“No one in government takes responsibility for anything anymore. We foster, we obfuscate, we rationalize. ‘Everybody does it,’ that’s what we say. So we’ve come to occupy a moral safe house, where everyone’s to blame, so no one’s guilty”- Aaron Sorkin, The West Wing
Like many presidential candidates before him, Senator Barack Obama ran in 2008 as the reform candidate. He ran as the Washingtonoutsider – a fresh and bold voice in an antiquated city of corruption and graft. He ran as the man that would vanquish the partisanship of the Bush years from our nation’s capital. He ran as the man who would simplify government, and turn it into a well- oiled machine. He claimed he would go line by line to fix our budget, halve the debt in his first four years, and cleanse the disarrayed leviathan of bureaucracy and inefficiency. He claimed lobbyists would not be allowed in his White House. And above all, he would restore our citizen’s trust in our government, and put their lives on a path back to prosperity.
All of this was enticing, refreshing and above all, a great sell. But now, three and a half years later, none of what has been mentioned above has been accomplished, and Republicans have made that argument at every turn of the campaign. And though they do not expect Mr. Obama to roll over, he and his supporters’ new plan of attack has taken political hypocrisy to new levels- a phenomenon that, before 2009, no one thought could possibly happen.
At a fundraiser this past Tuesday (he’s quickly approaching 200 for his first term), the president argued the allegations made against him about his fiscal mismanagement are not only hypocritical, but of complete falsehood:
“I love listening these guys give us lectures about debt and deficits…it’s like somebody goes to the restaurant, orders a big steak dinner, martini, all that stuff and then just as you’re sitting down, they leave and accuse you of running up the tab. That’s what they do.”
The problem with the quote above is not that President Bush ran up the debt and deficit spending (he did), but somehow the American people shouldn’t expect the President to put forth measures to fix it. Nor should they expect him to actually stop the practice, which has helped cripple our economic growth. Essentially, like a seven year old caught with his hand in the cookie jar after his friend had already plundered his own, Mr. Obama feels he can do just as Mr. Bush did, and then blame it on him.
At a fundraiser Tuesday, the President continues to direct blame for our poor economy as opposed to proposing remedies to encourage growth.(PBS Newshour)
Mr. Obama inherited four trillion dollars in new debt from Mr. Bush over eight years, including President Bush’s’ final fiscal year (counting bank bailouts and TARP) which included one trillion dollars of debt on its own. But just because President Obama was handed a tough situation (he was) means he automatically gets eight years to fix it? Instead of making the tough decisions of actually attacking our government’s inefficiencies (out of control spending, overloaded welfare and entitlement programs) the president decided to follow in Mr. Bush’s footsteps and then hop right over him.
Mr. Obama has accrued annual deficits of one trillion in not one year as Mr. Bush did, but in every year of his first term, running up more debt in that one term than any other President has in two. The people of the United States understand Mr. Bush made mistakes- namely handing over the keys to the Treasury vault to the Republican congress presiding in the years 2000-2006. President Bush paid for those mistakes when said Republicans were thrown out in that 2006 election, paving the way for the Pelosi Democrats to take control of the legislature. But those Democrats spent just as much, and when Mr. Obama was sworn in he soon followed suit. At this point it can be argued, and should be argued as advocated by Peggy Noonan and Jonah Goldberg, that President Obama’s first term is an extension of President Bush’s. Not only has he continued President Bush’s policies of containing terrorism (a good thing) but continued his fiscal actions of irresponsibility (a very bad thing).
To bring this full circle, as it comes back to campaigning for every politician, the message put forth in this speech by the president is essentially that because Mr. Romney is a Republican he will continue the “failed polices” of the Bush years. And, all things being equal, because the country voted for Mr. Obama as a repudiation of Mr. Bush, he should be returned to office to prevent a third term for our beleaguered former President. If that were the case though, and President Obama’s policies were such a stark contrast to Mr. Bush’s and above reproach, Democrats wouldn’t have been wiped out of the House in 2010 in historic fashion. And, as the incumbent president, Mr. Obama would not be polling only 0.8% higher than Mr. Romney in the RCP average for national polls.
Republicans lost their way in the previous decade. Mr. Obama made a point to inform the nation of that in 2008, but two years later the likes of Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney have agreed with him. There are new leaders of the Republican Party who are promoting new policies (albeit founded in the old American principles of personal responsibility) that directly combat the fiscal problems of the Bush years, whose results have now been prolonged by Mr. Obama.
President Obama has had a tough start to his re-election campaign. Most recently he made the claim (or gaffe) that the private sector “is doing fine,” as dismal job numbers were reported that created a stomach punch reaction in the stock market. So now he has reverted to the old adage of blaming President Bush for our woes, and the republicans who, if returned to the White House, will bring us back to those evils. But those problems haven’t ended under the President; they have been exacerbated by his own initiatives and that of his party at a frightening pace. President Obama should perhaps think twice about making the constant references to President Bush, as he only continues to draw comparisons to his own actions in his first term, and their failures.
– John P. Burns
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