Who was a better President: George Bush or Bill Clinton?

[The Ghost of RubangB]

Giving Bush credit for a stronger stance on terrorism is a joke. 9/11 happened. He had to act or he'd have been killed by the angry masses. Fighting back was the least he could do. At that point, it was revenge, and ANYBODY in charge, ever, would have done the same, if not more. Why do we give him credit for reacting? Are we supposed to believe that any other president would have gone back to sleep on 9/11 and done nothing about it?

The tax cuts were a joke. The majority of the cuts were for the richest of the rich. Yeah, some small businesses got a little slack, but the richest people in America got millions handed to them for nothing, and the poor got enough for a couple free beers and burritos. And all the money the government lost on tax cuts... mixed with starting multiple wars... mixed with blowing our entire surplus (including the large portion earmarked for social security)... basically handed our economy to China.

Clinton's terms were the only time in American history during which the national debt didn't increase exponentially. It's happened once ever. I'll understand if you want to give 100% of the credit to Newt or the Republican Congress and say Clinton had nothing to do with it... but to say that Bush didn't single-handedly blow every red cent of it with his tax cuts and mad spending policies is insane.


@rocketpig, what I mean about Bush being soft on terrorism until 9/11 is that... he got elected... and did nothing for 8 months. He was on vacation the whole time. He had a tax cut, and he cut funding for Planned Parenthoods on foreign soil, and went hunting until 9/11 happened. There was a gigantic pool of information that the CIA and the Clinton administration had built on Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden during all the attacks of the 90's. We had a terrorist problem. Bush sat on his hands and waited for the big one to get all riled up and do something.

It's like getting a job at a haunted house and forgetting to bring your ghostbusting kit until the king ghost comes and kills your family!

Clinton had asked for permission to go after Bin Laden, and the CIA said no. Tenet said no, and he's kicking himself in the teeth every day because of it. And all the Republicans in his cabinet and the Congress were always out for his blood and told him he couldn't afford to start a land war in the Middle East. Basically, nobody but Clinton wanted to do shit until the big one happened.

And if 9/11 hadn't happened, Bush wouldn't have been re-elected. Outside of his wars, Bush was a cartoon character of a president. His legacy is revenge.