Kevin Phillips was on Booknotes call-in last weekend. I watched a re-run of it this week. He said that it was preposterous that Bush, Sr was elected president. He didn't think Bush had much ability to run a county; but he didn't do too bad of a job. He did point out that Reagan/Bush run huge budget deficits and put our country in debt. He pointed out that Bush, Sr's approval ratings lost 50 points, the greatest approval rating loss in the history since polling began.
Kevin Phillips was an advisor to Attorney General Mitchell in the first term, in 1969 to 1970, before the Watergate debacle. He has written several well-received political books. He's a conservative, but has long since parted ways, in the mid-70's with the Republican NeoCons. He just didn't think Bush, Sr was very talented and had stopped supporting the Republicans by the time Bush, Sr was elected. He has in disbelief that Bush,Sr could go down in approval ratings as much as he did, about 50 percent. But then he started talking about George W, loss of public approval, about 70 percent decrease. He said that Bush went to about 17 percent approval rating, with no shame. George W just kept on keeping on. He pointed out that George W said several times that God wanted him to be president. He couldn't believe that George W was re-elected after the debacle of Iraq, with all of the lies told to get us in there. He said they were War Criminal several times I believe.
The money quote: he said that Egypt, during the time of the Pharaohs, were briefly ruled by insects. He couldn't stop laughing. He pretty well summed up the last eight years. We have been led by insects!!
Anyway, he said that the casino economy was let run wild during the late Clinton years, he wasn't very happy with Clinton, but then the last eight years have seen a huge downfall in our world leadership due to our financial failure. He said, when asked. that we wouldn't regain our leadership in the world. Once the Spanish lost the leadership in the 1500's they never got it back. Then the Dutch took over when they founded New Amsterdam, now called New York City. They lost financial leadership to the UK in the late 1700's. The UK lost the financial leadership to the USA about a hundred years ago, and now we have lost it to other countries. He said that our financial casino economy was duplicated in the UK. The City of London, UK's Wall Street, was just about as stupid as we were, and have collapsed about as much as these Wall Street Crooks.
It's nice to hear a literate fiscal conservative go after these NeoCon nuts that destroyed our country.