I assume the poster is talking about the post 9/11 climate, where the country was solidly behind President Bush, while the federal government was busy ramping up Guantanamo, the patriot act, water boarding, etc. in the name of fighting terrorism.
... a one-party state, Homeland security, Judith Miller, two wars of aggression on foreign soil (one completely illegal), the President choosing not to enforce laws he didn't like, every critical voice being labelled "unpatriotic", every media channel bleeding nationalism 24-7... the sort of thing that in other countries we'd call "a regime".
A regime of 4 "good" years maybe, before it started getting real blowback for all of its excesses. In regimes more properly called regimes - those good years last for decades, or the lifetimes of their supreme leaders. So.. at least we got that going for us.
Absolutely, the two-terms limit held up and anyway Katrina had broken the wave for good.
There is an alternative timeline where Katrina doesn't happen and GWB forces a reform of two-terms "to get the job done in Iraq, we need to stay the course", or something else to that effect (like Putin swapping jobs to get around term limits). That would have been very scary.
