A year after his historic election, President Barack Obama sought to remind Americans on Wednesday the biggest problems he is grappling with -- from the economy to the war in Afghanistan -- are the legacy of his predecessor, George W. Bush. With his approval ratings down from once lofty levels and Tuesday's Democratic election losses raising questions about his political clout, Obama held no special ceremony to mark the anniversary of his election as America's first black president. He instead traveled to Wisconsin to appear before a friendly audience in a school gymnasium and promote education as a pillar of his economic recovery efforts. Obama was elected on a promise of sweeping change after eight years under Bush, but many Americans are increasingly expressing impatience that his pledge has yet to bear fruit. He used the preamble of his speech to insist his administration had indeed had important successes and also to remind Americans of the litany of daunting challenges he inherited when he took office in January. "One year ago, Americans all across this country went to the polls and cast ballots for the future they wanted to see," Obama said. - Reuters
Dominant Social Theme: A timely reminder from the leader of the free world?
Free-Market Analysis: We're not quite sure what President Barack Obama hopes to achieve by continuing to blame his predecessor for current problems. Does he hope people will agree with him - thus paring his negatives? Or is he merely trying to deflect blame because like all humans, he doesn't like to admit that he's been wrong? We figure maybe Obama is simply trying to buy time. One more day of blame-the-disasters-on-Bush is one more day, maybe, that Americans don't blame Obama and his party for what's gone wrong. (And one more day therefore that resistance is lessened a tiny bit to the programs he's racing to pass.)
Obama needs all the time he can buy. He has a busy agenda. He's wasted billions on job stimuli that have produced, as predicted (here and elsewhere), corruption but no jobs; he's presided over an administration that has approved of the Federal Reserve's insanely inflationary and ruinous program of lending trillions at home and abroad to the world's wealthiest institutions; he's taken over parts of Wall Street and the nation's car industry; he's trying his darndest to socialize what's left of the country's private medical establishment; he's about to try to sign away some more of America's sovereignty in Copenhagen (though he hasn't managed to bring many troops home from America's murderously incompetent, serial wars).
What he can't socialize he seems intent on unionizing, and what he can't unionize, he's increasingly trying to demonize. ... So he's busy. And it's Bush's fault.
Of course, it's true, Bush was no great shakes. Until Obama came along, Bush was one of the greatest spenders on earth, a Republican to make Democratic spendthrifts blush. But it was after 9/11 that Bush truly swung into action - with startling zeal - presiding over two failed or failing wars, expanding the US domestic intel apparatus so that it rivals the vaunted KGB in scope (if not yet in efficiency); pushing forward the invasive and un-American Patriot Act; giving the CIA the green light for renditions and torture; expanding US military initiatives so that today they involve Pakistan and threatened to involve Iran.
That was only the foreign element of Bush's transformative presidency. Domestically, his second term revealed that "conservative" part of the Bushian paradigm was a good deal less important than the "compassionate" side. Bush did nothing to rein in the increasingly out-of-control military industrial complex or frothy Federal Reserve - so that toward the end of his term, the economy, juiced with billions of excess dollars, simply collapsed. Bush's solution: More of the same. No wonder Obama has a headache.
But is not, from our humble vantage point, quite true, no matter how Obama's head hurts, that the long-suffering American voter voted for Obama's version of "change." They voted, in our opinion, for someone who was not Bush. The American voter wanted less foreign military involvement, less spending, fewer and more modest government programs.
In fact, the American voter increasingly wanted the Federal Reserve to stop whatever it was doing that was leading to economic disaster after economic disaster, and wanted Washington out of the business of funding banks and other too-big-to-fail entities. The American voter wanted more jobs and less socialism, more honestly-earned inequities and less leveling, more real-income and less taxation; more real representation and less dangerous posturing.
Bush was supine economically and domestically and hyper-aggressive militarily. Obama has made noises about a less aggressive military stance (and may attempt to deliver on some of this) but he has been even more pro-active and spendthrift than Bush when it comes to the domestic economy.
Thus, we would tend to believe that Obama is the yin to Bush's yang. If one accepts, unfortunately, that American parties are much the same - only with different emphases - than Obama provides us with something of the ol' switcheroo. Voters, tired of empire building abroad are now experiencing the same thing at home. The American Federal government, under Obama, is looking inward, consolidating its increasingly unconstitutional power over Americans themselves rather than long-suffering Middle Easterners.
We can't believe this is serendipity. Those who stand behind Obama - the ones we call the monetary elite - are determined to move forward with an expansive and ever-more inclusive agenda. Bush was the military hand and Obama is the leveling one. They both belong to the same corpus.
So, yes, we think the real reason for Obama's Bush-blaming episode has to do with his race against the clock. He is trying to buy whatever time he can to push forward the agenda of his backers. The pummeled American public didn't vote for his leveling anymore than Bush's serial warfare. Those who backed Bush, and now Obama, are racing right alongside Obama, trying to put more pieces of the leveling puzzle into place as fast as they can.
And yet ... is it not already too late? The Internet has sparked the long-delayed libertarian revolution. We anticipate it will be peaceful, but it will come. The Gutenberg press did something similar, and the Internet is not a wit less powerful.
Conclusion: You, dear reader, may expect globalist tyranny. We do not. We think those who constitute the monetary elite will take a step back, as in the past. We see evidence this has already begun. Obama can blame Bush all he wants, but it's not going to help him win another term. The Democratic alternative is just as bankrupt as the Republican one. (And that's in America - something similar is afoot in Europe.) One day (perhaps sooner than later?), it may be the turn of the market itself.
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