People in the political world say that President Obama threw Secretary of State Clinton under the bus in an attempt to protect himself from political fallout from Libya.
I don’t follow those issues, so I can’t comment about the veracity of that charge, but I find it very interesting that some conservatives are urging Mitt Romney to throw former President George W. Bush under the bus.
More specifically, they’re urging him to condemn Bush’s statism and to attack Obama for continuing Bush’s failed policies.
Since I’ve attacked Bush for expanding the burden of government spending and reducing economic freedom, this resonates with me.
Phil Kerpen of American Commitment nails the issue in a column for Fox News.
Romney’s biggest missed opportunity in the second debate wasn’t on Libya…he should have connected the dots between Obama and Bush to illustrate the accurate point that on the most significant dimensions of economic policy, Obama has accelerated Bush’s policy errors rather than reversing them. In the crucible of the 2008 financial crisis, President Bush famously remarked that “I chucked aside my free-market principles .” He was referring to TARP, his infamous big bank bailout. Obama supported the bill and voted for it. …On government spending, it’s the same story. Bush racked up one of the most disastrous records of out-of-control spending and debt the country had ever seen. Every aspect of the federal budget jumped under Bush. …Obama came in and continued spending recklessly. Bush’s $152 billion stimulus bill failed and so did Obama’s $821 billion stimulus bill. Bush flushed $25 billion in bailout funds to Chrysler and General Motors, and Obama added another $20 billion before finally recognizing that the companies would inevitably file for bankruptcy. All of the pre-bankruptcy bailout dollars were lost. …On the biggest economic policy questions, the Bush/Geithner/Bernanke approach is almost indistinguishable from the Obama/Geithner/Bernanke approach. It hasn’t worked. Obama’s failed policies of the present are all too similar to Bush’s failed policies of the past.
Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute made similar points in an article for the Weekly Standard.
Obama’s claim that Bush’s policies caused the recession resonates with American voters. Almost four years after George W. Bush left office, polls show the American people continue to blame him—more than Obama—for the recession that created today’s dismal economic conditions. Throughout the fall and in their debates, it’s a sure thing that Obama will continue to argue that Romney is just another George W. Bush. How can Romney respond? …Romney should not deny Bush’s error. Although Clinton began the process of forcing low mortgage underwriting standards, Bush continued and enhanced it. Instead, Romney should point out that the government should never have been in the housing finance business, and that he will eliminate Fannie and Freddie to restore a functioning housing market—something Obama has failed to do in almost four years.
But here’s where I disagree with Kerpen and Wallison, or at least where I would add a big caveat to their analysis. What makes them think that Romney would be any different that Bush or Obama?
This post highlights a few of Romney’s policies that would undermine free markets and expand the public sector.
If all one cares about is whether politicians have an “R” or a “D” after their names, then my concerns don’t matter.
But if you’re actually interested in making America a better place, then policy matters a lot.
I’ll close with a final point. I have no idea whether Romney is a closet statist or a closet Reaganite. All I’m saying is that, if Romney wins, people who value limited government and freedom should begin working on November 7 to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent Romney from becoming another RINO such as Bush or Nixon.
You took the words right out of my mouth “What makes them think that Romney would be any different”? Many had hope for Bush that he would be different. I still hope Romney will pursue free market principles if elected, but he worries me. I actually wrote a similar article today about how both conservatives and liberals have been expanding the government for 100 years, and we need to get back to the libertarian, Constitutional roots.
This is what scares me. He may be the same as all the others before him. Still we need to elect him and hope for change (where have we heard that before!). Perhaps we can pressure Romney to change after all and reject the statist tendencies of many of his predecessors. If not we are doomed to continue down this path. Certainly re-electing Obama will be the disaster we deserve if we make that mistake again!
Here’s how to reform the system. Put
None of the Above at the end of the list on the ballot paper, and if NOTA wins, then nobody gets elected to the position. And if you don’t vote, then your vote gets counted for NOTA! see:
http://www.lifestrategies.net/nota
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For all his faults, Bush did not introduce ObamaCare, the greatest incentive to indolence introduced in more than two generations this side of the Atlantic. Think, what is easier? Withdrawing from the high cost, dubious reward wars, in Iraq and Afganistan or repealing a statist program like public monopoly forced social security and now ObamaCare which inevitably will have the same political trajectory as Medicare and social security? After all, Iraquis and Afganis don’t vote in America. Pulling the plug is difficult but relatively easy compared to the irreversible trajectory of effort-reward flattening social programs and the low motivation, perpetually compounding low growth rates they entail. Once you have loaded society with welfare programs, you wither away in wretched slow growth decline until you hit bottom. Under such an environment of low motivation and mutual dependence, every one is holding everyone else’s cojones. Nobody will let go first in the hopes that others will. It’s a catch 22 death spiral to decline.
But from a tactical standpoint I do wonder whether Romney’s slower march towards statism may ultimately prove more effective in easing Americans into permanent and irreversible statism — and the decline it will inevitably bring. After all, Americans and their legislature are more likely to go along with VAT if Romney proposes it rather than Obama, though the latter probably wants it more, but may not dare.
That being said, a second, now Obama unbound, term would be the coup de grace for the top American prosperity everyone seems to take for granted. I cannot imagine what America’s world economic freedom ranking will be after another four years of Obama. 27th? Now at number 18, we are already moving forward on momentum alone. Momentum is short lived. The motivational fundamental realities of unexceptional effort-reward curves will catch up soon. Countries in this rank cannot remain at the top of world prosperity for long. Decline will be swift, your problem, not your children’s. Finally, Americans have belatedly discovered how to sell the plow to feast on a few nice meals. Many one cultures have gone down that path and its all downhill once the vicious cycle starts. Too bad Europe is a little too slow to reveal the final outcome of mandatory collectivism. And the true declining phase of Europe has not really started yet. Alas, the US has already started circling the drain of HopNChange. The lessons from Europe will come too late. Others will be the breakaway nations that escape the misery of mandatory collectivism. I’m anxious to see which ones come out of this darwinian cultural selection, because for now the few promising ones are just postage stamp sized.
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