Sunday, March 09, 2008

Bush's Legacy As a Statesman and Teacher

GW has been frequently mocked for not being very smart. But when you think of it our current president has introduced more terms into the national lexicon than any other president in recent memory. For example:

  • Rendition
  • Subprime
  • Hanging chad
  • Unfunded mandates
  • Foreign combatants
  • Waterboarding
  • SIV
  • Axis of Evil
  • Coalition of the Willing
  • Strategery
  • Warrantless surveillance
  • Preventative war
  • Nucular
  • Unilateralism
And he's also bringing back some classic terms that haven't come up much in recent decades:
  • Stagflation
  • Quagmire
  • Executive Privilege
  • National Debt
  • Soup kitchens
Now that's what I call a legacy. Can you think of some more?

1 comment:

Crazy Politico said...

Most of the terms you attribute to Bush have been around for decades.

For instance, subprime mortgages have always been there. It just happens that the Fed lowered interest rates enough in the 2001-2004 period to make them attainable for people who should have stayed away.

The ACLU claims that the current of rendition policy goes back to Bill Clinton's administration (http://www.aclu.org/safefree/extraordinaryrendition/22203res20051206.html)

Foreign combatants, or "non-aligned" combatants is a term used in Geneva Accords for the last 5 decades.

Unilateralism became "en vogue" with Clinton's actions in Bosnia and Serbia, without UN or NATO approval. They both signed onto each action after the fact.

Stagflation, while being attributed to Bush is a policy decided by the Federal reserve, not the president.

I'll give you Nucular and Strategery, though one of the two is actually a word from an SNL skit, not that Bush used.