George W Bush Leadership Qualities

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Leadership qualities often vary person to person based on what they believe is important to them and their values. The main leadership qualities that I look for in a strong president are, humility, confidence in the face of adversity, a strong vision for the country's future, and the ability to be a bipartisan leader. All presidents will face adversity at some point during their time in office and they need to have the confidence to react appropriately based on the information given to them at the time. On occasion new information on an issue may come to light which totally changes a situation, putting the reaction of a president in the wrong. In these moments, presidents need humility to be able to change their stance and move in the right …show more content…

Bush is very rarely looked back on positively. However, President Bush faced far more adversity during his time in office than most presidents do, which is often forgotten. President Bush dealt with the attacks on 9/11 only nine months after he was sworn into office! Faced with the now very real threat of terror in the United States, President Bush launched the war against terrorism by signing the Patriot Act. He then invaded Afghanistan to take down the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Later in 2003, President Bush invaded Iraq to take down Sadaam Hussein, who was in league with terrorist groups. These actions were taken to protect us, the American people, and our goal of dismantling the Taliban and taking down Sadaam Hussein was achieved. To me the war waged against terrorism is definitely one of President Bush’s successes, as it showed that America would not tolerate terrorism whatsoever. However, the wars did have their faults which I will get to later. President Bush also had successes with aiding in the AIDS relief cause in Africa, reducing AIDS rates by nearly ten percent. He was also able to make significant tax cuts to all Americans, President Obama even kept the majority of these tax breaks, except for those given to the top half of a percent of …show more content…

One of his shortcomings include his failure to react promptly and effectively after Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Public dissatisfaction with the U.S. economy and the budget deficit after fighting in two wars also lowered President Bush’s approval ratings. Then, later in his second term, he had to deal with the largest economic disaster since the great depression, the housing market crash. Many people criticized President Bush for bailing out Wall Street because of all of the corruption there; however, without the Wall Street bailout America would have most certainly gone into a second great depression. Finally, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan turned into a disaster when the U.S. tried to maintain stability through occupation, which was widely scorned by the public as most people just wanted out of the middle east. This lead to less and less troops occupying theses areas making it harder to maintain stability in these countries. This could be a factor as to why even more dangerous radical groups such as ISIS and ISIL have emerged

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