> Corporations actually have a built in accountability - if they don't have customers onboard with the idea that they are providing goods and services effectively then they disappear and their owners get hit right in the financials.

Do they? The continued existence of most American telecoms and insurers would appear to prove otherwise.

Really, the issue with American politics is that presidential incumbents rarely get challenged by their own parties, and the two-party system is terrible for providing any sort of nuanced choice. Bush's legacy was truly punished in 2008, when America elected the most serious looking anti-Bush candidate running by one of the largest electoral and popular vote shares in recent history. (Both Hillary Clinton and John McCain were successfully painted as not anti-Bush enough during that campaign season.) And generally speaking American democracy doesn't outright prosecute former leaders, because generally speaking the government does not like the appearance of political retribution.

John Kerry was also not a great candidate to have run with an anti-Iraq campaign plank, and 2004 was too soon for most of the country to have soured on the war.