How would you grade President George W. Bush on his job as president?

Poverty is at a recent (not an all-time) peak because of the recession...the one that started in 2007! And it's at a peak because, unless you're the top 3% or so, your income has been basically flat for almost 30 years.

Health care was in a total mess for years. The ACA contains a lot of good ideas (ones proposed by the Republican Party and the Heritage Foundation, originally), and most of its provisions are meant to slow the uncontrolled growth in cost and to extend health insurance to all Americans (which, if nothing else, helps America's hospitals who are forced to treat millions of uninsured Americans annually, losing literally billions in the process...and then shifting those loses onto those who do have insurance...and remember, for a decade now, the GOP have been insisting hospital ER's are meant to be the place of care for those without insurance).
Polls also show if you take the major provisions of the ACA and ask, solid majorities of Americans agree and approve with each. Healthcare only works for some Americans, not all, and the number it's helping was declining every year for over a decade.

Lack of foreign policy experience is meaningless. Reagan had no foreign policy experience. Are you saying he was failure?

What mess?? The biggest mess I see is the unprecedented obstruction and abuse of the political system by Republicans, who announced more than 4 years ago, in the face of their loss in 2008, that they would oppose literally everything Obama did just to be obstructionist. They now routinely filibuster so many bills in the Senate that the media now routinely refer to the 60 votes "required" for every bill. Democrats NEVER did that! One year of GOP Senate filibusters, any of the last 4 years, exceeds the highest quantity of Democratic filibusters in an entire Congressional term (2 years), ever, and by a factor of at least 3.

Meanwhile...Bush...

Over 100 executions while Governor. Remember his appearance on TV where he's positively gleeful talking about how frightened one woman on death row probably was when it came time to die? He reveled in being able to put people to death!
His incompetence was staggering, reaching its peak with Katrina and Michael "you're doing a hell of job, Brownie" Brown (a man Bush put in charge of FEMA when his only major work experience was running a horse group)!
He invaded a non-threatening nation on false information, costing our nation over 3,000 needless American deaths, and over $2 trillion (probably, long term, well over $3 trillion)...not to mention the, minimum, 150,000 needless deaths in Iraq, perhaps as high as one million, and the effective ethnic destruction of the nation, leading to its continuing civil war with almost daily bombings to this day. Anyone forget his Admin's prediction the war would last months and cost us less than a billion dollars (and Iraq would reimburse us)? Yeah, that was right on the money!!
Kept us safe?? Notice his fans always say "...after 9/11?"
Because he totally blew it with 9/11! Al-Quada was a known enemy, bin-Laden a known sworn enemy, and it was no secret they wished to attack us IN the U.S. He'd already successfully attacked our embassies, and Clinton had tried at least three times to take him out. In August 2001, the CIA was worried enough about them, they flew a special briefer to Bush (who was on his non-stop vacations...1,020 days of vacation in 8 years, literally 35% of his entire Presidency) to warn him and let him know of their concerns. His response..."Ok, you've covered your ass!" and he went back to clearing shrubs from his shrub farm. Why exactly does he get a pass from presiding over the single worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil in all of U.S. history? It's not an accident his fans start his praiseworthy period after 9/11...

But even THAT is false!! Everyone seems to forget that in November 2001 there was another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, which killed 5 (more than were just killed in Boston, I remind you) and severely injured almost 2 dozen more. According to Bush's own State Department, in a 2008 report, there were 40,000 terrorist attacks worldwide between 2005 and 2007, and at least 19 Americans killed by terrorists in those years. Or how about the 3 Americans killed protecting US diplomats in Israel in 2003 (shades of Benghazi!!!!)? How about the people killed at the El Al desk in LAX in July 2002 (2 dead)? Beltway sniper in 2002 (10 dead)? And there are more...it is simply a falsehood that there were no successful terrorist attacks post-9/11 under Bush, just none as deadly.

Sorry, but the guy ranks as the worst we've had and isn't likely to see any revival anytime soon. Note all this stuff about his improving approval ratings is based on exactly ONE poll (many others all have him still low ranked). And let's note that this latest poll which has his supporters claiming he's now gaining acceptance, puts him at about 45% approval (up from his 20-30% range previously), but still gives him a 50% disapproval rate...contrast that to Bill Clinton's parting poll the week he left office. Despite being a President who'd been impeached, he had a 65% approval rate!

1) Stop putting words in my mouth. I never said Bush was to blame for the levees, I'm explaining why no one BEFORE the hurricane considered a total evacuation to be necessary.
2) Whether Nagin was crooked or honest is irrelevant to the discussion.
3) Yes, Obama WAS better following Sandy! FEMA was on site within 24 hours. Gov. Christie, a Republican, joined other regional governors in thanking Obama for his prompt assistance.
4) Want comparison? Bush flew into NO about 6-7 days after Katrina, into a big square with a cathedral in the background. Residents thought aid was finally arriving as some big power generators were set up, lights turned on...then in flew Dumbya in a helicopter, got off, stepped up to the lights, gave a brief speech about how much help he was providing, then back in the chopper, away he went. Lights turned off, generators packed up and removed from the city...You really wanna talk about staged events?? Contrast that to...what? I have no memory of any obviously staged photo ops with or without Christie by Obama!And have you forgotten the horrendously misnamed "Mission Accomplished" staged event on an aircraft carrier of all things?
5) Compassion? Bush?? For who???

He got THREE THOUSAND AMERICANS killed just so he could get Saddam Hussein, the blot on his daddy's record!
He went on national TV when running in 2000 and gleefully laughed and mocked Karla Faye Tucker, a woman who had been on death row. Bush had been asked about Tucker telling a journalist that she appealed for clemency just before her execution. Bush told it as, and I'll quote a description:
""He (Larry King) asked her real difficult questions, like, `What would you say to Governor Bush?'"
"What was her answer?" I (Tucker Carlson) wonder.

"`Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, `don't kill me.'"

I must look shocked - ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel."

That is your "compassionate" guy?? Please!!!

1) Not every city has one, never had, probably never will...and even having one wouldn't have accomplished a lot, as most of the drivers were gone already. But you're also talking about what coulda, woulda, shoulda been done beforehand. I'm talking about what WAS NOT done afterwards, when the need was obvious to one and all, but Bush defenders instead attack everyone else rather than admitting the Bush FEMA program did a lousy job (which it did).
2) That woman was still a human being. She may well have deserved the death penalty. But does that excuse Bush's gleeful mocking tone of how she, in his imagination, pleaded for her life, terrified of dying?? It was cruel, sadistic, evil sounding. And displayed to me that he has serious character flaws.
3) Yep, Obama has had innocent people killed with drone attacks...as Clinton killed people with Tomahawk missiles while trying to take out bin-Laden in the '90s; like Bush killed by the hundreds of thousands in Iraq (fyi, literally no President since we left Vietnam killed more innocent people than Bush did, it's just that simple). I know it happens, but a President SHOULD try to keep it minimal. We had no choice but to invade Afghanistan; Iraq, on the other hand, was a war of choice, and Bush CHOSE to attack them, for no good reason. FYI, the estimate of over 100,000 innocents dead there is the lowball estimate; a well-respected British group puts the number at closer to ONE MILLION!!! Obama isn't even remotely close!
But it does make we question the seriousness (vs the political hypocrisy) of those who complain about FOUR dead in Benghazi, while apparently not concerned about the thousands of Americans needlessly killed in Iraq. And did you know that, under Bush, after 9/11, more than 60 American diplomatic personnel were killed in no less than ELEVEN attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions around the world?? FIFTEEN TIMES as many were killed in Benghazi...Do you remember the Democratic hearings demanding to know what Bush was doing, what he was covering up, yadda, yadda, yadda? No, because Democrats didn't immediately use their deaths as a means to attack Bush (unlike the GOP and Obama).
4) No, I don't "believe" in abortion. I'm opposed to abortion. But I am pro-choice.