GWB is president because he lied and got away with it. Too many people believed the lies.
Consider Iraq. Either you believe it was connected to 9/11 in some way or you don’t. If you do believe that Iraq has a connection to 9/11, then the invasion makes sense. And whatever bad things happen there are unfortunate, but neccessary to effectively take on the bad guys. On the other hand, if you think they are unrelated, then you think it was a gigantic mistake on ever level.
Fact: Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11. There is no reputable independent source that will say otherwise.
Fact: The Bush administration knew this, and decided to go to Iraq anyways, spreading lies to the American public.
What did the exit polls show? 55% of the voters believed that Iraq was part of the war on terrorism, and the voted 81%-18% for Bush.
Consider the WMDs. If you believed that Iraq had WMDs, and you believe that Sadaam was a nutjob who was unpredictable, then you might reasonably feel we had to do something about it. If you thought there were never WMDs and we had defanged Saddam back in Gulf War I, then you didn’t see what the all the fuss was about.
Fact: Iraq did not have WMDs. They had close to zero offensive capability. We were more threatened by Australia then we were by Iraq.
Fact: The Bush administration knew this, and decided to go to Iraq anyways, spreading lies to the American public.
What does/did the public believe about this? In November 2003 (the closest date I can find), polls showed that about half the country overall believed there were WMDs in Iraq, while 80% of Republicans did. (According to Gallup, over half the country now believes they were lied to about WMDs.)
And Iraq and related issues were the #1 issue for voters, not “moral issues”. Of the 46% who bought into the fantasy that the Iraq War made the US more secure, 90% voted for Bush.
How about the economy?
Fact: The Bush taxcuts were bad economic policy, roundly denounced by hordes of economists. They were not designed to help the economy. Yet, 41% of the populace believed that they were even after 4 years of job losses and poor economic news, and they broke 92%-7% for Bush.
So what do have here? We have a country were roughly half the people believe in fairy tales they’ve been told. In fact, as the article nicely demonstrates (and has been shown elsewhere), the majority of Bush supporters simply don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.
72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%). Fifty-six percent assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD and 57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program. ..
Similarly, 75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda, and 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found. Sixty percent of Bush supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts, and 55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission. Here again, large majorities of Kerry supporters have exactly opposite perceptions….
only 31% of Bush supporters recognize that the majority of people in the world oppose the US having gone to war with Iraq.
So are people idiots? Well, there’s never a shortage of idiots. But for the most part, that isn’t the answer, and it ain’t their fault. Citizens shouldn’t have to spend their time investigating to see if their leaders are telling the truth. I spend a lot of time diving through news sources, going to primary sources, reading informed commentary. Most people don’t. Most people shouldn’t. In a well-functioning democracy, there is no need to. Your leaders normally aren’t presumed to be liars, and a properly-functioning media will let you know when they are. We do not have a properly-functioning media. I will simply point you to 6 years of cites at The Daily Howler.
Yep, GWB lied. He wasn’t called on it. Enough people believed. He won. He continues to lie. The US, and the world, is the worse for it.
(“Lies” is a term that carries a lot of meaning behind it. If it makes you feel better, substitute in “a careful program of misstatements, misrepresentations, and disinformation designed in such a way that they could always be defended on some tortuous hair-splitting fine point, but were designed purely to decieve” To me, that’s a lie.)