Portraying Bush as a Failure

[babylonsister]

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2009/03/02/portraying_bush_as_a_failure.html

Portraying Bush as a Failure


Ron Brownstein notes that "literally from the first moments of his presidency, Obama has repudiated Bush in unusually pointed terms. The process started in Obama's inaugural address... The White House took its indictment to a new level in the budget blueprint it released last Thursday. In a relentless 11 pages, the first chapter offers a withering point-by-point critique of Bush's economic record and governing performance."

The strategic reason, Brownstein argues, may come from a 1997 book called The Politics Presidents Make and a 2008 follow-up called Presidential Leadership in Political Time, in which the author "noted that the presidents who most successfully constructed lasting electoral majorities all followed presidents widely viewed as failures."

White House adviser David Axelrod seemingly confirmed this point in an interview: "This is the canvass on which we have to paint, and I think it's important to set that baseline."

Brownstein's article here:

http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/03/the_authority_to_repudiate.php

[CJCRANE]

1. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck

then I guess you could "portray" it as a duck.

On edit: Or put it another way - if the emperor has no clothes and you say so, is that "portraying" him as having no clothes...or just telling the truth?

:shrug:

[fasttense]

2. But, but the bush had that opportunity after 9/11 and look what he did with it.

"But the payoff for Obama in a strategy of repudiation could be much larger than these tactical advantages. Skowronek notes that it is precisely at the moments when the old approaches have been most thoroughly discredited that presidents have most lastingly reshaped both the electoral alignment and the governing agenda. And they have done so, he maintains, largely because the broad public rejection of the previously dominant political ideas creates an unusually large opening to redirect government's priorities and approaches. That's what Roosevelt did in 1932 when he laid the foundation of the modern welfare state on the ruins of Hoover's largely laissez-faire ideology and what Reagan did in 1980, when his insistence that "government is the problem" interred Roosevelt's New Deal coalition and redrew the boundaries of political debate for the next 28 years.

Could this be another such hinge in political history--"

The Clinton's sexual escapades were used over and over again to beat up Gore and all Democratic candidates in the 2000 elections. During the 2000 presidential election, one of candidate bush's rallying cries was that he would 'bring morality' back to the White House. After 9/11, bush had the entire country behind him. He and all the Republicons beat up on liberals like we were the 9/11 terrorists. The bush had his chance too to become a leader instead of a loser. He chose the destruction of the American economy as his No. 1 priority.

I think it is more than a pivotal moment and repudiation of the old status quo to make a great president. It takes intelligence, foresight, vision and honesty. All these attributes were lacking in the man that was bush.