What is the difference between Obama and Bush?

The supporters of each man would say there are big differences. President Bush was much more of a religious conservative, for example, and he supported very conservative policies on social issues; he also surrounded himself with advisers who had strong religious beliefs, and that informed some of those policies. President Obama, while generally a moderate, is certainly more liberal than President Bush was on matters of stem cell research, gay marriage, and access to contraception.

On foreign policy, both men seemed to agree on the necessity of being at war in Afghanistan, but President Obama was opposed to the War in Iraq and pledged to bring the troops home from there. And President Bush had strong ties to the oil industry and to the King of Saudi Arabia, which Obama did not have. Critics of President Bush also have observed that he was not very intellectually curious and did not want to hear any views that challenged what he already believed. President Obama, on the other hand, was a former lawyer and more accustomed to considering a number of potential choices before making his decision. And finally, both men were raised very differently. Mr. Bush came from an upper-class family that was very well-connected politically-- his father was a war hero and a former diplomat. Mr. Obama was a biracial child at a time when interracial marriages were not common; he was raised in a lower middle-class home, by a single mom (and a father who left when young Barack was only two) and later by his maternal grandparents.

But answering this question is difficult, because most of the differences are political: Bush is a conservative Republican, while Obama is a moderate (not a liberal, based on his voting and governing record) Democrat. Those who disliked Bush tended to be moderate or liberal Democrats; those who dislike Obama tend to be Republican and conservative.