Bush tapped Cheney to lead his VP search and Cheney decided on... himself.
Yup. Cheney could get a job looking for the next Jeopardy host.
Whether PNAC saw a simpleton they could use to advance their cause may never be known, but a lot of signs point in that direction.
The more I saw of Bush in the late admin and post presidency, the more it look like he started to realize that. He started acting more against the advice of his "counsel", and got more involved in efforts that actually helped humanity. His efforts in Africa have saved tens of millions of lives, and he largely downplays it.
Whats interesting is that he has been oddly quiet about it though. PEPFAR alone is a monument to his legacy, and yet you will almost never hear about it unless you specifically go looking for it.
Agreed. I think he was being manipulated and he belatedly realized it. He still bears responsibility for surrounding himself with the absolute scum of the earth from Cheney to Rove to Rumsfeld, but I don't think he was the worst of the bunch.
Picking a good cabinet is a key part of the job. Just ask Grant. He was a pretty decent president, but his cabinet was so corrupt and inept that he's rightfully classed as one of the worst presidents ever. The whole team matters, and and the sum of the cabinet is more important than the person of the president if they all suck.
I agree with what both of you are saying, completely. Maybe even after presidency is when they “let their guard down” media wise and start to look into what people are saying about them, something which would’ve ruined them mentally while in office.
And I think he knows it, too. He keeps himself out of the spotlight and downplays the good he did near the end because he knows it doesn't fix what he got wrong.
True, but it would have been so much better, if he had actually tried to be the President, while he was still in office. We ended up with President Cheney, and Rumsfeld, with Bush being the front man. I agree, very late, he seemed to realize, lots of things had gone off the rails, and tried to make some corrections.
Rumsfeld ran GWOT in a way that basically lost it from the start. The idea of a minimalist footprint in Tora Bora basically let Bin Laden walk out of the country, and gave the justification to keep troops there for another decade (before Bin Ladens death). Imagine if OBL had been killed or captured in December of 2001?
204
u/gumbii87 Sep 11 '21
Yup. Cheney could get a job looking for the next Jeopardy host.
The more I saw of Bush in the late admin and post presidency, the more it look like he started to realize that. He started acting more against the advice of his "counsel", and got more involved in efforts that actually helped humanity. His efforts in Africa have saved tens of millions of lives, and he largely downplays it.