It's that he is not very conservative at all in many ways.
While I agree with this, I would neither call him a centrist, nor would I believe he ran on anything other than a conservatiive platform. He talks one way and then does something else.
He is for Big Gov spending; said he was during the campaign;
I want to see the quote for that one... and I want to see it from his 2000 campaign as well.
Maybe you are now for tax increases?
I would be on a certain portion of wealth, especially to get the books in balance and remove the debt we have incurred.
Clinton, if he had the backing of Congress, probably would have done the same thing, as evidenced by him getting us into all sorts of smaller wars.
What's interesting is that a republican congress refused to give Clinton such permission and derided his military activities in Kosovo as well as his attempts to kill OBL using missile strikes. But then with a Rep in charge it is a-okay?
Heck Bush specifically addressed an Iraq War-type hypothetical in his first campaign and used it to differentiate himself from Gore, and democrats, by stating he would not engage in such campaigns and criticized Clinton and Gore for having done so.
I sure remember that as I agreed and it is was one of the things which helped me decide I'd prefer Bush over Gore. Where did that guy go? Oh yeah, the democrats managed to switch Bush and the rest of the republican congress with clones on 911.
the areas most consider failings directly relate to his liberal side, trusting Big Government as an effective tool.
Sorry but you missed one important part of the liberal side which he does not have and has lead to his great failures, trusting the people to be a part of gov't and taking care of them so that they can be a valid part of society and the gov't.
Liberals do not just "trust big gov't", there is a purpose and he has none. It might be pointed out that liberal programs did in fact work and produced what they needed to for society. There were of course valid criticisms of how big they needed to be and the bureacracy behins them, but things didn't start getting worse until we threw the baby out with the bath water, and then simply piped back in the bath water.
Keep in mind the new Homeland Security idea was also a dem idea, and it ruined our ability to respond to disasters.
I love how it was a Rep idea until it started failing, and now its back to being a dem idea. Hey guess what Rand? Whether it was a democratic idea or not, it was a republican created and run organization. Any and all failures at handling problems were Rep based. Heck look at all of the emergency services. Who was doing the appointing? Who was running the show?
Oh yeah, and as far as honesty goes, who appointed Brown who had no credentials for the job while stating he was going to improve emergency services, and then announced what a great job Brown was doing while a manmade disaster was going on because of Brown?
holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)