http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-levine/is-obama-still-better-tha_b_792967.htmlIs Obama Still Better Than Bush?
by Andrew Levine
Surely, this is a no-brainer; a turnip would be better than Bush, even Joe Lieberman would. But it's not a trick question. For at least a year now, since the Nobel Laureate announced he'd be escalating the Afghan War, the answer has become increasingly less than obvious. Since then, we've had, among other things, increased repression of dissent, an executive order permitting the assassination of American citizens abroad, Bush-level incompetence in dealing with the BP oil spill, drone attacks and bombings in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and who knows where else, TSA airport molestations, the Korea free trade deal (NAFTA East), a no show at Cancun, the persecution (soon to become prosecution?) of WikiLeaks, a federal workers' wage freeze, support for a deficit commission intent on undoing what remains of our feeble welfare state institutions, and now, worst of all, an impending capitulation to the Republican inequality enhancement scheme known as "Bush era tax cuts." Would Bush have been worse?
Since conditions change and since there is no agreed upon metric, ranking presidents is a fatuous exercise, suitable only for "presidential historians" on TV. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that George W. Bush would have to be at or near the bottom of any barrel -- along with the likes of Warren Harding and Millard Fillmore. Everything he did, with two partial exceptions, turned out disastrously. The exceptions -- keeping domestic anti-Muslim violence down in the days following 9/11, and helping African countries deal with HIV. Bush did far too little on both counts, but at least he didn't badly mess up.
Born filthy rich, Bush was not corrupt at a personal level, and neither was he truly villainous -- notwithstanding the war crimes, crimes against the peace and crimes against humanity that Obama and Eric Holder refuse to prosecute (even as they go after heroes like Bradley Manning and soon perhaps Julian Assange). Mediocrities simply do not rise to the level of historical villainy. To do the harm Bush did willfully would require talents of mind that he conspicuously lacks. He was just in over his head and too dumb to realize it.
In contrast, Barack Obama is, by all accounts, a man of exceptional intelligence and learning.
Nevertheless, he has governed as if he were a "secret Republican" or perhaps a flack put in office by Goldman Sachs to disempower the Democratic base and disillusion a generation. Unlike the idea, dear to demented Tea Partiers, that Obama is a secret Muslim, this bit of paranoid fantasy is at least consistent with the facts.
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