compassion for you. You were so clearly a tool of others, and the superficial arrogance and egotism that made you such a willing and cooperative tool are surely based on a deep pathology that we can only guess at and of which you will likely never be aware. But the blood on your hands, sir... the blood on your hands! A person is left to only hope and pray that in the context of All That Is even you had your place in some greater plan that we cannot see.
You got the TOOL part right.
...Meanwhile, virtually the rest of the world will be saying "Adios, you incredibly annoying joke of a loser."
Your legacy will be written!
...Written on rolls of soft, absorbent tissue paper and used in small rooms in every house in the land.
They will see you as you really are!
...And that will be as the smug yet stupid little man who had to be coddled and taken care of throughout his life.
Future generations will hear of you!
...And I will enhance all those recitations with disdainful profanity that describes what a worthless sack you were.
Ta.
Those are a few of the things that you are. You deserve to be prosecuted here and in the Hague.
I hope you spend your retirement getting drunk and cutting brush in Crawdad Texas.
I hope you are miserable every single day, no matter how much you drink, and that people spit on the sidewalk every time you go into town to buy more booze.
I also hope that you hide every time you see a Federal agent, sheriff, cop, or deputy, and pee your pants in abject fear that they have come to arrest you for treason.
Good riddance to bad rubbish!
Helen
Helen...you sound like a jerk! You are an intolerable, liberal jerk!
Actually, she sounds like the rest of us...tired of Bush, tired of his secretive administration, tired of being lied to, tired of being spied on, tired of being robbed by our own government, tired of the deaths, tired of war, tired of that smirk, tired of the mispronunciations and made up words...and at least she signed her name, anonymous, you JERK.
I've never before been this negative about a President and his cronies. Bush and his gang of four or more are-- Evil, scary, incompetent, dangerous, murderers, fabricators, ruiners of society and world safety, masters of financial disaster, and so much more............
Recommended Action Now: Impeachment, Indictment, Prison, for All--
Bush and his Henchmen--Chaney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Blackwater, Haliburton, Gonzales,
Please add names:
and Wolfowitz, Rice, Rove, Petraeus,
The......worst......President.....ever. Nice legacy, huh? For the last eight years, I have been ashamed that you represented our great country. I still have a hard time believing that you obtained the office of the Presidency (not "elected") and that, somehow, you managed to get re-elected. I doubt I will ever understand how you managed to survive eight years of Constitution-mangling incompetence without being impeached. I will despise you as long as I live.
Hopefully, our long national nightmare is now over and the new administration will be able to put the pieces back together.
As for you? Since nobody in Washington will have the stones to prosecute you and other members of your "administration" for your crimes, please just disappear.
May you be judged while you are living here on earth before you are judged at the gates of hell. Is there no justice for the crimes you've committed, in our own country and in the world at large? International healing can only take place by a trial.
Personally, you have been a thorn in my side and a pain in the ass that grew with each passing day: in Texas, internationally and throughout the country. Nixon looks positively angelic by comparison.
I'm ashamed to be a Texan. I'm ashamed to be an American. I'm mad as hell about Katrina, which hit many friends and coworkers, and I'm mad as hell about the stolen elections, the destruction of our global environment, the anger, the fear and greed, and I'm mad as hell at the dumbing down and polarization of America. And I blame you for dividing us all.
Well said my angry fellow American. But remember: he is a "uniter not a divider." Perhaps the greatest irony is that he was right.
Well, here we are. We have watched you win an election and steal another. We have watched you reinstate some monopolies and send the rest of our major companies overseas. We have watched you send our brothers, cousins and other assorted family after with them, to fight a war that was unfounded, according to you, SO WHAT!! It all mattered to us. You have dragged America down, while the major oil companies claimed record profits, you have put the entire country country into an economic depression and then claim that OPEC must stabilize oil prices to help our economy?? Have they not helped us enough? You have stood by while loan companies are bailed out...(Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG) and then judged the Big 3 differently. Too ittle too late??? Yeah I think so. You let go of Federal dollars for them, with nothing to benefit the America we used to be, except for more loans taken out, with no jobs to pay them back. Good Bye Bush...you hurt this country far more than any National Disaster......GOBama !!!
Dana
Dana
F*** YOU
So f***ing true.
He was kinda my first president as well. I was seven when he took office, so he's the first I can remember well.
Your words are mine, friend.
Virginia Tech, 2010
Thank you for keeping us safe...everyone quickly forgets the difficulty of your job and is so ready to criticize. You held a position that only a handful of people could even dream of holding. The problems of this Country were not made by one person alone, and to blame you George Bush for our crisis is not fair. The Americans who elected you are always so quick to turn on you. You kept us safe, you kept us proud. God Bless...
"The problems of this Country were not made by one person alone, and to blame you George Bush for our crisis is not fair."
That's true - it took virtually all of the Republican Party, too many of the Democratic Party, most of the media, and tragic numbers of our citizens, all willing to submit to fear or bribery.
PROUD?? I haven't been proud of this country for 8 years. Well, right up until November 4th. The pride is coming back. And as for keeping us safe? If he had come back from vacation and tried to DO something when he first heard of an imminent terrorist attack, 9/11 may have been prevented. He took 500+ days of vacation during his administration. And it was his (and his daddy's, and Reagan's) foreign policy that made them attack us IN THE FIRST PLACE!
... the eight years of your presidency have been. You made a mockery of our Constitution and our values. We no longer can make any pretense to moral behavior. We have tortured and lied and bombed our way to the wrong side of history. Now we are just another hypocritical imperial power, willing to say and do anything for oil or money.
I hope and pray our nation survives you, sir. We deserved better.
and whished you could have stayed. Or Huckabee would have made it. Unfortunally now we have a democrate as president and we have to see how this go's. Mr Bush, I am glad you were my president for the last 8 years. Great job, well done. Thank you.
The first and most important duty of a President is to protect its citizenship.
When 9-11 occurred, our President stood up and took charge of this country and said. "never again would we be attacked like that again on his watch". Thank you Sir for a job well done.
All these liberties that the people on here say have been stripped? Damn...I sure don't see them or feel them. Only those outside the law need to fear.
The financial collapse? Ask Barney Frank and his Fannie (no pun intended)and Freddie friends why they didn't admit to telling Bush and Republicans to go to hell when they brought up the problem in public and on tape for all to see in 2004.
And Katrina? What a freaking joke. The levees breaking was Bush's fault? New Orleans Democratic government wasted the money to fix them on other projects. 24 hours after the storm, thousands were being pulled from rooftops by Federal helicopters. And the people that complained the most and loudest were the dumb ass idiots that were told to evacuate and refused.
Get a life people, and take ownership of your own actions and quit blaming shit on others.
Mr. Bush was my first US-president as well. Your letter is a perfect illustration of everything I have felt throughout the years, but my European power does not extend towards voting for something new. I am glad that you seized your own power in order to make a change this past November. The world's thanking you for it as we speak.
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