Obama Would Like To Remind You That The Economic Downturn Is All Bush’s Fault
Remember when Obama said in his inaugural address that it was time to “end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics?” Forget all that. With the public getting more and more skeptical of Obama’s approach to fixing the economy, The One has decided it’s time to recriminate the hell out of his predecessor.
Over the past month, Obama has reminded the public at every turn that he is facing problems “inherited” from the Bush administration, using increasingly bracing language to describe the challenges his administration is up against. The “deepening economic crisis” that the president described six days after taking office became “a big mess” in remarks this month to graduating police cadets in Columbus, Ohio.
“By any measure,” he said during a March 4 event calling for government-contracting reform, “my administration has inherited a fiscal disaster.”
Obama’s more frequent and acid reminders that former president George W. Bush left behind a trillion-dollar budget deficit, a 14-month recession and a broken financial system have come at the same time Republicans have ramped up criticism that the current president’s policies are compounding the nation’s economic problems.
Obama had initially been content to leave partisan defense strategy to his proxies, but as the fiscal picture has continued to darken, he has appeared more willing to risk his image as a politician who is above petty partisanship to personally remind the public of Bush’s legacy.
Obama is clearly realizing that being President is a much different thing than being a candidate for President. When you’re a candidate, particularly a non-incumbent candidate, you can blame everything on the guy currently in office. But now that Obama’s been in office for a while now, his attempts to blame everything on other people are becoming more and more strained. Especially given that it’s his party that’s running the show. Democrats have majorities in both houses of Congress. They have an almost filibuster proof majority in the Senate, and a few select Republicans who have already proven that they’re willing to cross partisan lines to support their liberal agenda.
There are no excuses for Obama now, and his recriminations aimed at the Bush administration are coming off as amateurish as his approach to international diplomacy. The buck stops with Obama now, whether he likes it or not.
