I haven’t read Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Silver Blaze since I was in elementary school, but the “curious incident” of the dog that didn’t bark has stuck with me. If you want to fully understand this short story you can follow the links, but for my purposes, all I care about is that Sherlock Holmes was able to solve the crime by figuring out that a watchdog that didn’t bark meant that a stranger wasn’t responsible. The absence of evidence was the best evidence.
From time to time, this example comes to my mind when I am thinking about the tremendous amount of relief I feel every single day that George W. Bush is no longer our president. I can, of course, point to the many accomplishments of the Obama administration and be grateful for that, but those accomplishments are not what gives me a sense of simple relaxation.
What I really value is what no longer happens at all.
I want someone to do a study that compares how often Bush administration officials communicated to the public that they should be afraid and how often that’s happened in the Obama administration.
I am so grateful for No Drama.
I don’t want it to ever end.
I didn’t think I’d ever make to the end of eight years of Bush, and I never want to live like that again.
they weren’t telling the public to be afraid. they were merely dutifully validating their concerns. all of them. including a few the public didn’t recognize.
big difference.
Hysteria is a business model.
I’m just glad I don’t have to see Bush’s stupid face anymore, or Cheney’s rotten smirk. And I don’t miss that toad Karl Rove, either.
Ugly people doing ugly things ruined out country.
HRC is the opposite of no drama. If she wins, strap yourselves in kiddies.
Yabbut what am I gonna do with all this duct tape and plastic sheeting?
Build an oxygen tent?
“Plastic sheeting and duct tape” is best symbol ever of the utter stupidity of Americans.
I see on the news that he (W) was called for jury duty but wasn’t empaneled. Good news for justice.
Ms.Rice is pretty frigging scary in that photo. She could give Cheney some scary-faced competition.
It was the worst of times.
But you know, the fear-mongering didn’t end – it just got relegated to wingnut news sites. If you are unfortunate enough to have some wingnut news shouted at you (as in: at a business that is showing Fox) you’ll find that they are still selling hysteria. Obama’s deal with Iran is worse than Neville Chamberlain’s with Hitler. We’re going to get bombed by Iran within 6 months. Cops are being killed by blahs every few hours, and Obama’s cheering about it. The economy is about to collapse and the only solution is to buy gold from Ron Paul. Etc.
Somehow the world survived 8 years of Bush. But somehow those 8 horrible years only made the wingnuts double down on their policies – supported by the moralistic austerity economists who used the right-wing-caused world-wide economic collapse of 2008 as an excuse to implement even more right wing economic policies. If the GOP gets the white house for 4 more years it’s pretty much over for the next few generations.
I agree with you. (See my comment down thread.)
We had the worst possible people in charge at the worst possible moment.
Were the “adults in charge?”
Maybe.
But they were either drunk, or didn’t care….
And they were certainly clueless…………………..
HRC won in 2008 …
Domestic policy, would we have gotten Clintoncare?
How would Hillary have worked the financial crisis, Wall Street?
On foreign policy, Iraq withdrawal, ISIS and Syria?
On Netanyahu and his intent to bomb Iran in 2012?
The Israeil occupation of Palestinian land?
In what shape would U.S. Congress be?
Governor Obama would run for president in 2016 …
Didn’t that begin to disappear after the 2006 midterm “thumping” of GWB? By then it had lost its political punch as a majority of voters had had enough of it. And just enough Democratic politicians stopped behaving like wimps.
What, IMHO, Democrats/liberals dismiss in the unfolding of the historical naughts is just how pathetic the party had become by 2000 and became more hapless during the next four plus years. Then there was a mini-revolt for control of the DNC. Team Clinton had been running it since 1993. In “losing” in 2000, Gore was also exiled from the inner circle.
Republicans today may be pissed that they have lost the Presidency in four of the last six elections, but they’ve done well at the local, state, and congressional level. The same could not be said for Democratic party by 2005. The “mini-revolt” led to the appointment of Howard Dean as DNC chair. Policy wise, more centrist than the liberal base, but not into playing for elections to a draw or triangulating as a worthy political strategy.
Clinton lost the nomination in 2008 for two reasons: 1) the spirit of that “mini-revolt” still sparked and was bolstered by the 2006 Democratic gains and 2) the party rules weren’t stacked in favor of a Clinton restoration.
Just as I’m not likely ever to forgive/forget Carter for bringing god-speak to a more prominent position in political discourse, I am unlikely ever to forgive/forget Obama for relinquishing control of the party back to team Clinton after he won in 2008. With the same results that team achieved the last time a Democrat was President.
Looking at those visuals (color terror alerts), grimfaced Condoleeza Rice and the mushroom cloud, etc., I realize two things:
One, even after 9/11, I was NEVER in that mode. (A few weeks or months after 9/11, I remember being interviewed by a Columbia journalism major for a “man on the street” project, and I told her that most New Yorkers were handling it, we were used to weathering crises, and that it was mainly people in the hinterlands that were falling for the scare tactics.)
Two, many of my fellow citizens are still very much in that mode.
So thanks, Cheney & Co.