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Even though President Obama faces the very difficult task of running for re-election during a very poor economy, he has one important advantage going for him; voters continue to put much of blame for the current bad economy on former President George W. Bush. From Gallup:
To a large degree it seems people don’t think Obama was the one who ruined the economy, it is just that a lot of people think he has done a poor job of fixing it. That is still not good perception going into a re-election fight but better than the alternative.
The unfortunate thing for the Obama campaign is that even though less people blame Obama for the bad economy than blame Bush, Bush isn’t on the ballot this year, Obama is. A majority of people still think Obama deserves at least a moderate amount of blame.
The Obama team will likely try to tie Mitt Romney to the economic policies of the Bush administration, but that strategy has some real limitations. After all Romney didn’t work for the Bush administration and didn’t serve in Congress at the time.
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O’s getting away with murder on this one.
Wonder if he’ll still be by the time the election rolls around.
Romeny’s attack ads have yet to get into full swing.
Since Obama and Bush are just sock puppets for the PTB the blame is misplaced either way.
should read “most americans” and they would be wrong
while bush definitively brought the crisis to a head, it was reagan where the blame begins with his wealth re-distribution scheme marketed as “tax cuts” which were actually tax redistributed to the labor class and marked up to boot
second blame would go to bush senior, then bush but finally this economy right now is the sole responsibility of obama
he not only perpetuated reticulousness “trickle down” economic policy, he also created new “tax cuts” for the wealthy (that are not cuts at all), and gave vital resources to banksters and other criminals who caused the economic problems in the first place
this economy DEFINITELY falls at the door of this trojan horse
ps
it looks like channeled the first two posts,I owe you guys a beverage, tea totalers are not allowed, must be hard alcohol
Yeah- articles like this. Regurgitating the Kabuki Theatre of Black Romney v White Romney.
Sigh- now back to the side bar land.
side bar?
is that where I am purchasing drinks?
This would indicate Bush-bashing would be a sensible electoral strategy for President Zero. But he’s kept many Bush policies in place. And he has to look forward, not backward. Tch, tch, what’s a spineless, base-betraying politician to do?
Well, given that bo has nothing to run on, the blame game is his best strategy at this point. Add to this there are enough suckers out there who are eager to believe anything bo tosses out there, so it makes sense for him.
Observing the advertising in Ohio, it seems clear the GOP plan is to hang Obama around the neck of every running Democrat and try to force them to defend him. The superpacs are really beating up on Obamacare, as they call it.
It’s tough for Obama to respond, anything he trys to tag onto the GOP he’s likely guilty of as well.
Boxturtle (And neither side wants to talk about catfood)
There is also the republican congress. Where 0 uses them as a figleaf, they have exacerbated things.
That said I totally agree with your post. The antipathy 0 is feeling at the moment, which I think, explains his less than confident behavior, comes from the fact that bush/republicans policies and behavior doesn’t obviate the President’s appalling mishandling of the last three years.
It would be reasonable to assume there would have never been a tea party as we know it, if there had been a few serious perp walks down wall street.
The die was cast the day in August of 2009, the pharma deal was splashed on 40 point red headlines on huffpo.
This president has slashed himself and the country with the papercuts of disillusion to the point an oily sonofabitch like romney seems to be an option.
Point out that he still sucks less than Rmoney?
Boxturtle (He can probably get good advice from Holy Joe on being a surviving backstabber)
Dems running in 2012, better face reality! the guy in the White House is not your friend!
OBAMACARE is a complete disaster!
the only issue in 2008, 2009, 2010,2011,2012 was the economy and is the economy.
the Left is furious about OBAMA NAFTA type of deal with ASIA.
how many Dems want to defend Obama plan to send more USA jobs off shore, no one knows how this is going to help the un-employed and under-employed
you can add Clinton, George H and Bonzo to that list..GOP=Dems both the same crooks
a pox on all of them!
(to mods: figuratively speaking)
Any way you slice it, Obama doesn’t deserve reelection. Citizens have to fire a president who doesn’t go all out to try to solve an unemployment crisis. Reward a prez for 8% unemployment, and we’ll never see anything near 5.5% again. Romney isn’t the answer, but four more years of depression economics, then we’ll have another crack at swinging to the left. (But, maybe not.)
Most people do not have a completely consistent view of things. They may think that Bush is the real culprit but for Obama to continue to place the blame on Bush effectively says that Obama is completely unable to solve the problem. Americans don’t like that kind of weakness and it begs the question “if you couldn’t solve the mess Bush left us in the first 3 1/2 years, why and how will you be able to solve in the next four?
Well, my attitude is, so?…Aren’t we still blaming Hoover for the depression that lasted over a decade after he was long out of office? Even Bush, in the end, when he conceded that the gov’t needed to step in or step up before the rush on the banks led to full on depression. His purported (and reported) reason?…He didn’t want to be perceived as Hoover.
The problem is that now that the Obama Administration has the time to proceed to take the offensive banks down in an orderly manner, their Treasury and Justice Depts., more specifically, Timothy Geithner (who was part of the problem, so it’s not surprising that they’re not part of the solution) and Eric Holder (who also appears to have a past history of knowing how to skirt laws he doesn’t want to abide) have failed to uphold the laws at the very highest levels. What a surprise! Could it be a corrupt and greedy electorate with self-centered (tho naive and misaligned) goals gets what they deserve? Maybe we actually do have a center right majority with large puritanical tentacles protecting various religious arms and promising to make their version of moral authority precedent throughout the land.
Truly, the people are misinformed: the blame for “what went wrong with the economy” is shared by the entire political class since the rise to power of Ronald Reagan and “conservatism”.
Obama has largely failed, without a doubt, prioritizing fence-straddling and insufficient gestures over results.
Bush can’t be accused of failure, because his economic policies seemed deliberately intended to produce the worst results for anyone who is not rich. In this light, he was a major success.
Clinton was the beginning of the end for the Democratic Party as far as populist economic management is concerned, he is the Free Trade president, the deregulation president, he was a beneficiary of a long boom driven by inevitable technology advances that he himself could not take much credit for.
Bush I may – may – have actually tried to management the economy in some sort of remotely moderate or sane way, doing what Obama certainly won’t try to do (raise taxes on wealthy people).
Reagan’s history is writ large.
Of course, all the Congresses through all of these administrations share the blame heaped on the heads of state.
And again I say, who is responsible for electing the officials in office that helped the wealth to flow upward to the 1%. If apathy played a part, what is the solution? If they can’t hear us due to the din of the money or the clank of champaign glasses, where do we go from here?
I don’t think this is entirely fair. Obama’s had plenty of time to at least start fixing the problem. I don’t see any real systemic approach to fix the economy. In fact, his tax cuts and gifts to big business and the rich have made it worse. I know some will claim the GOP blocked him, but there are always ways around congress, if you’re willing to play hardball. Obama isn’t willing.
“…if you’re willing to play hardball. Obama isn’t willing.”
Seems to me that effective presidents have a “line in the sand, this far and no farther moment”.
Obama hasn’t and he won’t. (Except for that whistleblower thing)
The most ridiculous element of the American two party political system is that it rewards failure.
Screw up and the electorate votes you out. Obstruct everything your victorious opponent tries to do and get voted back in so you can screw up some more.
What a racket.
“…American two party political system is that it rewards failure.”
For the players, its a feature; for the citizens its a bug.
Since it was Bill Clinton, his economic team, and the tag team duo of Phil and Wendy Gramm who foisted the Financial Services Modernization Act and the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, the deregulation foundation for the financial component of the current economic disaster, that’s where the blame lies. Reagan was responsible for the successful destruction of unions, beginning with the air traffic controllers.
Obama’s had more than enough time. If he’d followed the Icelandic Model the US economy and the plight of the 99% would be much improved.
Thanks holey.for including Clinton in this class-wa lineage of pubs and crypto-pubs .The degree to which one is impressed by Rubin and his DLC machine is the degree to which one should be impressed with marketing products such as O and C .