The Decline of America under George W. Bush: A Government by the Wealthy and for the Wealthy

Although he was born into a privileged class, George W Bush's early career in business was tainted by a number of failures. As President, he inherited the longest economic expansion in American history. He was left with the most resilent economy in the world. Bush inherited a budget surplus which he turned into the largest deficit of any President. Then the country took a plunge over the next eight years. Bush left a legacy of failures in both domestic policy and foreign affairs. The government ran up a record budget deficit; the debt mushroomed from $4.36 trillion to $10.6 trillion; a combination of tax cuts for the wealthy and spending initiatives amounted to $1.7 trillion. The size of the middle class diminished, and the poverty rate jumped to 19 percent. Unemployment soared from 4.2 percent to 7.2 percent. Bush’s mishandling of foreign policy was deeply rooted in his failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States once had been respected as the moral leader of the world. That evaporated as a result of Bush’s flaws in Iraq and Afghanistan and by embracing a policy of torture. When Bush took office, threats to the United States came from terrorists, Middle Eastern turmoil, the rising powers of China and Russia, and regimes such as North Korea. Eight years later, not a single one of these threats had diminished.