“Bush Did It”, cried Mr. Obama… and the American Public

I’ve missed this space, and am happy to be back. Even two months later, I’m still stuck on the election. Everyone gets their chance at a sour grapes election post mortem: I’m smart enough to see what the loser did wrong, but not smart enough to realize it when it would have mattered. I present to you my grapes…

While killing time between meals on Christmas, I flipped through a new book found under the tree that morning aptly named The Presidents Club. The book, by Michal Duffy and Nancy Gibbs, is an examination of the relationship between modern presidents and their living predecessors. The first chapter introduces the reader to the establishment of the club: the partnership formed between President Harry Truman and former President Herbert Hoover.

I was surprised by their initial description of President Hoover as an accomplished, once beloved public figure and President, in place of the traditional narrative of the man who presided over the infancy of the Great Depression. The authors quickly juxtapose this depiction with that of Mr. Hoover being demonized by Franklin Roosevelt and the citizenry, as if he was the sole cause of American strife in that era of hardship. Hoover became Roosevelt and the Democratic Party’s whipping boy for close to two decades. As economics or common sense would dictate, to place the blame at Hoover’s feet is simplistic at best and duplicitous at worst.

There were certainly steps taken by Mr. Hoover which did worsen the situation, but the same could be said for FDR, who won re-election during the Depression twice. It did not help matters for President Hoover that Republicans obliged the new President and his party banishing Hoover from the public view. His own party refused to defend his record in hopes the public would forget he ever existed, leaving Republicans with a clean slate in subsequent elections. They ignored the former president as much as the Democrats celebrated his supposed failures.

This stuck out to me while reading as I played over in my head the 2012 Election. First kudos go to President Obama and his campaign team. They had a strategy from which they did not waiver, suppressing general voter turnout while generating massive support amongst their base through technological and statistical advantages that the Romney team can only dream about.

But one simple tactic may have done the most damage of all. From the day he stepped into office in 2009, President Obama’s campaign for re-election began. For four long years the ills of all Americans were blamed on the “policies of the past” and the “previous administration” by Mr. Obama. Conservative pundits repeatedly criticized the President for this recurrence as a lack of leadership- passing the buck on a man who was no longer in office. Yet on Election Day, although some polled voters blamed the President for the stagnant economy (which ranked at those voters’ highest concern), the majority blamed a man named George W. Bush.

While conservatives saw this blame game as a weakness in Mr. Obama, none of us were smart enough to realize the damage he was inflicting on the party years before Mr. Romney was even the republican presidential frontrunner. The biggest failure of Republicans in this election was their inability to make an argument in favor of President Bush’s record (or more likely a conscious choice to avoid such an argument) .

Though President Obama constantly referenced Mr. Bush’s 2003 “tax cuts for the rich”, he failed to mention that President Bush cut taxes for all Americans- which President Obama has now agreed to permanently extend for 98% of those Americans. During President Bush’s eight years in office, where taxes were as low as they had been in decades, unemployment averaged 5.3% in the United States.

In the 2005-2007 fiscal years following his broad 2003 tax cut, the annual deficit decreased each year, creating even more revenue for the federal government. This progress was then stymied by the 2008 financial collapse, since which the federal government has run a deficit over a trillion dollars each of the last five years- one for President Bush, four for President Obama. President Bush’s deficit in 2007 was a $167 billion.

Certainly these facts do not portend economic success under a Romney administration that lowered taxes, nor do they absolve President Bush of his own fiscal mismanagement as President (while lowering taxes helped the economy, he failed to control spending which ballooned the deficit in his first term). But the argument was there to be made that the similarities between Mr. Romney’s plan and President Bush’s were not problems for the Republican candidate, as President Bush’s policies were not proven failures, especially in the context of the financial collapse.

Yes, President Bush contributed to the housing collapse by signing The American Dream Down Payment Act in 2003 to ease housing loan standards. But President Bill Clinton exacerbated the problem as well in the Community Re-Investment Act a decade before. Recalcitrant democrats stalled on reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which was promulgated by President Bush. Big banks bet big on the Housing market and ultimately lost. Main Street received loans they could not afford. Wall Street sold packaged securities around these faulty loans for a profit.

And on it goes. The magnitude and complexity of the 2008 financial crisis cannot be blamed on one man. But somehow the perception created by Mr. Obama is that the problems that still linger since that crisis are the fault of Mr. Bush, and the majority of the American people ate it up.

In our own fear of referencing the “bad ol days” of President Bush, much like Republicans did with Hoover in the 1930s, we never really attempted to defend the distortions of his record made by the president. Lower taxes advocated by Mr. Romney would not bring us “back to the policies that got us here in the first place”, as they were not actually the policies that caused the collapse. But no one seemed to take the time make that distinction- whether it was Mr. Romney, the hundreds of Republicans trotted out on the campaign trail, or the advertisements costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

The lack of conviction in defending our former President and party standard bearer is a sobering thought in the context of 2012. In an election that was constantly referenced by politicians and pundits as one of the most important in our collective lives, Republicans approached this momentous debate timidly, ultimately scared of their shadow – a shadow that stood in the form of a two term Texas governor and two term United States President. Mr. Obama had no reservations about distorting the Bush record and connecting it to Mr. Romney’s plans to fit his campaign narrative for the American people. Why couldn’t Mr. Romney be forward with the public and address the American people as adults, highlighting the fact the very policies he intended to enact that were similar to that of President Bush- essentially lower taxes- actually worked for Americans for the better part of the President Bush’s two terms in office.

The Romney campaign bet the farm that the economic problems of the United States would be the most important factor in the election. They were. They bet the farm President Obama would shoulder the blame for those problems. He didn’t. Perhaps it’s time for Republicans to let President Bush out of the dog house, and in turn we may actually get our own house in order.

– John P. Burns