Every time I see this thread, I read through the title and this happens:

"How has Bush failed"

And I start to chuckle right there. How has Bush *not* failed? I then start to worry that if someone only reads that far, the forum's server will crash.

When I think of all the political capital he had after 9/11 and the 80%+ public support, it just makes me sad to think about what he failed to do with it.

He could have fixed, at least partially, our huge Social Security problem through partial privatization. Not only would that have helped SS, but it would have been a huge boon to the economy when all that money got invested in American businesses.

There was a time where he talked about making our space program a priority. That never happened. The technological breakthroughs that we lost out of are impossible to imagine.

Those are just two examples.

It is a real shame for someone to do so little with 8 years in office and various periods of time where he had a lot of public support. For the most part, our economy has been strong and thus opportunities were there. He just failed to seize them.