"W Stands For Wimp"

The point is, he might have been needed for something. And the place from which he should act is not a tiny plastic chair in an elementary school.

'The point' is that some liberals think they've found a really really good reason to attack Bush. As with the Natl. Guard and cocaine, though, it ultimately hasn't played well in the media or with the public.

The seven-minutes meme would work better if anyone could describe exactly what he's supposed to do in that time period or what he did wrong, rather than "he shoulda done something!"

I'll continue hating George Bush for bilking the city of A-town out of a few hundred million bucks, letting Osama run free for his eternal war, and killing 10k Iraqi civilians and a 1k Americans. I see those as real reasons to oppose him, rather than "he snorted coke!" and "he's not Superman!"

Would you have found any way he spent that time unacceptable? Playing pool, watching some Aqua Teen Hunger Force (admittedly half an episode)? I bet the parents, spouses friends etc. of people in the tower, who certainly had much less of an ability to do anything, didn;t just sit and read.

Also, like you, the coke thing does annoy me - I don't think doing drugs in youth disqualifies you from anything later in life. Doing drugs in youth but thinking people who do the same should be in prison, however, cats serious doubts about someone's concept of justice.

Didn't Kerry, in his first term as a senator, complete research that linked Iran-contra with central American druglords, via CIA as run by Bush 1?

I think W should stand for 'Whatever' (declaimed like bored teenager, with w/e hand signal). Also Karl Rove should be renamed Rover by Dems and spun as someone's licky-licky little bitch.

yeah, i think that's pretty much key. i think he's internalized the idea that his birthright, and now perhaps his being "saved" as well, has more or less exempted his conscience and very being from the recriminations and penalties every one else is supposed to suffer.

all this "w stands for [blank]" stuff just depresses me, though. it's pointless. when i get back from italy i'm going to go to wisconsin and help register people to vote.

I really hate that "he sat there for seven minutes!!!" meme. There are so many good reasons to hate Bush, you don't need "he didn't rip off his suit to reveal a superman outfit!" to make the case.

you're missing the point. it's not that he didn't turn into superman - though arguably he could have averted what would have been a strike on the White House or Capitol and perhaps also the Pentagon strike; and he had no way of knowing that there were only two more planes - it's that he sat there dumbstruck/terrified with absolutely no idea what to do, an image diametrically opposite from the one he seeks so relentlessly to project. it is truth-telling in imagery. it was an inexplicable act that revealed one or more of the following: 1) he was not substantively in charge, 2) the role he had chosen, or been chosen, to play was not going to be just some ideological role-playing exercise, but one that involved life and death, and/or 3) he hadn't really believed that PDB about 'bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.'

Um, the President doesn't micromanage national security during a terrorist attack

Um, some orders can't be given without the President's authority

...Which I totally sympathise with. If someone came in and told me thousands of people had just been killed in a terrorist attack, I would sit dumbstruck too. The difference is that I don't ask a nation to put it's security in my hands, so my uselessness in a crisis isn't a disadvantage to that many people.

(Couldn't find a picture of Richard Paul.)

x-post

Like I said, unless someone can come up with a plan for what Bush could have done in those seven minutes to Save America, or evidence of what was said in his hear or going through his mind, I'll continue hating Bush for things he's actually done as opposed to mind-reading.

He could (and should) have quite simply left the children to their children's things and walked out to confer whith his aides. Despite our mostly justified contempt for image-managing, he should have also been smart enough to realize that the bully pulpit part of his presidency was ill served by talking to kids at that point.

The funny thing here is that this thread is like a Karl Rove primer on how to deflate criticism. Don't defend attacks on the prostitution of the Republic to special corporate interests, don't defend against the hypocrisy of asking more from soldiers and reservists while reducing their benefits, etc, etc... Just find one little bit of hyperbole and distract everyone's attention from the meat and potatoes to the color of the bloody menu, like the Republicans always do.

I get tired of it, from both sides. There were plenty of good reasons from left and right perspectives to criticize Clinton. But the wingnuts from the right and a few from the left (Hitchens) focused on "he's a rapist/murderer" or (my personal favorite) blaming him for Ruby Ridge (despite not being President at the time). And there are an infinite number of excellent reasons from left and right to criticize Bush, but you get people latching onto the Natl. Guard, cocaine and his seven-minutes-in-heaven.

Is it because they think that the public is too stupid to follow along with the policy and outcomes, that they need something simple to latch onto?

Dave225 - and you criticize the police commissioner if someone isn't "doing something about it." If there's evidence of dereliction of duty in Dubya's seven-minutes, then make that the issue. "He failed America by not doing [x]." It seems to me, though, that no one can show dereliction there, else the focus wouldn't have been placed on his stupidity/wimpiness/close ties to them A-rabs, etc.

xpost - Wow. Non-sequitur of the day goes to...

That's improbable, isn't it Milo? My point is that we should ignore the 7 minutes/give him the benefit of the doubt and concentrate on the stuff he had lots of time to plan and show how un-patriotic they are but when all is said and done, he looked like a lost little cheerleader up there and it gave me the willies that day how clueless he looked.

Regardless of whether or not the situation was under control, his job is to make sure something is being done. The criticism isn't that he didn't dispatch a fighter jet right away, it's that he didn't even attempt to find out if he needed to do anything. It's Bush's repeated lack of ownership that people are upset about.
How do we know he didn't "make sure"? Would "making sure" only be possible in that seven minutes?

It's all based on mind-reading and assumption. Which may be 100% correct, mind you, but we don't know. We do know that there are truckloads of concrete evidence to support opposition to Bush, and we don't need the assumption.

Avoiding hyperbole may be improbable, but it's not impossible. And when it ultimately does more to harm your case (cf. everything Michael Moore has touched, seems like) than support it, you should cut it out completely.

"Would "making sure" only be possible in that seven minutes?"
It could very well have been. Bush was in a position of ignorance (unless we assume either that aide whispered every fact about the attack into Bush's ear or that Bush is omniscient), and made no attempt, for seven minutes (during which people were dying) to correct his level of awareness. This is small potatoes compared to his deliberate actions - but the Right believes those action were correct. They also claim Bush is the man to have in a crisis. It must be clear from his actions there that he is not that man.

yes we know, you're better than all of us