The Resume of George W. Bush
A few weeks ago a family member sent me an email titled "John Kerry's Resume". It misrepresented Kerry on more than a few points and the mean-spirited tone seemed to get in the way of serious arguments but it got me wondering what a Bush resume would look like. I found a few "George W. Bush's Resume" versions online but they were filled with the same sort of distortions and inaccuracies, and seemed written for an audience of people who already dislike Bush and support Kerry. It annoys me when people who share my view make their case so poorly that it undermines our position. I thought I could do better.
As I wrote this I started realizing the problem with our current president. Rewarding excellence and limiting failure is a deeply held value in America, especially in conservative circles. It is essential that we recognize the competence of juniors and promote them. By promoting our smartest, most efficient, highest-skilled workers to positions of responsibility we don't just reward them: we reward ourselves as we benefit from the good decisions they make in their new position.
Bush is the antithesis of this story. From Yale to the Champagne Unit to Harvard to Arbusto to Spectrum 7 to Harken to Texas Rangers to Governor to President, his failure was rewarded with ever-greater responsibility as the sphere of those damaged by his incompetence continued to expand. And that's how we got where we are today: the entire world is paying the piper because nobody had the guts to pull the brakes on this man's train of unearned, undeserved privilege.
My target audience is Bush supporters for whom their choice of candidate is still a rational decision. As a former Bush supporter in 2000 I don't see how anyone can support this president's run for a second term. Even if you believe his goals are sound, his ability to achieve those goals and the means he chooses to achieve them remain highly questionable. I have avoided points such as drilling in ANWR or Bush's enthusiastic execution record as governor of Texas because I don't fault him for those reasons: points such as those have reasonable positions on either side. I'm sticking to points like exposing the secret identity of CIA agents as revenge for their spouses' public statements, or creating an agency to re-inject discredited intelligence reports back into circulation - points that, to me, seem beyond any rational defense.
It is quite likely that this is not the final version of this document. I consider myself a rational person, and I'm expecting to revise the document as new information becomes available. While I don't have time to get into extended one-on-one political arguments with strangers I welcome the sort of input and rational criticism that will clarify my misconceptions. I expect to add new points and remove weaker ones throughout Bush's remaining term: I've found his resume to be a useful crib sheet to remember details like the name of Bush's personal criminal defense attorney, or the vote tally for the Federal Marriage Amendment, and I'd like it to remain "live".
There are two versions of my version of the Bush Resume online: one for reading online and one for printing. Their formatting is different but they are otherwise identical. I hope you find this useful in making your choice for president this year.
http://monkeydyne.com/bushresume/resume.html
http://monkeydyne.com/bushresume/print.html
http://monkeydyne.com/bushresume/errata.html
Hello. My name is George Bush and I'm running for President. Please consider my qualifications as set forth in the following resume.
The Resume of George W. Bush
EDUCATION:
- I entered Yale in 1964 with a SAT of 1206 (Verbal 566, Math 640), 200 points below Yale's average freshman in 1970.
- I graduated Yale in 1968 with a 2.35 GPA
- In the fall of 1970 I was rejected from admission at University of Texas Law School.
- In 1973 I applied to Harvard Business School with a 2.35
GPA. 1973 admission statistics are unavailable, but for an incomplete
comparison today's Harvard students average a GPA of 3.5 - no students were accepted with a GPA lower than 2.6.
- I graduated Harvard Business School with an MBA and below-average grades.
CRIMINAL RECORD:
- Two negligent collisions in July and August 1962 in Houston, TX (p20)
- Arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in New Haven, CT in December 1966 (p20) for stealing a christmas tree while drunk
- Convicted of drunk driving on September 4, 1976 in Kennebunkport, Maine.
- As a strong supporter of the Vietnam War I did everything in my power to avoid military service, both foreign and domestic:
- In February 1968 I applied to the Texas Air National Guard after scoring the bare minimum of 25th Percentile (p25) for the Officer's Pilot Aptitude Test. With low scores, no other qualifications listed, and a long list of applicants ahead of me nobody is sure how I got into the guard. Ben Barnes offers one explanation, swearing under oath that he called Brig Gen. Jim Rose at the request of my father's friend Sidney Adger, allowing me a privilege I did not otherwise deserve.
- I left the 111th "Champagne Unit" on May 24 1972, requesting a transfer to the Alabama 9921st Air Reserve, a postal unit with no airplanes and no pilots. I did not appear for any service in the 9921st.
- On July 21, 1972, my transfer request to the 9921st was
rejected and I was commanded to return back to the 111st in Maxwell,
TX. I remained away and did not return to Texas. I refused to submit to a physical exam in August, four months after the Air Force made drug tests mandatory for pilots on April 21, 1972. I was suspended and grounded as a disciplinary measure, ensuring I would never fly again.
- On September 5, 1972, I once again requested a transfer to Alabama, and once again I failed to appear (this time at the 187th). Neither my commanding officer nor Mavanee Bear, my girlfriend at the time claims to have ever seen me in uniform, though I did get a free dental checkup.
- I never met the requirements for honorable discharge, earning only 38 documented points out of a required 50 in 1973-74. I also completed only 36 of 43 required inactive-duty training periods in 1972-73, and 12 of 43 required in 1973-74. Fortunately I "worked something out" and was issued an honorable discharge I did not earn.
- My participation in the National Guard was so low that even by the end of the Vietnam Conflict I had flown only 336 hours, not meeting the minimum standards (500 hours flight experience) for combat duty. Even if I had been called to active duty I would have been unqualified to serve by military regulations.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
- I founded Arbusto Energy in 1979 with money borrowed from family friends including James R Bath, representing Salem Bin Laden. Over the next five years I
accepted at least $4.7 million dollars from my father's friends
including George Ohrstrom and Russell Reynolds, Jr., returning $1.5
million to investors and taking on $3 million in debt. My company was rescued by a buyout from Spectrum 7 by my successful Yale classmates Mercer Reynolds and William DeWitt Jr. in 1984.
- After the failure of Arbusto I was awarded a position as Chairman and CEO of Spectrum 7.
My participation resulted in more failure as the company was driven to
the brink of bankruptcy. I was rescued by a buyout from my father's
friends Phil Kendrick and Stuart Watson at Harken Oil and Gas in 1985.
- Impressed not by my abilities but by my connections to important people I was rewarded for my failure at Spectrum 7 with a seat on the Board of Directors at Harken Oil and Gas. Harken was a miserable failure during the time I spent there - it
posted $23.2 billion in losses. I was investigated by the SEC for
selling my shares one week before the loss announcement, and the resulting investigation explicitly did not exonerate me.
- I was the owner of the Texas Rangers, made possible only by my father's friends William DeWitt and Richard E. Rainwater. My participation resulted in incredible success for myself and terrible misfortune for my neighbors. I
used eminent domain to take taxpayers' land, paid for it with $4.9
million taxpayer dollars, and then spent $191 million more taxpayer
dollars to build myself a stadium. I left the city of Arlington, TX with a $7.5 million debt that I still refuse to pay, even after I sold the Rangers to Thomas Hicks for $250 million (a 2500% profit).
POLITICAL RECORD (DOMESTIC)
- I ran for the House of Representatives in 1978. My campaign was a miserable failure: I lost to Democrat Kent Hance after he criticized my family ties, prep school, Ivy League education, and jogging.
- I ran for President in 2000. My campaign was destined to be a miserable failure until I used a whispering campaign of lies to destroy genuine war hero and fellow Republican John McCain, claiming he had fathered an illegitimate negro child and was emotionally unstable due to his torture as a POW in Vietnam.
- In July 2001 I appointed Harvey Pitt to be the chairman of a "kinder, gentler SEC"
to ease regulation of foreign businesses. The results have been the
largest and most miserable failures of corporate accountability in
modern corporate history: Enron, Worldcom, and now Fannie Mae.
- The value of the dollar has collapsed 30% during my term.
- I am the first President to unconstitutionally restrict my opponents' First Amendment rights by allowing my supporters to remain at the venue while restricting my detractors to "free speech zones," fenced-off areas up to half mile away from the media, the audience, and especially myself.
- I've communicated less with the American people than any other president in the history of televised news, holding only one White House press conference every 3.25 months, compared to my father's 1.6 per month.
- To prevent activist judges from rewriting the
constitution to serve an agenda that Congress would never approve, I
attempted to rewrite the constitution to serve an agenda they never
came close to approving. My campaign for the Federal Marriage Amendment
was a miserable failure: it failed to pass either house of congress. In
the Senate the cloture call to end debate yielded only 48 votes, not
the 67 required to pass the Senate, not the 60 votes required for
cloture, not even the 50 votes of a simple majority.
- My 2004 budget set the record for the largest deficit in history: either $477 billion or $521 billion (CBO and OMB numbers, respectively).
- Nearly every major economic indicator has deteriorated since I took office in
January 2001. Real GDP growth during my term is the lowest of any
presidential term in recent memory. Total non-farm employment has
contracted and the unemployment rate has increased. Bankruptcies are up
sharply, as is our dependence on foreign capital to finance an
exploding current account deficit. All three major stock indexes are
lower now than at the time of my inauguration. The percentage of
Americans in poverty has increased, real median income has declined,
and income inequality has grown.
- As president I ignored Clinton's warnings about Al Qaeda,
mentioning that organization only once in public statements on national
security between January 20, 2001 and September 10, 2001. In the same time period I mentioned Saddam Hussein 104 times and missile defense 101 times.
- On August 6, 2001 I received a briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" which warned that "the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking." For one month I dealt with numerous other issues until the unfolding of the most successful terrorist attack in US history on September 11, 2001.
- With broad international approval I temporarily disrupted
the Taliban government, which has now re-emerged to control much of
southern Afghanistan after I abandoned this campaign for Iraq.
<> I campaigned strongly for war in Iraq. I claimed that:
- Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (none have been found).
- Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda (Iraq opposed Al Qaeda and successfully kept their operatives out of the country before September 2001. The strongest claim to support a connection came from Czech intelligence services and is now retracted. The 9/11 commission "did not believe that such a meeting occurred".)
- Iraq would give their weapons of mass destruction to terrorists (A secular Saddam would never give his "ace card" to religious elements he opposed throughout his life and could not control)
- The war would be "self-financing" through oil sales ($200 billion total has been allocated, and $138 billion has already been spent with more to follow).
- The war would end quickly, with troop deployments down to 30,000 troops by Autumn 2003 (March
2004 troop deployment: 114,000 US plus 23,000 Coalition troops in Iraq;
26,000 US and Coalition logistical support troops in Kuwait).
- Americans would be greeted as liberators (Public perception of Americans as liberators dropped from 43% at the time of invasion to 2% after Abu Ghraib).
I punished those who spoke unwelcome truth:
- I sent Joseph Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had
attempted to purchase uranium, where Wilson determined that those
claims were based on forged documents. Despite his report I continued to make public Iraq/Nigeria statements as late as January 2003. When Wilson publicly contradicted me, one of my senior officials exposed the CIA cover of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, in an article written by Robert Novak and printed in the New York Times on July 14 2003. No one is sure which senior White House official leaked the order or who was aware, but the fact that I hired James Sharp in June 2004 to represent me as a personal criminal defense attorney is significant when you consider that there
is no attorney-client privilege between a president and a White House
counsel that allows the counsel to withhold information from a Federal
grand jury.
- I fired Lawrence Lindsey as my economics advisor in early December 2002 for claiming that the Iraq War would cost between $100 and $200 billion. ($138 billion has been spent and $200 billion has been budgeted... so far)
- I fired Jay Garner as US Administrator of Iraq in March 2004
for calling for immediate elections instead of allowing American
companies to privatize government-owned assets. (American privatization
and lack of a legitimate Iraqi government is one of the major reasons
for unrest in Iraq.)
- I made US Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki a lame duck in June 2003, defying precedent and announcing his successor 14 months in advance of his retirement after he announced that "several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq".
- I threatened to have Medicare analyst Richard Foster fired if he replied to Congressional requests and reported that the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill would cost $551 billion, $156 billion over the White House's favored estimate of $395 billion.
- After the Iraq Health Ministry released figures showing that US and Coalition forces killed twice as many Iraqis as the Insurgents the Iraqis are supposedly being protected from, I acted decisively by ordering the Iraq Health Ministry to not release any more figures.
- I rewarded those who spoke welcome lies, paying Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress $340,000 per month for their false intelligence gathered about Iraq.
- Although Chalabi and the INC had been dropped from the CIA payroll in
1996 for being an unreliable source and also dismissed by the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) for the same reason, I continued to use Chalabi and the INC to support claims of WMDs in Iraq. Even after their information proved false and no weapons were found I remained so close to Chalabi that he sat with Laura Bush as my "Special Guest" during my September 2003 State of the Union address. I continued to pay the INC regularly until May 2004, when allegations surfaced that Chalabi had passed classified American intelligence to Iran.
- I put tremendous pressure on the CIA to come up with information to support policies that have already been adopted (as determined by the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq). When the CIA and DIA refused to verify intelligence items I wanted to believe, Donald Rumsfeld and I created the Office of Special Plans. This independent department within the Pentagon was designed to bypass the CIA and feed the discredited and unreliable information I wanted to believe was true
back into the intelligence stream in order to support conclusions that
the CIA and DIA could not. The OSP took much of the discredited
information from Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress.
- I opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security for nine
months, before turning around to take credit for its creation.
- I opposed the creation of an independent 9/11 panel. After being forced to accept the commission, I gave it only $12 million in funding to do its work (compared to $50 million combined for Whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky investigation) before turning around to take credit for its creation.
- My war against Al Qaeda has been a miserable failure. The
International Institute for Strategic Studies' most conservative
estimate (May 25, 2004) is that the occupation of Iraq has helped Al Qaeda recruit 18,000 operatives in more than 60 countries. By my State Department's own estimates, world terror attacks are now at their highest level in 20 years, up 36% since 2001.
- I have held 660 prisoners in Guantanamo, Cuba for over two years without trial or formal charge. My prisoners, several of whom were between the ages of 13 and 16, have never been formally charged. They are kept in steel cages, subjected to ongoing
torture, and denied access to legal counsel in opposition to Supreme
Court rulings (Rasul v. Bush). These prisoners are "the worst of the worst", "hard core, well trained terrorists" and their guilt is beyond doubt, which is why I've set 87 of them free without explanation or apology.
- In the past year I claim to have trained 100,000 Iraqi police forces, but only 8,169 of those have passed the required 8-week training course. Another 46,176 are listed as "untrained".
- My Secretary of Defense is the first in US history to have acknowledged ordering an intentional violation of the Geneva Conventions, in which Abu Ghraib prisoners were held "off the books" and hidden from the Red Cross. When this order was made public I refused to discipline him in any way, instead complimenting him on his job performance.
- After being informed of abuses at Abu Ghraib on January 16 (first reported on January 13) which included "Threatening male detainees with rape" and "Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick" I made "freedom from torture chambers and rape rooms" a centerpiece in my speeches until April 29 when the story finally broke on 60 Minutes II.
- My administration is the first since the Civil War to
imprison US Citizens (Jose Padilla) as "enemy combatants" without
charges, trial, or access to legal counsel. In a 5-4 decision (Rumsfeld v. Padilla) the Supreme Court dodged the opportunity to rule on the legality, ruling that the case had been improperly filed.
- My administration broke new legal ground by using material witness warrants to give effective life sentences to US citizens without charge, trial, access to legal counsel, or even plans to prosecute.
- My justice department was the first in US history to attempt to enforce federal regulations while refusing to disclose what those regulations are.
- My legal war against terror has been a miserable failure: I have detained more than 5,000 people on suspicion of terrorist ties, some of whom have been held without charge or without access to a lawyer. I have successfully convicted zero.
FUTURE GOALS:
Despite these mistakes and miserable failures I have never admitted
error or expressed regret or displeasure at any outcome. Quite the
contrary - at every opportunity I have called these outcomes successes,
and voters can look forward to more of these successes in the future.
Please consider my qualifications and record of accomplishments when
you cast your vote this November.
bushresume@monkeydyne.com
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