George W Bush

History will record that George W. Bush made one critically important contribution to our country — and to the entire world. He and his administration provided unquestionable proof of the bankruptcy of radical-conservative ideology, and set the stage for a qualitatively different progressive era in American politics. History is not linear. It is not gradual or evolutionary. Human progress proceeds in fits and starts like a volcano, where pressure gradually builds over years and then erupts with enormous power.
Very often those explosions of progress — periods when we expand the realm of democratic values, human dignity, economic opportunity and optimism — are precipitated by periods of domination by the forces of privilege, inequality and selfishness.

By assuring that all of the fruits of the growth of productivity in our economy went to the wealthiest 2% of our population, the Bush administration set the stage for the current economic collapse.