George W. Bush vs. Donald Trump

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On Economic Policy: Easily Trump, arguably the best or one of the best since LBJ, even while I vehemently opposed many thiings (tax policies)

On Non-Economic Domestic Policy: Trump

On Foreign Policy: Easily Trump. Best FP president since at least Reagan and excluding him Ike. Truman though clearly outclass him in every way. Since HST, it's between Ike, Reagan and Trump

On Leadership Skills: Easily Trump

As A Person: Bush, but if you exclude narcissism and sexism, it would be Trump

Overall: Trump by a mile

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As A Person: Bush, but if you exclude narcissism and sexism, it would be Trump

"As a person Bush, but if Trump were a different person I'd pick Trump."

well yes it's W. that's better as a person

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On Leadership Skills: Easily Trump

I definitely see your point on virtually everything else, but I'm not sure I follow you on this one.

Trump had no leadership skills (other than rallying his voters), and was a horrible representative of the nation (at least Bush behaved as a president and was capable of having cordial relations with other world leaders)

perhaps it's not "easily", but he never intended to start good relationships with other world leaders. That was part of the image he created. He certainly proved he's able to lead the GOP and his cabinet.

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Anyone who thinks Trump is worse than W believes that Muslim lives don’t matter. Full stop.

It's quite possible to think that protecting democracy and upholding the constitution is more important than lives.

Abraham Lincoln certainly believed that preserving the Union is more important than peoples' lives and George Washington believed American independence is more important than peoples' lives, so you can't say that there aren't precedents.

LOL... That's not true. Human lives are more important.

That being said, Trump lost all credibility he still had, as a human being it's W. but policy-wise it's still Trump because Bush created radical Islamic terrorism in the mess that's called Iraq now. If anything, without Iraq, Libya, Syria & Afghanistan, Clinton would've won and we would not be debating who is worse: W. or Trump. Because the radical Islam fueled right-wing populism and xenophobia. Trumpism is a result of Bushes failures.

Trump might be utter scum, but Bush is not better at the slightest!

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I guess the psychopath/murderer/war criminal who killed fewer people is 'better' than the psychopath/murderer/war criminal who killed far more people, but both are scum? Not that difficult?

350,000 is a lot of people.

Most of them would be dead if Clinton was president too...

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I think the only argument for Bush here is “lol nice guy “ Trump’s rhetoric was certainly more toxic, and he was obviously still horrible, but on almost any metric he was certainly better than Dubya. For example, if I were to tell you there were two candidates on the ballot:

Candidate 1 is:

Pro-life
Extremely Anti-Gay
Extremely Anti-Marijuana legalization
Arguably a top 5 military hawk among all U.S. Presidents
Against the vast majority of government spending that wasn’t directly tied to murdering Middle-Easterners
A Bible-Thumper who uses the Good Book to justify murdering the brown people in Iraq, along with his attempts at constitutionally banning gay-rights.

Candidate 2 is:

Pro-life (but everyone knows he doesn’t actually give two sh*ts about this issue)
Has made almost no attempt to overturn national gay marriage, besides occasional whispers that never went anywhere.
Fired his Attorney General who wanted to prosecute states that had legalized marijuana. And sure, while there were other reasons that he fired Sessions, from everything we can tell he wanted him to leave states that had legalized alone. 
Got us less involved overall in the Middle East
Is fine spending federal dollars to stimulate the economy.
Is so obviously not a Bible Thumper that he can’t even hold the book right side up.

The only area where Bush was demonstrably better than Trump was the immigration issue, and while I agree, his stances on immigration were abysmal, I don’t think that his stance on this was any worse than the Tea Party Era Republican Party of 2009-12. Trump saw where the party was headed, and jumped on it. This obviously doesn’t excuse his behavior, or horrific views on most issues, but let’s be realistic, Bush would’ve never gotten the opportunity to be president if he had run in 2016 with his “compassionate” views on immigration. He would’ve lost the primary to Trump or whoever the “populist,” anti-immigrant candidate was.

If I’m a Democrat however, I would much rather run against a Bush type in 2024, than a Trump type. I’d welcome the neo-cons reclaiming the GOP as it would likely lead to 3 or 4 straight Democratic victories. The key to victory right now is blue-collar Americans. If the GOP goes back to the neo-cons, it can almost be guaranteed that many of the gains they made among working class whites will be erased in the years to come.

Bush created a fertile ground for Trump to rise in. Trump's rhetoric created division, polarization and violence, but on policies he was much better. Both were atrocious though and easily among the worst presidents we've ever had.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

I think the only argument for Bush here is “lol nice guy “ Trump’s rhetoric was certainly more toxic, and he was obviously still horrible, but on almost any metric he was certainly better than Dubya. For example, if I were to tell you there were two candidates on the ballot:

Candidate 1 is:

Pro-life
Extremely Anti-Gay
Extremely Anti-Marijuana legalization
Arguably a top 5 military hawk among all U.S. Presidents
Against the vast majority of government spending that wasn’t directly tied to murdering Middle-Easterners
A Bible-Thumper who uses the Good Book to justify murdering the brown people in Iraq, along with his attempts at constitutionally banning gay-rights.

Candidate 2 is:

Pro-life (but everyone knows he doesn’t actually give two sh*ts about this issue)
Has made almost no attempt to overturn national gay marriage, besides occasional whispers that never went anywhere.
Fired his Attorney General who wanted to prosecute states that had legalized marijuana. And sure, while there were other reasons that he fired Sessions, from everything we can tell he wanted him to leave states that had legalized alone. 
Got us less involved overall in the Middle East
Is fine spending federal dollars to stimulate the economy.
Is so obviously not a Bible Thumper that he can’t even hold the book right side up.

The only area where Bush was demonstrably better than Trump was the immigration issue, and while I agree, his stances on immigration were abysmal, I don’t think that his stance on this was any worse than the Tea Party Era Republican Party of 2009-12. Trump saw where the party was headed, and jumped on it. This obviously doesn’t excuse his behavior, or horrific views on most issues, but let’s be realistic, Bush would’ve never gotten the opportunity to be president if he had run in 2016 with his “compassionate” views on immigration. He would’ve lost the primary to Trump or whoever the “populist,” anti-immigrant candidate was.

If I’m a Democrat however, I would much rather run against a Bush type in 2024, than a Trump type. I’d welcome the neo-cons reclaiming the GOP as it would likely lead to 3 or 4 straight Democratic victories. The key to victory right now is blue-collar Americans. If the GOP goes back to the neo-cons, it can almost be guaranteed that many of the gains they made among working class whites will be erased in the years to come.

Bush created a fertile ground for Trump to rise in. Trump's rhetoric created division, polarization and violence, but on policies he was much better. Both were atrocious though and easily among the worst presidents we've ever had.

Let's not forget the roles Nixon, Reagan, and Gingrich had in Trump's rise.

certainly!