Well, the bar is set very low, nowadays, for both parties.
Though... people tend to forget this, but before Iraq and Katrina Dubya was actually quite popular - the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the No Child Left Behind and stuff like that gets some recognition even in retrospect.
(well, at least it seemed so from the outside)
Dubya was "popular" with the "who'd you like to have a beer with," crowd. And the 2000 election was close enough to merit the famous Florida recount. That being said, even back then EVERYONE, including myself, freshly new in the U.S, knew he was the party's puppet the the person really pulling the strings was Chaney. He was also surrounded by staff that worked for his father.
His biggest moment was immediately after 9/11 and his, "We will find you, kill you, haunt your dreams" speech. That quickly went to shit when, again, obvious to everyone, he lumped Iraq with Afghanistan in his "Axis of Evil" and completely made up the WMD thing to invade... sorry, "liberate," the Iraqi people.
His pre-9/11 numbers weren't great, appeared to be on his way to being a 1 term president, but the whole, "presidents during war always get reelected" thing worked out for him.
As for No Child Left Behind, it was good in theory, horrendous in practice. As a high schooler during it and my mom an elementary teacher for 13 years, all it did was add more standardized tests that told us nothing of how the teacher, student and school was actually performing.
But yeah, in hindsight, he looks WAY better than either current candidate. For starters he wasn't a million years old while in office.
What I do miss from Dubya is he was still "old school" republican and you knew what you got. Typical economic/social, post-Reagan, conservatism.
That's what it was like from the inside as an outsider. I'd like to hear from an insider on the inside.
