SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2010
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B5 Both parties are playing the Bush blame game campaign from B1
ment can help Democrats win one more time. “When everyone is unhappy about the present, it only makes good political sense to blame the past,” said Daniel Schnur, a political science professor at the University of Southern California and a former aide to Sen. John McCain’s 2000 presidential bid. Criticizing Bush “has the advantage of absolving both sides of responsibility for the current situation. Their hope is it will give them more credibility going forward. No one is going to believe what you are promis- ing for the future if they believe you are responsible for the present.” Republicans started distancing them- selves from Bush in earnest in 2006. With violence escalating in the deeply unpopular Iraq war, many GOP candi- dates opted not to have the president — the man most closely associated with that conflict — on the campaign trail for them. In 2008, the party’s presidential nominee, McCain, sharply rebuked Bush for his lackluster response to Hur- ricane Katrina three years earlier. Today, the Bush-bashing continues. On the GOP side, among congressional Republicans and conservative activists, it has centered on one issue: spending. Having Bush to attack has been con- venient for both groups. The “tea party” movement says its roots are in a rebel- lion against the Bush administration’s increased deficits and bailout of Wall Street firms. This has allowed its mem- bers — people who generally voted for Bush twice and then McCain in 2008 — to cast themselves as independent from the GOP. Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, need a way to establish their anti-spending bona fides to tea partiers and, at the same time, convince more mainstream voters that the GOP today is not the same party that sup- ported Bush. So for many Republicans, particularly those in states where the tea party is strong, their message is: Bush was a big spender, Obama is an even bigger one, and we will slash all of that spending if you give Congress back to us. “One of the things we have to do is ad- mit we were wrong, that we spent too much money,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (Ga.), explaining the GOP’s criticism of Bush. “I think that plays well with Re- publicans, because you’re saying we spent more money, but you’re also im- plying, ‘I wasn’t part of that.’ ” Of course, dozens of congressional
president, and Democratic officials have gleefully noted comments such as a re- cent remark by Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), a longtime Bush ally, who said that “President Bush’s stock has gone up a lot since he left office.”
But the approach also illustrates both
parties’ struggles. The GOP’s singular focus on spending and the alleged ex- cesses by Bush and Obama has allowed Republicans to gloss over the fact that they don’t have a governing vision to re- place “compassionate conservatism.” They have not collectively embraced the notion of cutting entire government agencies, as candidates such as Paul en- dorse, nor the specific ideas on issues such as Social Security and Medicare ex- penditures proposed by Ryan. Instead, the post-Bush Republicans
Having George W. Bush to attack has been politically convenient.
Republicans voted for the Wall Street bailout and other ideas opposed by the tea party, such as the No Child Left Be- hind Act. They acknowledge this but say Bush or the GOP leaders in Congress at the time demanded that they support those measures. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), part of the group of new GOP leaders who have dubbed themselves the Young Guns, said in a recent interview that many of his Republican colleagues were “back- benchers” during the Bush administra- tion, though fellow Young Gun Eric Can- tor (Va.), the Republican whip, was in the House leadership for much of Bush’s tenure. Both men voted for the bank bailout.
Some conservatives argue that the
main reason the GOP lost seats in 2006 and 2008 was excessive spending, though polls suggest that the real cul- prits were the Iraq war, ethics scandals and the financial meltdown. And most Republicans, as Democrats readily point out, still support many of the pol- icies that helped increase the deficit, such as the tax cuts for most Americans and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “There’s a lot of revisionist history go- ing on,” said John Feehery, a former top GOP aide on Capitol Hill. “There’s an in- teresting discussion going on in the Re- publican Party about what they really stand for.” To woo their bases, both parties are
smart to highlight their differences with Bush. Doing so links the Republicans
THE WASHINGTON POST
with the tea party, and connects Obama and congressional Democrats with lib- eral activists who still hate the former president, even while they are some- times disappointed with the current ad- ministration.
Among Republicans, there are some signs that attacking Bush works. Two of the GOP candidates who emerged from competitive Senate primaries, Ken- tucky’s Rand Paul and Colorado’s Ken Buck, castigated Republicans almost as much as Democrats for growing the gov- ernment. The attacks by Democrats are also bearing fruit; GOP officials and candi- dates are constantly being asked by re- porters for their views on Bush. Not ev- ery Republican is down on the former
have offered a limited agenda of items such as ending earmarks. For the Democrats, the Bush-bashing underscores that their party hasn’t won a recent election without Bush as a scapegoat. As The Washington Post’s Michael Shear noted this month, Demo- cratic campaign ads this season feature the former president as an again-rel- evant villain. And as Janet Hook report- ed recently in the Los Angeles Times, “Congressional leaders are urging Dem- ocrats to focus less on bragging about what they have done — a landmark healthcare law, a sweeping overhaul of Wall Street regulation and other far- reaching policy changes — and more on efforts to fix the economy and on the perils of Republican control of Con- gress.” In short, forget about the past two years, remember the eight before. “The Democrats are bereft of positive arguments that are compelling to vot- ers. The only thing they can do is blame Bush,” said Doug Schoen, a Democratic pollster who worked for former presi- dent Bill Clinton. “So you have this weird thing where the tea party people and Obama are agreeing [that] the problem to a greater or lesser extent is George Bush and the Republicans. I would argue this is very, very unhealthy for our political culture because no one is talking about real ideas.” From Bush’s point of view, all this
negative attention may not be such a bad thing. The criticism probably doesn’t keep him up at night; as he has often said, he’s not a man of regrets or indecision. And all the talk might even help him sell books. Whether it helps anyone win an election is an open ques- tion.
baconp@washpost.com
Obama pledged change. Why is so much the same? bush from B1
break between Bush and Obama should not be exaggerated. Dismantling the past is extraordinarily difficult. In a host of arenas, Obama is holding on to the Bush administration’s policies and practices, even some that he decried during his presidential campaign and vowed to un- do. From the wars we fight to the oil we drill for, we’re still living in the Bush era —like it or not.
First, consider the strengthening of presidential power. Every president since Richard Nixon has fought to restore the authority of the executive branch that was diminished as a result of Watergate. No chief executive was as successful as Bush, especially since he had the help of Vice President Dick Cheney, who had dedicated much of his career to criticizing the 1970s reforms that he thought had emasculated the White House. Bush re- lied on signing statements and executive orders to implement initiatives such as warrantless wiretapping without having to get approval from Congress. Obama has not done much to reverse the trend. While he has worked harder to court Congress, allowing legislators to craft the details of the health-care legisla- tion, for example, he has not stepped back from Bush’s robust use of executive pow- er. He has relied on it to strengthen envi- ronmental programs and agencies that had been weakened since the 1980s. On national security, the pattern is more striking. Obama’s Justice Department has turned to Bush’s sweeping interpretation of the “state secrets” privilege to battle lawsuits involving the rendition and tor- ture of terrorism suspects, and the presi- dent has defended the right of the govern- ment to conduct intrusive domestic wire- tapping programs. The second enduring legacy of the Bush presidency is the sprawling coun- terterrorism infrastructure created after Sept. 11, 2001. The Bush administration vastly strengthened the government’s ability to fight terrorist networks by col- lecting information, tracking and closing down financial and nonprofit organiza- tions, and interrogating detainees. Al- though Obama was a critic of this pro- gram on the campaign trail, much of it re- mains in place — most notably, the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Early in the Obama presidency, Jack
Goldsmith, a former lawyer for the Bush administration who had become a vocal critic of its counterterrorism policies, criticized Cheney for exaggerating the dif- ferences between the two White Houses. “The new administration,” Goldsmith wrote in the New Republic, “has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded
“As commander in chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources we need to seize the
u
initiative.” — President Obama, announcing the new Afghan war strategy, Dec. 1, 2009
JASON REED/REUTERS
some of it, and has narrowed only a bit.” And in a blistering report on the ad-
ministration’s national security record re- leased last month, the American Civil Lib- erties Union warned of the “very real dan- ger that the Obama administration will enshrine permanently within the law pol- icies and practices that were widely con- sidered extreme and unlawful during the Bush administration. There is a real dan- ger, in other words, that the Obama ad- ministration will preside over the crea- tion of a ‘new normal.’ ” The report praised Obama’s decisions to release the Bush administration’s “tor- ture memos” and to outlaw secret CIA prisons overseas, as well as his prohibi- tion of torture, but criticized the adminis- tration for, among other things, failing to eliminate military commission trials and targeted killings of terrorism suspects. ACLU Director Anthony Romero de- clared himself “disgusted” with the presi- dent’s policies. Nor, in a practical sense, has the Oba- ma administration distanced itself from
the Bush administration’s third legacy, its wars for regime change. After the 2001 at- tacks, Bush defended a vision of foreign policy that sought to remove terrorist- friendly governments from power and re- build their countries’ civilian and security institutions. These principles under- pinned the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. To the frustration of many liberals, Obama has not changed course. While following through with Bush’s withdraw- al schedule for Iraq, Obama has expanded Bush’s mission in Afghanistan by sending 30,000 more troops into the conflict. He is now relying on Gen. David H. Petraeus, who Bush used to clean up the problems in Iraq, to strengthen the counterinsur- gency effort in Afghanistan. AndObama’s withdrawal dates remain fuzzy. At the end of this month, 50,000 U.S troops will still be in Iraq, while the July 2011 dead- line for leaving Afghanistan remains far from solid (in fact, many administration officials backed off that date almost as soon as it was announced). The Bush administration also rejected
strong regulatory oversight of offshore oil drilling — a fourth critical legacy. In keep- ing with their long-held position that oil companies should be free from govern- ment restrictions in order to help end American dependence on foreign oil, Bush officials allowed agencies responsi- ble for oversight to be weakened, staffing them with administrators who were skep- tical of climate change and other scientif- ic arguments about the environment. Although many Democrats initially de- cried Bush’s deregulatory policies on off- shore drilling after the BP oil spill in the gulf, it soon became clear that blame also rested with the Obama administration. In a series of penetrating articles for Rolling Stone, Tim Dickinson revealed how the Obama White House had not done much to repair the broken Minerals Manage- ment Service and had been willing to trade support for offshore drilling in ex- change for votes on climate-change legis- lation. Ignoring the advice of scientific ex- perts, the administration authorized an aggressive round of drilling in the gulf
“America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence. . . . This will require increasing American force levels. So I’ve committed more than 20,00 additional troops
to Iraq.” — President George W. Bush, announcing the Iraq surge, Jan. 10, 2007
JIM YOUNG/REUTERS v
without adequate environmental review. After the spill, the Obama administra- tion did impose a moratorium on drilling and stuck with it despite enormous politi- cal fallout; when a federal judge struck down the first ban, Obama imposed an- other. Yet the moratorium has been far from airtight, with loopholes allowing several kinds of drilling to continue. Fiscal policy is the final area where
Bush’s legacy still looms. The tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 provided substantial tax relief for middle- and upper-income Americans, with the benefits weighted toward the wealthiest citizens. Building on Ronald Reagan’s supply-side eco- nomics, the Bush administration pushed for big cuts based on the notion that they would propel economic growth. More- over, during the financial meltdown in the fall of 2008, the administration pro- posed the Troubled Assets Relief Program — with Democratic support — which of- fered a massive bailout to the nation’s fi- nancial sector. These policies remain intact. Obama, as a senator and presidential candidate, helped push the TARP through Congress, and as president he extended and defend- ed the bailout. On the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire this year, the ver- dict is still out. Here, Obama and the Democrats have made an aggressive push to overturn part of the Bush legacy: They have rallied support to allow the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to expire — in order to reduce the deficits they helped create — while extending the cuts for Americans earning less than $250,000 a year. It’s not clear whether they will suc- ceed; after all, many Democrats are ner- vous about being tagged as members of the party that raises taxes.
A
lmost since before he took office, Bush was written off by many as an intellectual and policy lightweight, an accidental commander in chief. None- theless, it soon became clear that his would be a very serious presidency — one with long-term consequences for the na- tion and the world, far beyond his two terms in office.
Obama, who won the presidency on a
platform of change, is now seeking to re- cycle that anti-Bush magic for the mid- term vote. Yet, he is learning the hard way that it is easier to campaign against the Texan’s legacy than to actually govern against it. It is Bush who, despite avoiding the post-presidential limelight (at least until his memoir is published in Novem- ber), has continued setting the terms of the debate, so much so that his successor and opponents must adopt many of his ideas, however reluctantly. We may live in the age of Obama, as many call it, but it’s still Bush’s world.
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