George Bush: Good Candidate...Bad Timing

Assuming 9/11 never occurred, we cannot be sure exactly just how well a president GWB would have been. Obviously his decisions and actions would have been drastically different in some cases, and terribly similar in others. Therefore all we can do is examine his policies during his tenure as President thus far. I'll admit I was a little apprehensive about the topic of debate when I first came across it, however, after reading Round 1 it became pretty clear what my opponent's position and main arguments in this debate would be: "George W. Bush's legacy, his performance, and his reputation are all the products of the unfortunate events that took place during his administration. The events that we had little if any control over // George W. Bush's administration performed poorly because Bush was given a unexpected task that he was unqualified to accomplish..." Although I agree that Bush's legacy (as a horrible president), performance and reputation are all the products of unfortunate events, I disagree that "we" a.k.a. the Bush Administration had little to no control over them. Furthermore, I do not agree that Bush's poor performance should be attributed to the fact that he was given an "unexpected task" that he was "unqualified to accomplish" as my opponent has pointed out. The President of the United States of America; the Commander in Chief of the greatest army and greatest super power in the world, SHOULD be *qualified* to accomplish any unexpected tasks. If not, they are not a good candidate for the Presidency as the topic of debate claims. I also disagree that the attacks of 9/11 were unexpected. Buzzflash.com cites upwards of 40 articles from various credible sources that claim Bush did in fact know about the attacks, or at least had fair warning. For example, "CBS reporter David Martin revealed that weeks before the attacks, the CIA had warned Bush personally of Osama Bin Laden's intent to use hijacked planes as missiles. That followed the damaging exposure by The Associated Press's John Solomon of a pre-9/11 FBI memo from an officer in Phoenix warning of suspicious Middle Eastern men training at flight schools — a warning that went unheeded" (http://www.inthesetimes.com...). Because of all the undisputable evidence (even the White House couldn't refute it), it is more than fair to say that Bush - at the very least - failed to take appropriate action given the situation prior to 9/11. I think this dismantles my opponent's claims that the attacks that destroyed Bush and his credibility were unexpected and out of our control. In that case, obviously Bush was not a "good candidate" because he allowed the terrible tragedy of 9/11 to occur in the first place. Taking a look at the country today and the country before George W. Bush's tenure in office, my opponent noted some of the successes the U.S. had going for itself including the growing economy, high employment rate, and record number of home ownership. Today, Bush and his policies have spent the surplus and bankrupted the treasury (he acquired the biggest annual deficit in history), over 2 million Americans lost their jobs during the first 2 years of Bush's presidency (not to mention he cut unemployment benefits for more out of work Americans), and he presided over the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12 month period. Now my opponent has said, "We needed a president who could maintain and even feed our success." But obviously Bush didn't feed our success at all or even sustain it. In fact, he set us back big time... and that's just the tip of the iceberg. If Pro wishes to argue that a lot of our spending has been dispersed to the military due to our involvement in Iraq, very well. I would agree with him, obviously. However how does that tie into the "unexpected" event of 9/11? Bush's choice to go against the U.N. and proceed with the war was a choice that he made and one that I argue contributed to the 9/11 "conspiracy theories" that claimed going to war with Iraq was his goal all along. Throw into the mix the Halliburton scandals and the fact that the Pentagon admitted there was absolutely no relation between Saddam Hussein/Iraq and al Qaeda, and it all leads back to the fact that GWB made awful decisions that hurt the U.S. both abroad and domestically COMPLETELY UNNECESSARILY... meaning he would have made poor and hurtful decisions regardless. Thus my point is that even if the attacks of 9/11 WERE unforseeable, Bush's response was the wrong one and his actions, in fact, *did* hurt America so why should his "legacy" say otherwise? I don't believe that he had an "unlucky break" but rather did an incredibly bad job at leading this country both before and after the attacks of 9/11. His actions were and are full of corruption, lies, deceitfulness, scare tactics and scandal. And a President who is willing to go to any extreme to promote their own agenda is a BAD candidate for the Presidency regardless of the times. On that note, I would like to move away from 9/11 and Iraq and focus instead on domestic issues since my opponent stresses that this is GWB's supposed strong point. Because home ownership foreclosures are a huge problem in this country at present, I would like to include a fellow debater's stance on GWB's chosen policy on how to go about helping citizens. "Any government attempts to bail out homeowners in foreclosure are wrong and unfair to tax payers" - HandsOff. Bush's decision to assist those in said situation is just one of many in which Bush's ideology opposes that of most Conservatives, making him a bad represenative of the party. In fact, GWB set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending INCREASES, more than any president in US history. That is clearly not a Conservative position. Perhaps a Republican being elected to office in the year 2000 would have been great for this country, but *NOT* George W. Bush. Moving away from the economy (though it's hard because he made countless mistakes in this area), some other Bush failures include setting the record for the least amount of press conferences than any president since the advent of television, signing more laws and executive orders circumventing the Constitution than any president in US history, presiding over the biggest energy crises in U.S. history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed, presiding over the highest gasoline prices in US history and refused to use the national reserves as past presidents have, dissolved more treaties than any president in US history, presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud of any market in any country in the history of the world, refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions (I do consider this as a domestic issue)... [Source: http://www.buzzflash.com...] Now, I gotta be honest. My intention for the rest of the round was to go on listing dozens upon dozens of broken promises, mistakes and failures of George W. Bush. All domestic, all relavent. But what's the point? We all get the jist of it. He sucks. And granted many presidents before GWB have screwed up in the past. I agree with my opponent that GWB is not the worst president in US history as many people ignorantly assume. However the Pro's argument in this debate about GWB just being an unlucky guy is absurd. A president should be prepared to take on everything that comes with the position, the good and the bad. Also, many of GWB's F-ups had little to nothing to do with foreign policy. In conclusion, if we stray from my opponent's argument for a little bit and examine GWB just as a presidential candidate, I feel we should also note that "[Bush] became president after losing the popular vote by over 500,000 votes, with the help of [his] fathers appointments to the Supreme Court." - Kelley Kramer.