I don't miss Bush at all.
One thing to note about the political climate of the era is that Dubya wasn't as reviled during his presidency as Trump is, now. Sure he didn't win the popular vote, either, but he lost it with better numbers than Trump did.
Accordingly, it was totally mainstream to buy into Bush's complete imperialistic bullshit. And the Christian right were still more common to encounter. When Obama was elected, we gradually faded out of an era where it was common to accuse people of being agents for the gay agenda.
That said, I still have nostalgia for the internet of the period, which didn't suffer as much monopoly or panicked parents as today (going online now, it's like hundreds of thousands of people simply vanished). There was a way more exploratory attitude to the internet, and among other things Google's algorithms were vastly better because they were still focused on improving their search engine (and they had more competition) and not dominating everything else. Stickam existed, html-customizable social networks existed, free online gaming was a lot higher quality (everything's been watered down and priced up for the shit-tier devices that are popular right now), and basically most of what we have now is weak as shit. Like there simply isn't an equivalent replacement for Stickam that I'm aware of, nothing where you can just start up a free broadcast and people will come just 'cuz it's in a public directory. That doesn't exist anymore.
Flash and Java were cool, too.
And I miss emo kids, just because they were fucking nice to look at. Hipster male fashion isn't nearly as flamery and cute as emo kids, it just reminds me of 2006 and when 'hipster' fashion wasn't quite mass-marketed bullshit yet and the music associated with the label was better.
