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[nenjin]

I think we'd just see a new all-time high of political deadlock. Repubs and Dems would make sure no Trump initiatives would pass both houses, while continuing to obstruct each other's legislative agendas, as per normal. Essentially, I think we'd get a one term lame duck president who would be blaming both parties for the poltical situation, instead of just blaming one party most of the time.

It would, ironically, be the closest we'd have gotten to an independent party president, just with a Republican flair.

[Sheb]

Well, yeah, invading countries on made-up pretexts, arresting people all over the world without charges and sending them to black sites to be murdered, killing global actions on climate change... There are plenty of reasons to dislike Bush.

As for Donald "Some, I assume, are good people" Trump, I honestly don't know what he'd do as President. He has no background as elected official to check. Sure, he's being a crazy asstard now to cather to the base, and he has a reputation as an asshole, but he might calm down once in office.

[nenjin]

Sure, he's being a crazy asstard now to cather to the base, and he has a reputation as an asshole, but he might calm down once in office.

Or, he goes full Donald once in power because he'd view himself as being the CEO of a country which he has a controlling share of. Savvy hasn't really described his MO to date.

[Sheb]

And then he gets reined in by Congress and makes an ass of himself for a few years.

[Frumple]

Bankrupted and sold to china. That's the results, just like every school in the country will spontaneously self-immolate if jeb gets elected.

[Sheb]

What's so bad about Jeb and schools? I get he was mightily unpopular with teachers, but as far as I know Floridan schools actually improved during his tenure.

[Frumple]

... they did not.

Be kinda' interested where you picked that up, actually? Everything on the ground, from pretty much everything teachers do, to student learning retention, to college rigor, etc, so on, so forth, went into a decline when that bastard started screwing with things. There was probably some number mangling to make his impact not look like a complete disaster on the surface of things, but no, improved florida schools did not, and largely have not since.

[mainiac]

And then he gets reined in by Congress and makes an ass of himself for a few years.

Trump doesn't have a track record as a politician, but his negotiating strategy is well established.  He finds a counterparty (hereafter refered to as a chump) and gets them to have an investment in something he can influence.  He then proceeds to screw over the chump by tanking the chump's investment.  Then he goes to the chump and says "hey, how about you cut me a sweetheart deal so I have an incentive to stop ruining your investment?"

If you think that brinksmanship over the debt ceiling is bad... for Trump that's just a Tuesday.  He would probably do a default on US treasury bonds just to prove a point.  Basically his philosophy is blackmail is good as long as it's legal... think about how much potential to blackmail Congress the president has.  Think of how destructive it would be to use that power at every possible opportunity.

[Sheb]

Frumple: I vaguely remember stuff about graduation rate for minorities increasing and increase in the student's ranking.

[mainiac]

Politics is weird: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/obama-hurricane-katrina_n_3790612.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

[Frumple]

@Sheb: Yeah, the first is largely untrue -- just checked around a little bit looking for anything good the bugger did. The specific thing bush touted was hispanic graduation rates, which are largely unchanged from when he came in office and now, and as near as I could tell did not increase meaningfully (if at all) during his time in office.* The student's ranking -- if you're talking compared to the rest of the nation, it does look like we saw a meaningful increase in comparative ranking... for forth grade reading. Which was largely due to the housing bubble letting the state afford something along the lines of extra support staff. Roughly everything else was either largely unchanged, or only marginally bettered -- and you can damn sure believe much of the betterment there doesn't have a damn thing to do with the students actually knowing and retaining the material, since the results of the stuff bush pushed for was absolutely toxic for that.

*Though it's fairly equitable to compare then and now, since students and teachers are still getting screwed over by the initiatives he presided over.

E: And it's kinda' amusing the full survey that article links to has been removed, heh. Suspected copyright infringement :V

[Sheb]

Yeah, I've been digging a bit, and while it seems clear that his claims of having improved the system greatly is a steaming pile of political bullshit, it doesn't seems that things have become much worse either. Was overall education spending constant during his time as governor? If he gets stable results for less costs, you could tout that as an improvement of sort.

[mainiac]

It's fairly easy in most management positions to get stable short term results while cutting costs.  You just ignore long term investments.

[Frumple]

Spending per student has increased since, for what it's worth. Roughly on par with the national rate of increase (though still notably below it as a raw amount). I'd pretty strongly posit that if it wasn't for his bullshit, we'd be getting a lot better results from it :V

Seriously, a fair amount of the results stability has been due to eroding standards and shifts from teaching the students to teaching the tests, which was largely brought on by the changes he presided over. Teachers haven't been kvetching just to kvetch, y'know? And a lot of that money has been functionally bleeding out to administrative costs, again, which were at least partially forced to increase due to the foundation jeb laid. Teachers have been losing hours they would have been able to spend on students to dealing with the crap he heralded ever since, for, hey, very little gain. He didn't get stable results, he lucked out to be in office during a pretty good period for the state (pre-housing bubble), and then be out as what he did steadily caused problems since. Buggered everything up, screwed off, and let everyone else deal with the consequences.

[Zangi]

Them golden parachutes as those short term results stop giving positive results.  The awesome part is that not everyone will realize that the problems showing up is due to your policies and even if enough of them did, what can they do about it?