Peace, prosperity, & a budget surplus of $128 billion as George W. Bush enters the White House, 2001

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Jan. 8, 2009 | After a couple of presidential terms, mismanagement in every area of policy -- foreign, domestic, even extraterrestrial -- starts to add up. When George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, he inherited peace and prosperity. The military, the Constitution and New Orleans were intact and the country had a budget surplus of $128 billion. Now he's about to dash out the door, leaving a large, unpaid bill for his successors to pay.

To get a sense of what kind of balance is due, Salon spoke to experts in seven different fields. Wherever possible, we have tried to express the damage done in concrete terms -- sometimes in lives lost, but most often just in money spent and dollars owed. What follows is an incomplete inventory of eight years of mis- and malfeasance, but then a fuller accounting would run, um, somewhat longer than three pages.

Until not too long ago, President Bush's supporters could be heard to argue that the economy was the unheralded success story of his administration. In 2006, Larry Kudlow called it "The Greatest Story Never Told." While praising Bush, Ramesh Ponnuru decried the unfairness of it all. "It seems to happen every week: Some new piece of good economic news comes out, and Republicans sink a little deeper in the polls." To share their admiration, it helped if you ignored the way the wealth was being distributed. Or if you were a repo man.

But the whole debate became moot on Sept. 15, with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Now the economy may be the most burdensome of all the Bush legacies that Barack Obama will have to shoulder.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/01/08/damage/

[terisan]

1. Yup...and he immediately squandered it and then looted everything else he could find. nt

[Citizen Number 9]

3. well, to be fair about the description

several hundred million people were living high on the hog and then they got so scared they decided to smite some middle easterners and then they decided to buy a bunch of SUVs and live it up even more so they didn't have to think about the war they had started. And then everything came tumbling down.

[opihimoimoi]

2. That Evil Asshole and his GOP Buddies took the Helm of our National SHIP and trashed Her against the

REEFS of Despair...almost INTENTIONALLY.....against warnings he advanced his misguided steps/decisions...and now we reap his ineptness...he had FOOLED US....MBA my ASS

[Stinky The Clown]

4. I just read "$128 billion" and in my gut said ......

..... "what a paltry amount".

How things change in 8 years, huh? Now we say "trillions" and don't even blink.

[terisan]

5. I remember the general sense of shock when 40 billion was requested to rebuild Louisiana