During the 2008 campaign Barack Obama ran more against lame-duck President Bush than against his Republican opponent, John McCain. The campaign is now long over, and yet President Obama still seems haunted by the ghost of his predecessor. Last week, for example, he was railing at the Bush phantom, whom he blamed for his received economic mess. In the world of Barack Obama everything he inherited was someone else’s fault — unless he believes past policies offer him some advantage and thus are to be claimed as entirely his own.
The stock market is sliding. Gas and food prices are soaring. The housing market is as bad as it has been for the last three years. Unemployment is back over 9 percent. Economic growth is anemic. The national debt has risen $5 trillion in just three years. This year’s $1.6 trillion budget deficit is not stimulating anything but uncertainty and despair. Medicare and Social Security are not sustainable at present rates of payouts. Record numbers of Americans draw food stamps and unemployment insurance. An unpopular Obamacare has not even been implemented yet, and the administration has already granted 1,400 exemptions from it.
Advertisement
In other words, much as Jimmy Carter took the hard times of 1975–76 and turned them into the mess of high interest, high inflation, high unemployment, and high gas prices — while blaming the American people for their malaise — so too Barack Obama has made almost everything worse and is getting angrier at other people and events (the European meltdown, the Japanese tsunami, the Middle Eastern unrest) in the process.
The administration’s massive borrowing, new regulations, promised higher taxes, opposition to new oil leases and pipelines, takeovers (from GM and Chrysler to health care), and rhetorical assault on the successful in private enterprise have turned a bottoming-out recession into a near-permanent slump. Those with capital do not want to invest in new workers or equipment because they believe the president does not like them, in the sense that he will raise taxes to take away their hard-won profits, or will impose some sort of new regulation — like Obamacare or prohibitions against opening factories in right-to-work states — to make profits impossible. The result is that they have been for two years largely sitting out this “recovery,” as the economic witch-doctors — Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, Larry Summers — come and go.
Meanwhile, Obama serially faults the Bush policies of 2008, not his own of 2009–11 — something that becomes ever more difficult as the Bush administration’s average unemployment rate, GDP growth, deficits, and gas prices now seem not all that bad. And to the degree that economists fault Bush for the financial meltdown of 2008, they have cited his excessive federal spending, government intrusion into the housing market, and chronic budget deficits — just those areas where Obama has trumped Bush and turned his misdemeanors into felonies.
Sometimes Obama’s obsession with Bush’s ghost is more implicit. Take national security. He has quite boldly embraced and expanded all the Bush protocols he once trashed, largely because he has discovered that Guantanamo, tribunals, renditions, preventive detention, the Patriot Act, and Predator drones keep terrorists away from the United States. Yet to this day, Obama has not told the American people why renditions used to be bad and are now acceptable, or why the Bush Predator-drone program of targeted assassinations was wrong but needed to be quintupled. Instead, he makes it clear that a President Obama would have absolutely no patience with someone like a griping Senator Obama.
Obama has not changed the Bush-Petraeus plan for Iraq — but has never explained why he once denounced what he now advocates. Now the president has dropped his former multicultural reaching-out to the theocracy in Iran and the dictatorship in Syria. But again, what caused the reversion to the Bush-era distrust of these awful regimes? Has Obama matured in other areas, in the fashion that he recently confessed that his opposition to raising the debt ceiling in 2006 was the sort of irresponsible politicking that he now deplores in others?
When George Bush was president, promoting democracy was derided as an arrogant neoconservative imposition of our values onto different cultures. Now pushing democracy in the Arab world is called advocacy for human rights. Yet once more, Obama never explains why he channels the prior president’s policies without even the barest reference to his name.
Obama knows the media are invested in his success. Therefore he feels no urgency to explain to the public why policies enacted years ago deserve blame for their failures and receive no praise for their successes. It is almost as if Obama on some days claims, “Bush did it,” while on others insisting, “Bush didn’t do it.”
The young president, you see, cannot help it. He is haunted by the ghost of a president past.
This is the result of many things, but the chief ingredients are likely inexperience, and lack of personal confidence and any innate leadership qualities.
Lacking his own leadership model, or grasp of history, he is merely parroting the actions of the last President he can remember clearly.
Couple all that together with an ego never before seen in the White House and you get a guy who doesn't think he has to explain why everything that was once evil or corrupt is now acceptable policy.
He gets away with it because the vast majority of his supporters let him get away with it. Post January 2009 popular opposition to all things Bush simply evaporated. Anti-war sentiment chief among them.
During Obama's presidency a number of milestones connected to the wars in the Middle East have occurred and have been largely unnoticed. We passed the 5,000 casualty point during the summer of '09, the 6,000 casualty point in late spring of this year, and, of course, in late November of 2010 we passed the Soviets for length of time fighting in Afghanistan.
Does anyone doubt that had McCain won the election these milestones would have been greeted with well-publicized national marches and protests? Does anyone honestly believe that had McCain involved us similarly in Libya that we'd be hearing the nuanced pro-war discussion among Democrats as we do now?
Except for the few principled anti-war activists (so few we barely notice them) the entire anti-war sentiment against Bush was a sham. And politicians aside (politicians are, after all, politicians...then can't help it) I take endless joy in reminding 2008 anti-war Obama supporters (those among my family, acquaintances, and co-workers) how suddenly quiet they all became. Even the 'silent' protests of yard signs and bumper stickers became a mere shadow of what they once were.
I've even successfully tweaked a few people by suggesting that if McCain/Palin had won we'd be out of Iraq & Afghanistan by now as the public outcry would have left them no choice. Having thus far effectively quashed opposition to Obama as either extremist or racist the media and his voters have essentially paved the way for him to do whatever he wants. And since he is a weak, unlearned, incurious, and easily lead man we, predictably, find no coherence in his policies...except the inevitable downward spiral that results from his incoherency.
"I've even successfully tweaked a few people by suggesting that if McCain/Palin had won we'd be out of Iraq & Afghanistan by now as the public outcry would have left them no choice."
Mr VDH is a great Historian, but a blinkered analyst.
The reason " Blaming Bush " works is because beyond the halls of the faithful and the National Review the vast majority of Americans know a complete failure when they see it. Mr Bush was a catastrophe, pure and simple. Mr Bush was a decent Christian gentleman but was incompetent for the job.
The results are obvious,until we acknowledge the failure and understand what went wrong We cannot come in from the cold.
Mr Bush utter instability to distinguish a competent subordinate from a an incompetent subordinates, Mr Bush's expansion of the government on borrowed dollars, Mr Bush's failure to support the Army , or expand it or get it the right equipment, all while using it constantly as a social worker, the list is endless.(The protectionism, the corruption, the religious sanctimony,open borders, this list can go on and on.)
Me Obama is the end result of Mr Bush's failure's of leadership and policy. Until conservatives can acknowledge and accept these failures the bulk of Americans will not trust us with the Government, nor should they.
We spent 20 years running against Jimmy Carter, Mr Bush did far more actual damage to the country than the peanut ever managed.As a pinata "W" will never go away.
so the question still remains... if bush was such a failure, why does the current president choose to employ or expand on policies he vehmently derided and vowed he would never do... admit it andy, you've been had...
Oh Andy. Why don't you think for yourself for once. While I fully acknowlege your points and your opinion about former President Bush, you are FAILING to acknowlege that in the last two and a half years, Obama's policies have tanked any problems he inherited or had from the Bush presidency. You do realize his policies have ADDED, SINCE!!!!! Bush left office more than what the deficit was when Bush left! You do realize more people were AGAINST a government mandated, regulated Health Care System- yet Obama insisted the shove it down our throats. You do realize he denounced the war, PROMISED to cut down our military presence in the middle east, and in fact two ADDITIONAL conflicts are added. Must be a sad to be a person like you that can't stand up for reality, and face these failures on his part instead of defending like he can do NO wrong in the world.
VDH nails it, as always. BTW, let's not forget that then Senator Obama was perfectly OK with the financial bailout of the fall of '08. Doesn't he deserve at least partial responsibility for the very Bush policies he trashes? And to History Buff, good point but I believe the American public is much more informed than in 1936. Whether it is or not, there is simply no way Obama's going to win 46 states like FDR did in 1936. No..possible...way.
It's a pity that Obama hasn't made the fundamental changes required to turn things around. He started his term knee deep in it and whether by choice or by inability to move our lawmakers, he is still knee deep in it. I had high hopes for him.
Obama's initial problems could be attributed to his total lack of relevant experience to be President of the United States. He had NO executive experience and in the legislature of IL and in the U.S. Senate typically voted "present" on controversial issues.
Now, after 18 months in office, his problems clearly stem from a lack of judgment, ability to think critically and inability to relate to the American public.
I take these opportunities, and have been since the election of '08, to offer my opinion that the recession did not begin in '07, as economists on both sides of the aisle insist it did. We were still in +GDP the second quarter of '08. Yes, we had the Fannie scandals, and the sub-prime scandals and yes panic was in the air. But the panic was heightened by the knowledge that one B. Hussein Obama, and baggage, had promised fundamental transformation. They don't call them businessmen for nothing.
