Bush: I Had To Destroy The Free Market In Order To Save It
“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” President Bush told CNN, defending his offer of $17 billion in loans to the Big Three “to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse.”
Thus did Bush concede that protectionism, if a critical U.S. industry is in peril, must trump free-trade ideology. For in offering the bailout to GM, Ford and Chrysler, Bush, by omission, excluded BMW, Mercedes, Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Hyundai—though all operate auto plants here in the United States and all are feeling the same sales slump.
You know you’ve gone off the tracks when Pat Buchanan starts praising your market and trade policies.
Really, though, up until this last year Bush was an ok President. He got some things wrong (Medicare prescription drugs, no child left behind) and he got some things right (tax cuts, the war in Iraq) but this bailout business is going to end up overshadowing any of the good he did.
In a free market economy like America’s, failure is as important as success. If bad businesses aren’t allowed to fail our economy won’t progress. And if we aren’t progressing and growing we’re stagnating. And stagnation means unemployment and a paucity of prosperity.
