Tag: George W. Bush

‘More,’ Fedzilla screamed, ‘more!!’

I thought I could let this go, but then this Washington Times story by Stephan Dinan begged to differ.

Now I realize that the situation over the last few months was akin to walking a tightrope, but to rack up a record $239 billion in debt in ONE DAY – almost 60% of the wiggle room gained by the Republican sellout – simply boggles the mind. Notice that the previous record deficit day came in 2009, after Barack Obama took office. So don’t blame it on Bush.

In fact, consider that in one day our deficit exceeded that of the entire final Bush budget submitted with a Republican Congress (fiscal year 2007) – $239 billion beats $161 billion in any sort of math, fuzzy or not.

And the public is skeptical too. Today a Rasmussen Poll was released and it showed just 22% of the public approved of the budget deal. Of course Republicans are dead-set against it (by about a 4-to-1 margin) but the poll also showed unaffiliated voters in with the same feelings toward the agreement. Only Democrats had a more favorable impression, with 34% favoring the package with 40% against.

The reason the public doesn’t like the agreement? They don’t trust Washington to cut spending.

Another interesting facet of Rasmussen’s summary is that, despite the frenetic coverage by the media, people had expected the outcome. Perhaps it’s a natural cynicism Americans have with their government. “You can’t fight City Hall,” they often say.

While the TEA Party has made great strides in fighting the excesses of government, its biggest problem is that we only control a small portion of government. Look at the strides certain states like Wisconsin and Ohio have made in curbing their governments – they managed to elect enough conservative legislators in both their legislative bodies to complement the reformist ideas of the governors elected – Scott Walker and John Kasich, respectively.

Both Walker and Kasich also have to overcome continued threats to their reform packages as several GOP state senators are subject to recall elections this month in Wisconsin and Ohio’s Senate Bill 5 – an act which severely curbed union influence in Ohio – goes before Buckeye State voters this fall. Don’t be surprised if unions aren’t looking to dump tens of millions into the campaign to overturn SB5.

So the TEA Party fight may be over for the time being in Washington, and those of us skeptical that Fedzilla could curb its spending appetite may be vindicated based on the one-day deficit record. But we have a lot of state capitals where the fight needs to be renewed.

Come this fall, the scene in Annapolis may rival the one back in March, but contenders will on the opposite sides. I’d love to see 10,000 TEA Party members outnumber 50 union thugs in demanding fiscal responsibility.

Does the strategy include snuffing out Osama?

I’ve had a lot placed in my e-mail box of late; fortunately this wasn’t time-sensitive.

It’s a look at how the other half plans to live in 2012:

The accompanying text noted the following, from campaign manager Jim Messina:

I want to show you a quick presentation I’ve been giving to the first staff coming on board here in Chicago, outlining our strategy to win and our overall approach to this campaign.

In the weeks and months to come, we’ll ask grassroots supporters like you to meet with one another and local organizers to take the first steps to victory on November 6th, 2012.

But before we begin meeting in living rooms and backyards across America, it’s important that we communicate with each other about a set of principles for the organization and our overall strategic thinking about how the race will shape up.

The most important aspect is this: Our campaign will be grounded in President Obama’s experience as a community organizer. This notion of ordinary people taking responsibility for the organization at the neighborhood level is not only the way to win, it’s also the way politics ought to work. Our campaign will be an example of innovation and efficiency, but it will also be an example of civic engagement at its best and most rewarding.

(snip)

This plan will evolve as we get feedback from grassroots supporters like you over the weeks and months ahead. That’s already happening — as you know, we’ve already started the process of having one-on-one conversations with people in every state to gather thoughts and ideas, and thousands more talks will take place over this spring and summer.

But this briefing should give you a sense of our current thinking about how we’ll build an unprecedented grassroots campaign to win — with you leading it.

No, that billion dollars Obama plans on raising will lead it – follow the money (if you can.) A billion dollars can slap down a whole lot of Astroturf. While they want to “act like an insurgent campaign,” the ugly truth is that Obama has an abysmal record of lacking accomplishments (save the bin Laden killing, which was in many ways handed to him by his predecessor – you know, that guy he likes to blame for all his problems.) And that thinking will by necessity evolve, based on current events we can’t yet foresee. How do you explain away $5 a gallon for gas, for example – blame the oil companies, of course!

It’s all about shifting blame for problems created or enhanced under the Obama regime.

Let’s look at a case in point, brought up by Messina in the video. Review the 2004 electoral map, which showed fairly solid Bush country in most places save along the coasts and the upper Midwest. By 2008 many of these areas had seen a slight economic decline, but a large factor in how the Democrats racked up such voter registration gains was their work in blaming Bush for every one of the country’s maladies, coupled with the drumbeat of a compliant media pounding home a message that we were stuck in an Iraqi quagmire which was sapping America’s resolve. No wonder people were ready for ‘change’ and they got it, voting out the continually moderating GOP majority in 2006 and finishing the job by electing Obama in 2008.

And regardless of who the GOP put up to follow in Bush’s footsteps he or she would’ve had a tough row to hoe. Yet John McCain was perhaps the most uninspiring Republican candidate to come along in some time. His one chance at the polls came when he picked a conservative firebrand as his vice-presidential pick, but he threw it away when he suspended his campaign to work with Obama to address the economy. It showed a lack of leadership as he played into the Democrat’s hands and, quite honestly, I think he was fortunate to only lose by 6 points. (Had McCain selected another moderate as VP, like perhaps – as one rumor had it – Joe Lieberman, I think he would have lost by 20 because conservatives would have stayed home in droves.)

But in 2012 the tables may be turned, with the exception that the media isn’t continually beating down Barack Obama. Still, the economy hasn’t improved from 2008, we’re still fighting a war on now 2 1/2 fronts (Libya rising while Iraq winds down), gas prices are back to summer 2008 levels, and government spending is surging well beyond even George W. Bush’s high deficit levels. In 2010, just as in 2006, the party in charge of Congress was tossed out. (It was only Senate demographics that saved a Democratic majority in the Senate, since they had a pretty much equal number of seats at stake with the GOP. In 2012, the large number of Democrat Senators who swept Harry Reid into power in 2006 are sitting for re-election – if Republicans make similar inroads next time they take back the majority.)

And while it’s no safe bet that Republicans won’t wear out their welcome, much of their success hinges on Barack Obama’s continued failure. It’s why killing Osama bin Laden was a godsend for President Obama, and we’re sure to be reminded thousands of times that Obama was in charge when Osama assumed sea temperature.

Hey, even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile. But, as it was in 1992, it’s the economy stupid. President Obama better have less than 8 percent unemployment by the middle of 2012 or he’s toast – you can take that to the bank and hope the financial institution is ‘too big to fail.’

An observation

I’m considering expanding the point for a PJM post, but perhaps one point is worth pondering as we celebrate the centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth today.

Just compare this to what you recall from any centennial celebration of the following Presidents:

  • The 100-year anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt’s birth was in 1982 (he died in office in 1945.)
  • For Harry Truman, it would have been 1984 (he passed away in 1972.)
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower would have turned 100 in 1990 (he died in 1969.)
  • The centennial of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s birth was just three years ago, in 2008. He succumbed in 1973, and I vaguely remember that when I was a kid. Oddly enough his was the last Presidential death for over two decades, until his successor Richard Nixon died.

And have you heard about any big plans for any of these men who served?

  • The centennial of the birth of both Richard Nixon and his successor Gerald Ford comes in 2013. Nixon died in 1994, while Ford is our longest-lived President – he was 93 when he died in 2006.
  • Both Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush would turn 100 in 2024 – just 13 years from now.
  • A similar pairing occurs when George W. Bush and Bill Clinton would both turn 100 in 2046.

My suspicion is that the next Presidential centennial to draw heavy interest will be John F. Kennedy’s in 2017. I imagine the media will push to have his celebration rival Reagan’s, with the additional factor of his ‘martyrdom’ due to assassination.

On the other hand, not all that many of us will be around when the 100-year anniversary of Barack Obama’s 1961 birth rolls around – I’ll be 96 when that happens!

Anyway, if I can inspire myself to fill in the blanks and make a decent post of it you may see this information again. If not, enjoy the Super Bowl. My pick: Green Bay 27, Pittsburgh 24. It’ll be one of those games where the Steelers keep trying to catch up but can never get over the hump – the Packers will win it on a late field goal.

The popularity paradox

Over the last couple decades America has settled into an uneasy truce with itself, as presidents of both parties propose new ideas and promise a new way of doing business but eventually lose their popular mandate.

Prior to President Obama, the poster child for this phenomenon was George H.W. Bush. The elder Bush frittered away an 89 percent approval rating just after the liberation of Kuwait from the clutches of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. In less than two years his political fortunes declined to such a degree that he drew less than 40 percent of the popular vote in the 1992 election, yielding office to President Clinton.

In time, Clinton’s leadership was questioned so much that his party lost the majority in the House of Representatives two years after his election. After Clinton left office, George W. Bush managed re-election but spent his entire bank of political capital and popularity chasing Osama bin Laden around the Middle East while engaging in a little nation building along the way.

All these case studies reflect a simple fact: America sours quickly to new leadership if things progress in the same old way.

In President Obama’s case, pundits like to point out that his approval numbers are relatively in line with Ronald Reagan’s during the early days of his tenure. As in the present day, the first part of Reagan’s term was marked with a poor economy and high unemployment – before last October, the last time unemployment reached double digits was during a correspondent period in Reagan’s presidency.

Yet history shows that once Reagan’s economic prescription of lowering tax rates took hold his popularity surged, with the best evidence being an absolute electoral slaughter of the hapless Walter Mondale. On the other hand, President Obama’s policy accomplishments to date range in public perception from skepticism whether the stimulus has actually worked to outright hostility about the passage of Obamacare and progress in cleaning up the oil from the Deepwater Horizon tragedy.

Perhaps more than any other president in recent memory, though, President Obama suffers from being thin-skinned. While he may say from time to time that “the buck stops here” it’s usually lost in a litany of finger-pointing and blame shifting, with a favorite target being opposition Republicans. (Having advisers who proclaim we should never let a crisis go to waste or that we should put our boot on the throat of particular businesses isn’t much of a help either.)

People who followed President Obama’s cult of personality during his campaign and remain loyal to him make up a larger and larger portion of those who approve of his performance. Others who questioned his qualifications or didn’t like those policies he ran on make up a continually growing segment of the opposition, leaving less and less room for ambivalence. America may be fortunate that there’s not an issue like slavery to divide up the union.

To be a good leader, the key qualification is to go in a direction which people would eventually like to be led, convincing them to leave the safety of inertia. Of course, the leader is the one who gets the slings and arrows but shrugs them off in pursuit of a cause greater than self. One problem our President has is selling the idea that he’s not the one with the most to gain from the direction he’s attempting to take us. The American people keep attempting to put on the brakes and turn things around but the only way to get this leader to listen is to outpoll his followers at the ballot box.

Michael Swartz used to practice architecture but now is a Maryland-based freelance writer and blogger whose work can be found in a number of outlets, including Liberty Features Syndicate. This piece debuted June 18.