Bush Hides from Average Americans

Published on November 30, 2005 By COL Gene In Politics

President Bush has not addressed a audience of average Americans since the presidential debate in 2004. Every time Bush gives a speech it is before either a pre-screened group or the military. Why is the president afraid to address unscreened audiences?

Comments (Page 5)

drmiler

on Dec 02, 2005

maybe you should just put a bullet in your head and rid us of your ignorant mentality

better off dying during those 30 years

wish you would have been cought, tortured and raped and then burned to death.

Sorry Tex, I didn't see those. I stand/sit corrected!

singrdave

on Dec 02, 2005

one should ask what is wrong with the President's message? Even Bush should understand he needs a different message.

Based on your screeds, you would be upset if he announced that he'd had Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast.

No message would appease you but a complete reversal of foreign and domestic policy for the last five years and an abject apology to everyone on the friggin' planet. How likely is it that he will "change his message" to something you would want to hear?

drmiler

on Dec 02, 2005

Based on your screeds, you would be upset if he announced that he'd had Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast.

No message would appease you but a complete reversal of foreign and domestic policy for the last five years and an abject apology to everyone on the friggin' planet. How likely is it that he will "change his message" to something you would want to hear?

Not in this lifetime OR the next!

COL Gene

on Dec 03, 2005

singrdave

I would agree with Bush if he adopted policies that solves our problems.

On the Budget - cut the Pork, increase enforcement of existing tax laws and return the tax rates to the pre 2001 levels for the top 5%. If that does not balance the budget and generate a surplus to begin paying down the debt, look for more spending cuts and tax increases until we are generating about $150 Billion annual surplus to be applierd to the national debt. No new entitlements like the prescription plan without providing the funding.

Stop, illegal aliens from crossing our borders.

Insure free-trade creates a level playing field for United States employers and stop allowing China from manipulating their currency and not respect property rights.

Begin rebuilding the infrastructure of the United States.

Require higher gas mileage on ALL new cars sold in the US.

This is just a sample. Bush has not done ANYTHING effective to deal with ANY of these issues in the past 5.5 years.

MythicalMino

on Dec 03, 2005

I would agree with Bush if he adopted policies that solves our problems

No you wouldn't....I deal with ppl of your kind every day....I work in retail.

COL Gene

on Dec 03, 2005

You do not know what you are talking about. I did support Bush for example with the five party talks to control the Nuclear threat from N. Korea. Tell me which of my suggestions you do not believe would help solve the issues facing this country? Show me how ANY of the Bush policies have solved these issues? Be specific like I have been.

COL Gene

on Dec 05, 2005

Bush's policies are failing on all fronts

E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post Writers Group

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Washington -- THE BUSH ERA is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that, the better for them -- and the country.

Recent months, and especially the recent two weeks, have brought home to a steadily growing majority of Americans that President Bush's government doesn't work. His policies are failing, his approach to leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not go on like this.

The Bush Era did not begin when he took office, or even with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It began on Sept. 14, 2001, when Bush declared at the World Trade Center site: "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."

Bush was, indeed, skilled in identifying enemies and rallying a nation already disposed to action. He failed to realize after Sept. 11 that it was not we who were lucky to have him a leader, but he who was lucky to be the president of a great country that understood the importance of standing together in the face of a grave foreign threat. Very nearly all of us rallied behind him.

If Bush had understood that his central task was to forge national unity, as he seemed to in the months immediately after Sept. 11, the country would never have become so polarized. Instead, Bush put patriotism to the service of narrowly ideological policies and an extreme partisanship. He pushed for more tax cuts for his wealthiest supporters and shamelessly used relatively modest details in the bill creating a Department of Homeland Security as partisan cudgels in the 2002 elections.

He invoked our national anger over terror to win support for a war in Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the United States would need many more troops and careful planning to see the job through. (Gen. Eric Shinseki, who was pushed out for being prematurely right, comes to mind.) The president assumed things would turn out fine on the basis of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful policymaking and thinking through potential flaws in your approach are not his administration's strong suits.

And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Friday, Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf States after Hurricane Katrina. There was no magic moment with a bullhorn. The utter failure of federal relief efforts had by then become clear. Monday's resignation of FEMA Director Michael D. Brown put an exclamation point on the failure. The source of Bush's political success was his claim that he could protect Americans. Leadership, strength and security were Bush's calling cards. Over the last two weeks, they were lost in the surging waters of New Orleans.

But the first intimations of the end of the Bush Era came months ago. The president's post-election fixation with privatizing part of Social Security showed how out of touch he was. The more Bush discussed this boutique idea cooked up in conservative think tanks and Wall Street imaginations, the less the public liked it. The situation in Iraq deteriorated. The glorious economy Bush kept touting turned out not to be glorious for many Americans. The Census Bureau's annual economic report, released in the midst of the Gulf hurricane disaster, found that an additional 4.1 million Americans had slipped into poverty between 2001 and 2004.

The breaking of the Bush spell opens the way for leaders of both parties to declare their independence from the recent past. It gives forces outside the White House the opportunity to shape a more appropriate national agenda -- for competence and innovation in rebuilding the Gulf region and for new approaches to the problems created over the last four and a half years.

The federal budget, already a mess before Hurricane Katrina, is now a laughable document. Those who call for yet more tax cuts risk sounding like robots droning automated talking points programmed inside them long ago. Katrina has forced the issue of deep poverty back onto the national agenda after a long absence. Finding a way forward in -- and eventually out of -- Iraq will require creativity from those not implicated in the administration's mistakes. And if ever the phrase "reinventing government" had relevance, it is now that we have observed the performance of a government that allows political hacks to push aside the professionals.

And what of Bush, who has more than three years left in his term? Paradoxically, his best hope lies in recognizing that the Bush Era, as he and we have known it, really is gone. He can decide to help us in the transition to what comes next. Or he can stubbornly cling to his past and thereby doom himself to frustrating irrelevance.

DJBandit

on Dec 05, 2005

drmiler: Tex, before you start talking about this, maybe you should go look at the col's reply #33. "He's" the one that started with the "drop dead routine". All I said was "same to ya". Now one here has wished the col dead.

maybe you should just put a bullet in your head and rid us of your ignorant mentality

better off dying during those 30 years

wish you would have been cought, tortured and raped and then burned to death.

(Those aren't your quotes)

Well I see you already made up your mind about me. But maybe you may have seen mine but you missed this one, which was first BTW:

You are an Ass. YOU DO NOT KNOW ME AND TO SAY I AM LYING SHOWS YOU FOR THE IDIOT YOU ARE. To think I spent 30 years defending the rights of the likes of you makes me sick. DROP DEAD !

BTW, there's a chance you might have been included in that comment if you would have contradicted what he said. But that doesn't matter, your beef is with me (still not sure why) so bring it to me, don't go around looking for ways to mess with me, go directly to the source. I tried to be nmice and stop this befor it got out of hand but you don't seem to care so deal with me and leave everyone else out of it.

stutefish

on Dec 05, 2005

Within the past several weeks I have sceen Bush giving speaches on TV. . . If Bush wants to improve his ratings, speaking to those that already support him will not help.

Gene, within the past several weeks he spoke to you, who does not support him.

What more do you think he could accomplish, if he spoke to you live rather than via satellite? Would you be more likely to support him, if you'd been in the room when he gave that speech?

What is it about being in the live audience that you belive gives you that special feeling of wanting to support our president, that is so tragically missing from your life?

Daiwa

on Dec 05, 2005

It is disingenuous in the extreme for EJ Dionne to blame Bush for the polarization he laments. Bush stayed on course & followed through with results. Political opponents & ordinary folks who joined ranks in support following 9/11 apparently weren't as serious about it as they like now to claim. Dionne, like most who only have to critique as opposed to do, suffers from the bravery of being out of range.

Cheers,
Daiwa

singrdave

on Dec 05, 2005

Bush's policies are failing on all fronts

E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post Writers Group

One man's opinion; no more, no less.

singrdave

on Dec 05, 2005

singrdave, I would agree with Bush if he adopted policies that solves our problems

Okay, let's examine them one at a time.

On the Budget - cut the Pork

Pork does not come from Bush; it comes from Congress. Unless you'd like the line-item veto back...

increase enforcement of existing tax laws and return the tax rates to the pre 2001 levels for the top 5%. If that does not balance the budget and generate a surplus to begin paying down the debt, look for more spending cuts and tax increases until we are generating about $150 Billion annual surplus to be applierd to the national debt.

Are you basing the success of those pre-2001 tax rates on Clinton's budget? The one that predicted that the 1999-2001 "irrational exuberance" stock bubble to continue without fail? The one that was impossible to fulfill without some 3000% annual growth?

Stop, illegal aliens from crossing our borders.

Illegal aliens crossing our borders gets a F from me, too. Happening for decades. Not Bush's fault, but at least he's taking steps to work out a program with Vicente Fox. So it's easier said than done, COL. Wanna become a Minuteman with me?

stop allowing China from manipulating their currency

And yet you went on and on about a recent wasted trip to China. You think China's an easy nut to crack?

COL Gene

on Dec 05, 2005

Bush can veto a bill (which he has NEVER DONE) and send it back to congress. That does not require a line item veto.

He proposed the largest new entitlement progrem with the drug plan under Medicare and NOT ONE CENT TO PAY FOR THE COST!

The pre 2001 tax rates were just fine for the economy and the treasury needs the income from those rates to help balance the budget. What we can not afford, especially with the added exepense of Homeland defense and the Iraq War is the loss in revenue from the Bush tax cuts.

Bush said he needed 10,000 more border guards to secure the border and then only asks Congress to fund 200 more WHY?

Trips to China are not what is needed. We need to get China to respect property rights and allow our goods to enter China or STOP allowing cheep imports into America from China. His trip to China did nothing but spend money for the trip.

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