Excerpt: On this day in 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot in the chest at the side entrance of the Washington Hilton on Connecticut Avenue by John Hinckley Jr. Reagan was walking to his limousine after a speech to AFL-CIO leaders when Hinckley, 25, who was standing among a group of reporters, fired six shots, hitting Reagan and three others.
Dubya’s Iraq delusions cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. But Dubya didn’t threaten the fabric of our democracy, nor did he encourage internal divisions and hatred.
Without Dubya, we wouldn’t have Trump, Putin and possibly Xi. After Clinton the US had a very high prestige in the world and even their antagonists were more likely than not to try and not piss them off too much. After the Iraq invasion the US lost all claim to being not just another imperialistic power and this definitely emboldened the others. Any idea that rules and international law mattered went out of the window. Add to that the normalization of torture, unrestricted mass surveillance and open disregard for democracy and we have a lot of the ingredients for the mess we’re in right now. And let’s not forget the 2008 financial meltdown which contributed to the feeling of disenfranchisement that drives a lot of the present day political divisions. So in my view Dubya really fucked shit up and we’re all still paying the price.
Oh, Dubya DEFINITELY fucked shit up and set things in motion. He is one of the worst presidents, just above Ronald Reagan. But Trump, tied with Andrew Johnson, has him beat, I hold.