Again I shall shred all my liberal leftist cred when I say that I am beginning to agree with the commentators on the right. I have begun to grow tired of constantly blaming every problem Obama has on Bush. Granted, Bush did have eight years to simultaneously run the US economy and foreign policy/image into the ground with two unpopular and totally unfunded wars. (Afghanistan and Iraq are the first two wars in US history in which we did not raise taxes. Facts are sexy.) And granted, as John Stewart so eloquently demonstrates in the first segment of his show, blaming mistakes on the previous president is long standing tradition.
When it comes to the oil spill, I just have to say, Obama really needs to own this. He seems like a pretty smart guy. He should have realized before making his national address extolling the safety of off shore drilling that: Bush and Chaney were oil men and had essentially gutted the agency, the agency was woefully corrupt and suffering a severe case regulatory capture, and that the oil industry might inflate its safety numbers a bit.
However, we can’t change the past; let’s look forward. Obama should take a more active lead in dealing with the oil spill. He needs to first kick BP’s ass for not allowing the desperate for work fisherman to use respirators and safety equipment. There should be National Guard units, wearing proper safety gear, maintaining the boom and shoreline defenses. For all his bluster, Obama doesn’t seem like he actually wants to touch this disaster because if things go wrong then he could be blamed. It’s easier to blame BP’s incompetence and Bush’s cronyism than to accept these as facts and then figure out how to fix the problems that have sprung from them. Clean up the spill. Fire those that approved the leases. But, first and foremost, Obama has to realize he too has made mistakes. If you can’t learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others, you’re just boned.
And this extends beyond the oil spill to the economy and the war. Consistency is only admirable if you’re making progress. It’s easy to blame Bush for the country being at war, but if you continue to send more troops in, it is your responsibility. It’s easy to blame Bush for the failed economy, but if you take out everything useful from the reform bill and then call it a success, you then own the failed economy. So, yes, Bush screwed up and screwed up hard core. But Obama has been dragging his feet on actually fixing things. He relies on blaming Bush and the phantom threat of Republican filibuster instead of pushing for all that change he promised.
