Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Maureen Dowd's "Not O.K. at the O.K. Corral": Still Blaming Bush and Cheney

Maureen Dowd, in her latest New York Times op-ed, "Not O.K. at the O.K. Corral" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/opinion/27dowd.html?hp), uses the opportunity to blame the Republicans, specifically Bush and Cheney, for all of America's ills. According to Maureen, an independent Obama, willing to compromise at the drop of a hat, has fallen victim to the morass created by his predecessors:

"The last century was the American century. But this one will not be, thanks to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who used their boots and spurs to ride roughshod over the globe and American economy. They spent eight years and trillions of dollars either barging into stuff they should have left alone or leaving alone stuff they should have intervened on.

. . . .

The White House feels that its foes not only want to stomp on any reasonable compromise; they want to make sure that Obama never has the presidency he dreamed of, one that isn’t about digging out from W.’s intractable messes; one that helps the parties reason together and move into the future.

. . . .

You could argue that Obama created his own nightmare by failing to read the class rage of the public and aggressively cut government fat as soon as he came into office. His passivity allowed the Tea Party to rise, fed by fury over Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats stuffing pork into the 2009 stimulus package.

But whatever the criticisms of Obama, it’s Republicans who are overtly playing politics. Even though Obama compromises ridiculously easily, the Republicans are showing no willingness to compromise at all."

Only the Republicans are playing politics? I suppose that is why Obama has been rejecting any temporary agreement ending before November 2012, which would allow the parties to hammer out a better reasoned arrangement without the exigencies of time bearing down upon them.

Only the Republicans got us into this mess? Peculiar. I thought it was Obama who decided to escalate the war in Afghanistan, which will cost the US a record $120 billion in 2011. This is now Obama's senseless war.

Obama is the "great compromiser"? Observe what David Brooks had to say yesterday in "Congress In the Lead" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/opinion/26brooks.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss), concerning Obama's negotiating style:

"[T]he White House negotiating process was inadequate. Neither the president nor the House speaker ever wrote down and released their negotiating positions. Everything was mysterious, shifting and slippery. One day the president was agreeing to an $800 billion revenue increase; the next day he was asking for $400 billion more."

Obama merely failed to trim government fat when entering office? Read "Toying With Default" in "Review & Outlook" of The Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903999904576465843244525786.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h):

"Then again, it has long been clear that Mr. Obama isn't interested in spending reform. In February he proposed a budget that spent more than any in U.S. history. In April he demanded that Congress pass a 'clean' debt ceiling hike that included no spending cuts whatsoever. Only after House Republicans unveiled their own sweeping budgetary reforms did the White House rush to also claim it wanted deficit reduction as part of the debt-ceiling debate."

And if you think for one moment that the president's nascent desire to cut spending is anything other than an unscrupulous political ploy designed to win him reelection, read Paul Krugman's "Messing With Medicare" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/opinion/25krugman.html?ref=opinion):

"So why is the president embracing these bad policy ideas? In a forthcoming article in The New York Review of Books, the veteran journalist Elizabeth Drew suggests that members of the White House political team saw the 2010 election as a referendum on government spending and that they believe that cutting spending is the way to win next year."

Don't get me wrong: Bush was indeed profligate in his spending. However, I had always thought that Obama was swept into office in order to correct these excesses. Instead, in July 2011, as we coast toward November 2012, absent any meaningful achievements attributable to the Obama administration, economic or otherwise, we are stuck in a "blame game."

Let's see if the American electorate is willing to buy it.

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