1992, Bush utters “Ozone Man” into the lexicon as a pejorative against Al Gore.
There is a difference between campaign rhetoric and policy, to be sure, but the country lost clarity of focus rapidly as a nation after the Gulf War and began to let trivial things divide it. (I remember the 1990s culture wars, and I’d like to forget.) Bush senior may have been one of the last decent human Republicans outside of his periodic populist gestures. I’d say Nixon (modulo corruption) or Ford (ineptitude) or Eisenhower was probably the last. I’ll never forgive the Bush son for pissing away my generations’ future and Rove’s mobilization of the demos into this gerrymandered hellscape.
And yet Reagan (with Bush as VP) signed the Montreal Protocol. And Bush 41 created the acid rain pact with Canada (PM Mulroney).
A lot of blame goes to Bush 43 ("Dubya") for a lot of things, but I generally view him as a patsy for those around him that actually made the decisions and pushed them through.
There is a difference between campaign rhetoric and policy, to be sure, but the country lost clarity of focus rapidly as a nation after the Gulf War and began to let trivial things divide it. (I remember the 1990s culture wars, and I’d like to forget.) Bush senior may have been one of the last decent human Republicans outside of his periodic populist gestures. I’d say Nixon (modulo corruption) or Ford (ineptitude) or Eisenhower was probably the last. I’ll never forgive the Bush son for pissing away my generations’ future and Rove’s mobilization of the demos into this gerrymandered hellscape.