How long to undo Bush damage?

Question

How long will it take Obama to undo the damage the Bush regime has inflicted?

In particular:

To the Constitution

1. Dropping habeas corpus

2. Nullifying the checks and balances on a "unitary president"

To the nation:

3. Dividing Americans against each other

4. Politicizing the government

(Such as only Republicans in the Justice Department,

and the K Street project - contracts only to Bush loyalists)

5. Spying on Americans

6. Spending $2.7 TRILLION dollars on a senseless war

To the world:

7. A policy of pre-emptive war.

8. Alienating our allies

9. Stirring up a hornet's nest in the Middle East.

10. Making global warming much worse - denying its reality.

Answer 1

probably about half as long as it took to repair the damages that President Clinton caused!

Answer 2

A very, very long time. The rate of progress will depend on if the Democrats get a 2/3 majority in Congress which they do not have at present. Only a 2/3 majority will make a bill "bulletproof" and safe from filibuster and presidential veto.

So much progress to undo Bush's destructive and unconstitutional policies have been killed on the floor of the legislature because the Dems do not have the 2/3 majority they need to force the needed changes through. : /

Answer 3

3-6 especially the debt that President Clinton got rid of will take many decades. The next president is screwed and doomed to fail becasue of BUSH

Answer 4

Minimum 4 years of the next President's first term.

Don't blame Obama on having to cut Bush's tax cuts because Bush caused it with his reckless economics.

Answer 5

you do know that if bush wasnt president and someone else was that  they would be blamed just as bad as bush.

Answer 6

You mean to tear down Bushes improvements don't you?

Answer 7

Very long time...   As you outlined, the damages were a lot.  A lot of people, including American soldiers were killed in the illegal wars.  

Bush has been used by Israel.  Americans must get back to their senses and do the right things for America and the World.

Hopefully, there will be peace and prosperity.

Answer 8

haha nice question... a while.

Answer 9

Its going to take a long time and, unfortunately, I don't think that anyone will be able to undo this amount of damage in even two-terms.

Answer 10

How long before people stop being unreasonabl and blaming everything but their hang nail on the President of the Free World. How long before we realize congress is often part of the problem, along with citizens that aren't willing to say "What can I do for my country?" Instead of "What can my country do for me?" How long before we realize how lucky we really are, regardless of how bad our situation is, it would be worse in any other country. How long before we quit expecting hand outs and entitlements? Thats the real question my friend. But I'm sure your Bush hating has gotten you pretty far, right?

Answer 11

Most of the Bush supporters here are very aggressive and incredibly uncivilized it's not surprising really, bush was a warmonger and so are his supporters. The whole world hates Bush and any person in his right mind should hate Bush too.

Answer 12

What makes you think Obama's going to win?? And if he DID win, what makes you think he's capable of that?? That guy is full of empty promises and speeches.

"Change we can believe in".... yeah, more like "Change that will s***w this country"

EDIT: I would like to add that peach has the best answer to this question!!!

Answer 13

I think approximately 300 yrs if the Iraqis are lucky..oh and that is if it does not become invaded by another country....I think every one knows that Iraq has a solid history of invasions ....

Answer 14

Centuries, without a doubt.

Answer 15

The truth of the matter is that Obama would not be able to undo the damage Bush has done, if he actually does happen to get elected and doesn't get assassinated during the early days of his presidency. The fact is, the damage done during Bush's eight years will probably not fully be undone in your lifetime, if you actually are the person being displayed on your avatar.

The Constitution has been trampled on by the Bush administration. Various bills have been implemented with the guise of trading "Freedom for Security". Probably the one sticking out the most is the Patriot Act, which fundamentally erases the fourth amendment, and gives law enforcement agencies free reign to spy on it's own citizens without the need for warrants, in the name of 'national security'. The Patriot Act is very complex, and as far as I know of it's not going away anytime soon. As for habeas corpus, the Supreme Court has just ruled that people can not be held captive without being charged, and Guantanamo Bay will probably be disbanded over the next several years.

Our government has always divided it's people against one another, you lived to see the 60's right? The more divided a countries people are against one another, the more powerful a government becomes. They like things the way they are, and there will always be constant bickering between the far right and the far left, and everything and everyone in between. If the next president is Obama, rest assure that he will do what he can to appoint democrats into positions of power within the Supreme Court and Congress, because that's what both sides do when they have the opportunity to do so. The War will undoubtedly take many years to pay off, and if you think it's gonna get taken care of in the next eight years dream on. However, the sooner the war ends, the quicker we can go about the rebuilding process and attempt to resecure our failing economy. The Vietnam War was a much larger one in terms of death's, costs, and damage. Even though it was just about as senseless as this one, and it lasted many years and costs the equivalent of trillions of dollars in today's money, our economy eventually managed to recover from it. I'll let you be the judge of how long that took, I believe that our economy was fairing pretty well throughout the 90's up until 2001.

There will probably never be any serious policies for pre-emptive wars, which is both a good and bad thing. Should the need ever arise for us to strike first or face imminent death, that would be the only ideal time for a pre-emptive war to be implemented. However, that has never been the case over this last half century, and I don't know if I can ever again believe in our intelligence community's credibility after they lied about the weapons of mass destruction, and got us involved in a desert Vietnam as a result. It would be great if our intelligence and our media was credible, but it isn't, and the government will always use it to their liking in order to garner the weak minded and easily persuadable into supporting the agendas they want them to. Unless American citizens by the masses educate themselves as to what's really going on, and stand united against the lies and false accusations, our government has already proved time and time again that it is powerful enough to generate a war at it's own discretion. The real sickening thing is that those responsible for starting these false wars face no consequences for their actions whatsoever, even though they are the biggest criminals of all.

As far as our allies go, Britain is the main one, and the rest are more or less willing to sit across a table from Bush, and put up with our antics mainly because they need our trade and other miscellaneous things, not because they want to. Our country was never the favorite, there is after all no such thing when it comes to world powers. But we used to be respected to some degree, for both our actions in WWII, and our efforts at combating Communism during the Cold War. After we were attacked on 9/11, we had the whole world supporting us, behind us completely when it came to going into Afghanistan with the intention of destroying Al quada and the Taliban. If we were to just stick to destroying Al quada, and restoring order to Afghanistan we'd probably be done with the war right now, and could stick to more important things like beefing up our national security and moving forward economically. The one thing that really pissed the rest of the world off was the war in Iraq. U.N. inspectors found no weapons of mass destruction, and we proceeded to invade Iraq despite the U.N. not sanctioning it. The way the world sees the United States is as a bunch of hypocrites, with regards to a 'doing what I say, and not what I do' mindset. We expect Israel and Palestine to make peace, yet we invade a sovereign nation and jump start a civil war between rivaling people of different religious beliefs. We expect others to follow the rulings of the United Nations, but we don't have to if we don't want to.

As far as Global Warming is concerned, I would say that it is already in the process, and will become more of a harsh reality within the next fifty years. It isn't as though it will end life on the planet as we know it, but it will make the weather more volatile, and natural disasters occur more frequently. The next president doesn't have a snowballs chance in h**l of stopping it, but maybe he can initiate some bills and laws to slowdown or lessen the severity of it before it gets real bad. The only reason why we are even concerned with the Middle East is because of its natural resources. I don't know if you noticed, but our government couldn't give less of a **** about the genocide going on in Darfur, and the other millions of crimes against humanity being committed daily because we have nothing to gain from it. We put Saddam in power in the first place, because we thought that he would do what we wanted him to do. Even after he gassed the Kurds(The thing he was hanged for), Donald Rumsfeld was over there not long after shaking hands and sitting down with him to talk over some things of importance. As soon as oil is no longer a valuable commodity, our interest in the middle east will be no more, and we will no longer have anything to do with that region of the world.

Answer 16

Hopefully, he'll have 8 years to start turning the tide on the travesty that he's about to inherit.

Answer 17

guess you only bash people when things  dont go your own way or to your liking... I see this way too much.... I am so curious to see what you all will do when nobama doesnt make president.... are you going to blame that on bush as well????

by the way.. in many aspects.. America has always been divided.... its called freedom of choice...

added as for "global warming".. are you blaming bush for that? hmmm seems to me everyone in this world should be held accountable for some part of it. some way or another... be it driving cars, running factories, you name it...!!!

Answer 18

It's a good question.  Poor Obama he will have lots of things to deal with the coming years.I agree the next president should really do something about the taxes that are being paid on senseless wars.  I'm soo glad that so many people dislike Bush,  because Bush = wars.  I think the only people who really like Bush are Israelis because everything he did he did it for  Israel and not for the Americans.

dingbangi - said it very well.

Answer 19

Obama nor McCain can do it in their terms. It will take far longer than 4 years. It might take a decade or more. And whoever believes Bush made improvments, please pay reality a visit, would you?

Answer 20

1. this law applies to Americans, those citizens who have pledged loyalty to America alone.

2. the liberals in the justice department refuse to uphold the Constitution

3. Americans are allowed to be divided in their beliefs and values they expect their elected officials to hold. that's the whole idea.

4. all Obama will do is make there all Democrats in the Justice Department, which solves even less than having all Repub's

5. There's some nasty people, right here in our own country, and we do what we can to get rid of them.

6. 2.7 trillion we didnt have to spend now if we'd fixed the mess with saddam when clinton was president, he was too busy getting head from his intern.  (oh by the way, that guy was effed up, you know one of his officials used an Iron Maiden torture device on iraqi soccer players for playing poorly?)

7. this war needed to be fought a LONG time ago, AND i dont think it's very pre-emptive when the first strike was by 20 terrorists in 4 of our own goddamn planes and killed 3000 CIVILIANS!.

8. our allies alienated US refusing to see that ignoring the terrorist threat is THE WORST POSSIBLE course of action, (see 3/11 and the London city bombings)

9. the middle east has always been a pit of trouble, they have the biggest source of natural oil, which is the life-blood of the world until WE, (the U.S.) develop the new cost-effective technology that will remove the need for middle-eastern oil from every developed country in the world.

10. WHAT THE h**l HAVE WE DONE TO MAKE GLOPBAL WARMING WORSE. we didn't join the tokyo protocol because we felt it was too lenient, we emit FAR LESS carbon into the atmosphere than china or india, and we produce all the technology and food that the world runs on! we are the BIGGEST contributor to the planet, without being the biggest contributor of greenhouse gases!

SUCK ON THAT YOU COMMUNIST ********!

Answer 21

The saddest part of that question is that you apparently believe it.  That says volumes about the state of education and political discourse today.

And to supply an answer, just in case the reporters feel like it, the answer to number 10 is that Bush does not deny global warming, he disputes efficacy and the cost of the "solutions" put forth by some of the more fanatical believers.

Answer 22

You must have a denial problem as no facts were given! You suggest that battling terrorism is senseless. Are you an American? We see that your comments do not indicate that you are! Maybe you are an ACLU board member that are usually ultra-Liberal. As far as putting the same party in jobs, you deny this about the Democrats! If Republicans had some control over the Supreme Court appointees, why is it that most are Liberal or Moderate? We do not have checks and balances because Liberals in our Supreme Court refuse to support the original Constitution! As example, maybe the Liberal Justices will allow men to marry goats, next? After all, it may be the desire of a few! The only Allies that have been somewhat alienated are the cowards that would not lift a foot to help against the reality of terrorism! This can include France, who, during WWII, had to rely on a few in the underground that were not cowards! Every time a Republican is in office as President we hear these lies that deny the fact that we have a majority of Liberals in our Senate and House and that these are the ones that are taxing and spending! Our original Constitution allowed taxes to support the military! It still does, but Liberals want to tax anything that moves and most that do not! Next time you want to speak against any President, please tell all the facts and support our troops as they are real Americans! Earl