For anyone looking for signs that Fox News is running out of effective attacks to level at President Obama, the evidence just became abundantly clear that they are near to depleting their reservoir of smears. An editorial on their web site has just deployed the ultimate insult imaginable: Obama Has Continued Bush’s Failed Policies.
Ouch. That was brutal and totally uncalled for. Accusing Obama of doing anything remotely similar to Bush is not only cruel, it is delusional. Tea Party leader Phil Kerpen, the author of the editorial, cites as evidence that Obama is following in Bush’s footsteps the fact that he installed Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary and reappointed Ben Bernanke chairman of the Federal Reserve. The fact that almost every economic policy enacted by the Obama administration is the polar opposite of Bush’s seems to have escaped Kerpen.
It was Bush who ushered in across-the-board tax cuts that have been one of the most prominent contributors to the deficit. It was Bush who piled on spending for defense driven by two wars that he kept off the books. It was Bush who deregulated Wall Street leading to an unprecedented financial calamity. It was Bush who presided over policies that rewarded corporations for outsourcing jobs. Those are the failed policies for which the Bush administration will forever be remembered. And since Obama has opposed all of them, it’s hard to see what Kerpen is getting at in his feverish rant.
Kerpen is correct, however, in describing Bush’s policies as having failed. Even today, the vast majority of the nation’s outstanding debt is the result of the Bush administration’s mismanagement of the economy. It’s good to see that Fox News is finally acknowledging that it was Bush who was responsible for the mess we are in today. That’s one of the reasons that Fox, and the rest of the right-wing media, have all but scrubbed Bush from their reporting. And since the right is now connecting Obama to the Bush debacle, they have to put to rest their complaints about Democrats blaming Bush.
However, a big point that Fox and Kerpen have ignored is that there is someone who actually is advocating a continuation of the failed Bush policies: Mitt Romney. He is pushing for even more across-the-board tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy and will balloon the debt. He seems to support military interventions in every country with whom we have some conflict (i.e. Iran, Syria, North Korea). He wants to accelerate deregulation for businesses and has promised to reverse every regulation that Obama enacted on day one if he is elected. And his record of having profited personally from eliminating American jobs and sending them to China is well documented.
Despite this universal acclimation of the Bush agenda, Romney has utterly excised Bush from his campaign. Romney has not appeared in public with Bush; has not celebrated his endorsement; has not deployed him as a surrogate. And while Bush himself is being treated, deservedly, as a pariah, Romney has stacked his campaign with former officials from the Bush administration. It is uncommon, to say the least, for the past president of a candidate’s party to be so brazenly cast aside, even as he espouses the same economic program.
Yet somehow Kerpen managed to close his article by arguing that Romney represents change and saying that “It’s time to try something different.” That’s a conclusion that can only be explained by the onset of dementia. A Romney administration would be a carbon copy of the Bush years. And now Fox News has helpfully agreed that the Bush years were a disaster. So in a way, that’s an endorsement of Obama. Well, except for the fact that the editorial gets the facts all wrong and reverses the roles of Obama and Romney as Bush’s successor. But other than that…