Bush defends auto bailouts
Former U.S. President George W. Bush is set to release his memoirs under the title Decision Points on Tuesday, November 9. The book is slated to delve into the eight years of the Bush Administration, touching on everything from the war in Iraq to the reasoning behind various economic policies. The Detroit News was able to get its hands on a pre-release copy of the text and found Bush had committed to bailing out the auto industry as early as November of 2008, despite having misgivings about government intervention in private industry and the management of both Chrysler and General Motors.
Still, the memoirs say that the move was designed to "safeguard American workers from widespread collapse."
Additionally, The Detroit News reveals that Bush finally decided to pull the trigger on the bailouts to keep Barack Obama from having to make a decision on the situation right off the bat. Bush writes that "I had to keep my successor in mind. I decided to treat him the way I would have liked to have been treated if I were in his position."
Decision Points will be released simultaneously in the U.S. and Canada in hardcopy, e-reader and audio formats.
[Source: The Detroit News | Image: Getty]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
dhan 7:31PM (11/08/2010)
i know many people disliked bush during his presidential terms, but i think he did have this country's best interest at heart, irregardless of how his decisions and policies have turned out to be.
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Justin 7:50PM (11/08/2010)
lol his domestic policies are messed up, but his foreign policies are just fine.
savagemike 7:59PM (11/08/2010)
I disliked Bush as much as anyone.
However, I would concede that I never thought his incompetence was born of malice or ill intent.
Now Cheney on the other hand....
Need More Lutz For GM 8:22PM (11/08/2010)
I never liked Bush, but how could you say something like the Iraqi war was in the American people's best interest?
Shiftright 8:24PM (11/08/2010)
As savagemike eloquently said, it wasn't that he was a bad guy, evil or self serving. I honestly think he wanted to to the best he could but he simply was not competent , savvy or intelligent enough to be in the position that he was put in, and I do mean put in because he was essentially a puppet for the interests that put him there. The evil Sith Lord Cheney was in reality the one who really ran things.
I do have to agree with his decision regarding auto bail outs though. As much as it pained him and his successor, not doing so would have been disastrous.
warren 8:32PM (11/08/2010)
I'm no fan of Bush, but yeah, I'll go along with that.
It's moments like his speech after the VT shootings in 2007, or his silly dancing in Africa, that made me realise that he's actually a decent guy that was stuck in the middle of a sh-tty system.
In a way I feel sorry for him. He inherited a few massive problems: the hatred of radical Islamists bent on punishing America for its interference in the Middle East.... a financial system that designed to (and eventually accomplished) massively transfer wealth and land ownership from the middle class back to the upper class.... an increasing pace of outsourcing of manufacturing and high-technology jobs..... an education system that rewarded only the wealthy, thereby reducing America's ability to teach enough people how to be amazing at something other than video games and sports stats. The consequence of that last item is that America had to admit millions of people into the country on the basis that they could do a job that a natural-born American wasn't available to do.
Bush didn't create any of these problems. That's just how America was in 2000. That's how the upper 1% want it to be. No President will ever have the power to change that. You could have Jack Bauer as President, George Carlin as VP and Chuck Norris as Secretary of State. Won't make a difference.
Heck, it wouldn't make a difference if all the Tea Party favorites got into the top spots either -- they'd be forced to behave as expected, too.
John P 8:55PM (11/08/2010)
Agree dhan, He made some mistakes, but there's no doubt he was on our side. Still is.
RAndroid 9:25PM (11/08/2010)
If you give a mentally ill psychopath a gun and he or she runs around a daycare killing little children while quoting God and how's he's cleansing he earth of future evils, well that psycho has the best interest of the people in his heart to. Doesn't make it a damn bit right on any level though does it.
"the war in iraq has nothing to do with 9/11"
"no child left behind"
"I'm not bailing out the banks, I don't want to be the guy that does that"
"I've authorized the sale of six civilian and 2 military sea ports to an Islamic company from the United Arab Emirates"
"I saw the first plane hit the tower on the television" (no you didn't)
"mission accomplished"
Oh you could have meant the best interest of people in ANOTHER country! If I got you wrong, I'm sorry! My bad!
Majarvis 10:00PM (11/08/2010)
LOL
"irregardless" isn't a word. Irrespective is, but "irregardless" is not.
Scorch 11:07PM (11/08/2010)
At some point we as Americans lost the capacity for rational political discourse. People no longer acknowledge one another's right to disagree, they just say you either agree with them or you hate America and are just like Hitler. This applies equally to members of both political parties.
While I may not agree with some of the things Bush or Obama did/do as President, I don't think the first thing they think about when they wake up in the morning is how to best ruin the country.
MarketAndChurch 11:50PM (11/08/2010)
@warren
well perhaps if businesses weren't required by Government to be veins of social welfare (employer provided healthcare), and unions got their ish together, perhaps we could make the US a more attractive place to build stuff, and a less expensive place to relocate to(especially here in California).
If we simplified tax codes, lowered taxes, relax land-use policies, cut government waste, increase transparency, then we deserve to have those JOBS come back, because then we're showing that we're at least competing for those jobs(just like China, India, Brazil, and Turkey are). We can't be a manufacturing powerhouse and be on par with Germany if we don't at least make those structural and institutional changes.
Make the system less complicated... less expensive... and only then will we be able to achieve some meaningful income equality, create sustainable and lasting private sector jobs, and allow upward mobility for more Americans.
digitalzombie 1:14AM (11/09/2010)
I will commend him on the autobail out and the surges. Other than that no, he's basically made a lost decade for America. The financial bailout of his didn't believe in getting the money back until Obama did it.
He waged 2 wars, passed medicare plan D, and had massive tax cuts. How the hell are we going to pay for two wars and medicare plan D with tax cuts? Trickle down yeah...
All his predecessor republican such as Regan, who started the tax cuts thrend, and Bush Sr. all increased tax. Regan tax gas. Bush lost his reelection because of, "Read my lips...", made new taxes. Why? Because tax cuts add to the national deficits. The only one that didn't raise tax after tax cuts was Bush 2. Heck they got Cheney to fly down to do a reconcillation for massive tax cuts bill while have two wars. HA!
He [bush 2] knows nothing about the economy at all. The trickle down theory does not work. He increases spending and have no plans what so ever to pay for them and what's worst he gave tax cuts.
homunculus 7:35AM (11/09/2010)
That's why in the law there's a category for willful negligence. He may not be guilty of malice aforethought but his acts as president amount to guilt: authorizing torture, fighting two wars without paying for them, creating a medicare drug benefit without paying for it, wasting blood and treasure on a war based on trumped up intelligence and falsified claims, trampling civil rights with the patriot act, politicizing non political government positions, for example in NASA, squandering a budget surplus on spending and tax cuts, etc. Do I think he's the antichrist? No. Did he make many terrible decisions? Absolutely.
ManOnFire81 9:00AM (11/09/2010)
Agreed. George Bush love the USA. You could plainly see it, even if he made a few mistakes along the way. Barack Obama on the other hand...
Luis 9:48AM (11/09/2010)
@Market and Church:
Those JOBS are NOT coming back. I just heard a great argument why:
If you can get someone to make something for 1/20th the cost of an American, you will do it. Americans are too well-educated to be able to compete with cheap labor. I don't care how low you want wages to be, our country is TOO rich to make cheap things. So, unless you want to revert back to a time with no technology and NO education where you die at 40, those jobs are NOT coming back. We are innovators, and will continue to be. I wish we'd stop trying to race to the bottom and instead focus on reaching for the top with better education.
Watch Texas cut education further with it's $25 BILLION budget hole...yeah, that will help!
Rich 9:51AM (11/09/2010)
"Irregardless", despite being nonsense, is as much a word as "dord". It owes its existence to ignorance from its creators and habitual record-keeping from it's perpetuators.
Funny thing is, it's a double negative. Its meaning should be "not without regard".
Which is how we should behave toward Bush's rather ridiculous claim that he wanted to treat his successor fairly. Fairness would have meant not letting the banks collapse in the first place. Fairness would have been reducing, not increasing military spending and brinkmanship with a highly organized criminal organization. Anyone who believes a conservative isn't in the pockets of multinational corporations and thinks they're looking out for the little man wants their head examining. Bush was a cheerleader. Go China.
jake136 11:59AM (11/09/2010)
"Irregardless"- you borrow that from Bush Jr?
Riverblue 7:37PM (11/08/2010)
At the very end, when the chips were down, he made some good decisions. They were big ones, directly affecting a large number of people.
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fizzandpop 7:42PM (11/08/2010)
Let's just compartmentalize the Bush legacy for one minute.
In this instance he overcame ideology and tackled the problem head on. Balanced the arguments in his head, and made what we all agree was the right decision. Could a Republican do that now? Not a chance. Is Obama allowed to do that now? No way.
It was only two years ago, seems like a lifetime.
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Aprime 8:04PM (11/08/2010)
>we all agree
Uh, Keynesian economics have been disproved time after time, I don't need an auto bailout to remind myself that Washington picking winners and losers doesn't help out anyone in the long run. Sorry you guys bought in the industry's arguments to get government life support, I didn't.