Fearless I wasn't disagreeing with you. I probably shouldn't have "quoted" you. Sorry for the unintended foul.
Blaming GWB for this would be folly - but he IS associated with it. As a period - his presidency is the one that started with the bust and went out with a meltdown. In between there were some wars, terrorism and lots of other complex thing. Bush is part of it - there's no denying that. Historians will investigate further to find the unravelling of events, but in systems science it is much more neutral and just look at how things interact. That also gives a lot of thought to as to HOW systems/situations emerge, through systems philosophy and systems intelligence (the direct interactions and influences structuring a system).
Bush wanted to be the next Reagan. But he ends up being just like his daddy. War. Huge deficits. Bailouts. The Republican ideology doesn't work. The Dems must come in and clean up the mess once again following a Bush.
I think that the "old money" elite in the US allowed and supported the even more elitist-thinking Neocons in an aggressive move to "reshape" things abroad... See http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm and www.anglospherechallenge.com
The economy has gotten to be such an issue that the Democrats are winning now... People in the US are not THAT crazy that they would vote for the same. Knock on wood ... I said the same for the 2004 election too... Social control and psychology works in mysterious ways - see RAND Corporation research, while American Enterprise Institute research in formalizing the elitist ideas. That is just by going through some of their research areas - and remembering the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerial_state
Yes, he's associated with it. As in, he pushed regulations to reign in the gse's in 02 and 05, but the dems would have none of it. The Chris and Barney show played on.
The Neocon ideology centers around their "right" (they call it "responsibility") to claim and do things without asking for consent - how they need to take "leadership". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerial_state http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_theory