OAK BLUFFS — Sharky’s Cantina is once again mixing its “Obamarita’’ cocktail, with tastes of the president’s favorite fruits, and the Locker Room on Circuit Avenue has restocked the “I vacationed with Obama’’ T-shirts.
But as Martha’s Vineyard prepares for the first family’s visit tomorrow — their second summer stay here since President Obama took office — the excitement that marked last summer’s arrival of the fresh-faced commander in chief seems to have ebbed like the tide.
Obama, now a tested president burdened by war and economic upheaval, may well get the peace and quiet he has been seeking as he settles in for a 10-day stay, presumably at the historic Blue Heron Farm in Chilmark where he stayed last year, local residents said.
“I have no desire to go chase him or see him,’’ said Elaine Allen, owner of the Laughing Bear clothing shop on Circuit Avenue, one of the few stores to feature a poster in its window welcoming the first family this year.
(snip)
One barometer of the plunge in excitement has been the sale of Obama-themed T-shirts, which designers had been banking on after the craze of last year. Clothing labeled with the president’s name sold by the thousands, helping to salvage a tough economic year for the island.
But this year’s T-shirt sales are much less brisk, merchants say.
“Last year, Obama gave you goose bumps, but I don’t think you’re going to see that this year,’’ said Alex McCluskey, co-owner of the Locker Room, who sold more than 4,000 “I vacationed with Obama’’ T-shirts last year. But so far this year, he said, his hot item is T-shirts of former President Bush asking, “Miss me yet?"
Showing posts with label George W. Bush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George W. Bush. Show all posts
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
Re Obama's blame-Bush strategy: By one measure - jobs promised minus actual jobs - Obama has a deficit of 7.6 million
In the wake of a recession that began roughly seven weeks after President Bush took office, America experienced six years of uninterrupted economic growth and a record 52 straight months of job creation that produced more than 8 million new jobs. During the Bush presidency, the unemployment rate averaged 5.3 percent. We saw labor-productivity gains that averaged 2.5 percent annually — a rate that exceeds the averages of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Real after-tax income per capita increased by more than 11 percent. And from 2000 to 2007, real GDP grew by more than 17 percent, a gain of nearly $2.1 trillion.
As for Obama’s claim that Bush “turned a budget surplus into a deficit”: by January 2001, when Bush was inaugurated, the budget surpluses were already evaporating as the economy was skidding toward recession (it officially began in March 2001). Combined with the devastating economic effects of 9/11, when we lost around 1 million jobs over 90 days, the surplus went into deficit.
Rather than whine incessantly about the situation, President Bush proposed policies that triggered the kind of sustained growth that saw the deficit fall to 1 percent of GDP ($162 billion) by 2007. Indeed, before the financial crisis of 2008 – which I’ll return to in a moment — Bush’s budget deficits were 0.6 percentage points below the historical average. (My former White House colleague Keith Hennessey eviscerates Obama’s assertion that we faced a “decade of spiraling deficits” here).
Now let’s consider Mr. Obama’s record: an unemployment rate of 9.5 percent, with 131,000 jobs lost in July, during our so-called Recovery Summer (Vice President Biden promised us up to 500,000 new jobs a month back in April). The overall unemployment rate, incorporating people who want jobs but did not look during July, is now 16.5 percent.
According to J.D. Foster, Obama’s “job deficit” — the difference between current employment and the jobs Obama promised to create by the end of 2010 – stands at a staggering 7.6 million workers. The 2010 deficit is $1.471 trillion, or 10 percent of GDP, while the debt is $9.2 trillion, or 62.7 percent of GDP. (From January 20, 2001, to January 20, 2009, the debt held by the public grew $3 trillion under Bush, from $3.3 trillion to $6.3 trillion; in 20 months, Mr. Obama will add as much debt as Mr. Bush ran up in eight years.) And let’s not forget that the Obama administration passed an $862 billion stimulus package and assured us that unemployment would not exceed 8 percent; instead, unemployment topped 10 percent – a figure higher than what the Obama administration said would occur if the stimulus package wasn’t passed.
Sales of new homes collapsed earlier this year, sinking 33 percent to the lowest level on record (new home sales rose in June from May’s historical low, but the overall pace was still the second slowest on record, the Commerce Department reported.
Not surprisingly, the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index now stands at 50.4. As a reference point, a reading above 90 indicates that the economy is on solid footing, while above 100 signals strong growth. We also learned on Tuesday that the Federal Reserve, downgrading its assessment of the economy, announced that the pace of recovery is “more modest” than it had anticipated. “The Fed noted that high unemployment, modest income growth, lower housing wealth and tight credit were holding back household spending,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Consider this as well: according to the Obama administration’s own projections, in the first term we’ll see an average unemployment rate of 9.0 percent, real GDP growth of 1.1 percent, federal spending as a percentage of GDP at 24 percent, budget deficits as a percentage of GDP at 7.8 percent, and the deficits as a percentage of GDP at 6.2 percent (see here).
These projections are, across-the-board, depressing.
Now, unlike Obama, whose intellectual dishonesty can be striking at times, some of us are willing to concede that things need to be placed within a proper context. Obama took the oath of office in the wake of a financial collapse that made every economic indicator much worse; it’s only fair to take that into account. But even here, in characterizing what happened, Obama has to present a cartoon image, distorted and disfigured, pretending that it was wholly and completely the fault of President Bush and Republicans.
In fact, it was a complex set of factors that both Republicans and Democrats were complicit in. In addition, it’s worth noting that Democrats were in control of Congress beginning in January 2007 -- and Congress is where legislation, including appropriations and tax legislation, is passed.
Second, spending would have been much higher during the Bush presidency if Democrats had their way. To take just one example: Democrats proposed creating a prescription-drug program as an alternative to the one Bush proposed that would have cost a projected $800 billion over 10 years. The Bush prescription-drug law was originally expected to cost half that amount — and today it costs a third less than initial projections because it uses market forces to drive prices down (see here and here).
Third, Democrats bear the majority of the blame for blocking reforms that could have mitigated the effects of the housing crisis, which in turn led to the broader financial crisis.
As for Obama’s claim that Bush “turned a budget surplus into a deficit”: by January 2001, when Bush was inaugurated, the budget surpluses were already evaporating as the economy was skidding toward recession (it officially began in March 2001). Combined with the devastating economic effects of 9/11, when we lost around 1 million jobs over 90 days, the surplus went into deficit.
Rather than whine incessantly about the situation, President Bush proposed policies that triggered the kind of sustained growth that saw the deficit fall to 1 percent of GDP ($162 billion) by 2007. Indeed, before the financial crisis of 2008 – which I’ll return to in a moment — Bush’s budget deficits were 0.6 percentage points below the historical average. (My former White House colleague Keith Hennessey eviscerates Obama’s assertion that we faced a “decade of spiraling deficits” here).
Now let’s consider Mr. Obama’s record: an unemployment rate of 9.5 percent, with 131,000 jobs lost in July, during our so-called Recovery Summer (Vice President Biden promised us up to 500,000 new jobs a month back in April). The overall unemployment rate, incorporating people who want jobs but did not look during July, is now 16.5 percent.
According to J.D. Foster, Obama’s “job deficit” — the difference between current employment and the jobs Obama promised to create by the end of 2010 – stands at a staggering 7.6 million workers. The 2010 deficit is $1.471 trillion, or 10 percent of GDP, while the debt is $9.2 trillion, or 62.7 percent of GDP. (From January 20, 2001, to January 20, 2009, the debt held by the public grew $3 trillion under Bush, from $3.3 trillion to $6.3 trillion; in 20 months, Mr. Obama will add as much debt as Mr. Bush ran up in eight years.) And let’s not forget that the Obama administration passed an $862 billion stimulus package and assured us that unemployment would not exceed 8 percent; instead, unemployment topped 10 percent – a figure higher than what the Obama administration said would occur if the stimulus package wasn’t passed.
Sales of new homes collapsed earlier this year, sinking 33 percent to the lowest level on record (new home sales rose in June from May’s historical low, but the overall pace was still the second slowest on record, the Commerce Department reported.
Not surprisingly, the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index now stands at 50.4. As a reference point, a reading above 90 indicates that the economy is on solid footing, while above 100 signals strong growth. We also learned on Tuesday that the Federal Reserve, downgrading its assessment of the economy, announced that the pace of recovery is “more modest” than it had anticipated. “The Fed noted that high unemployment, modest income growth, lower housing wealth and tight credit were holding back household spending,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Consider this as well: according to the Obama administration’s own projections, in the first term we’ll see an average unemployment rate of 9.0 percent, real GDP growth of 1.1 percent, federal spending as a percentage of GDP at 24 percent, budget deficits as a percentage of GDP at 7.8 percent, and the deficits as a percentage of GDP at 6.2 percent (see here).
These projections are, across-the-board, depressing.
Now, unlike Obama, whose intellectual dishonesty can be striking at times, some of us are willing to concede that things need to be placed within a proper context. Obama took the oath of office in the wake of a financial collapse that made every economic indicator much worse; it’s only fair to take that into account. But even here, in characterizing what happened, Obama has to present a cartoon image, distorted and disfigured, pretending that it was wholly and completely the fault of President Bush and Republicans.
In fact, it was a complex set of factors that both Republicans and Democrats were complicit in. In addition, it’s worth noting that Democrats were in control of Congress beginning in January 2007 -- and Congress is where legislation, including appropriations and tax legislation, is passed.
Second, spending would have been much higher during the Bush presidency if Democrats had their way. To take just one example: Democrats proposed creating a prescription-drug program as an alternative to the one Bush proposed that would have cost a projected $800 billion over 10 years. The Bush prescription-drug law was originally expected to cost half that amount — and today it costs a third less than initial projections because it uses market forces to drive prices down (see here and here).
Third, Democrats bear the majority of the blame for blocking reforms that could have mitigated the effects of the housing crisis, which in turn led to the broader financial crisis.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Yes, George Bush was humanistic, but he left huge messes on the Mexican border and in the Middle East
In the age of Obama, I always assumed that the Democratic Party would define itself against George W. Bush. But I never imagined that the Republican Party would as well.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that the central conservative insight is that culture matters more than politics. But in this regard, George W. Bush was an odd conservative because he didn’t care much about culture; he believed that people everywhere were pretty much the same. In the mid-1990s, when Pete Wilson and Pat Buchanan were demonizing Mexican immigrants, Bush insisted that they were just like everyone else. “Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande River,” he told a reporter. “And see, what I understand is, is that when you’re a man who got kids to feed, and are you making 50 cents and you can look up north and see the chance to make $50 and your kids are hungry, that you are going to come.”
Prominent Republicans barely ever discuss illegal immigrants in the humanizing terms that Bush did.
After September 11, Bush described Muslims in the same universalistic way. A few months after the attacks, he insisted that “Islam is peace,” a view dramatically at odds with the one being propagated by most conservative talking heads. (A 2002 poll of evangelical Protestant leaders found that only 10 percent thought Bush was right.) But Bush’s brand of Christianity was genuinely ecumenical. Although he had transformed his life through Christ, he knew that lots of former addicts had done so through born-again Islam. As president, he sought out people like Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya who told him that the people of Iraq yearned for democracy, and were capable of building it. And it was this belief that made him receptive to the arguments of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who as ambassador to Indonesia had been emboldened by watching the world’s largest majority-Muslim country move from dictatorship to democracy. Two months before the Iraq War, Bush declared, “The human heart desires the same good things, everywhere on Earth. In our desire to be safe from brutal and bullying oppression, human beings are the same. In our desire to care for our children and give them a better life, we are the same. For these fundamental reasons, freedom and democracy will always and everywhere have greater appeal than the slogans of hatred and the tactics of terror.”
My take:
These insightful observations get to the heart of George Bush's shortcomings as president. Earlier, people who are familiar with the Bush family have noted that Mexican nannies bounced Bush on their knees when he was a child, and that his brother, Jeb, is married to a Mexican national.
So, Bush had a strong sentimental attachment to Mexican immigrants. This, along with the fact that family wealth meant that he never had to compete for a job, allowed Bush to cast a benign eye on illegal immigration from Mexico.
Other people, who did have to compete for jobs with illegal immigrants, paid the price for Bush's sanguine attitude.
In the Middle East, Bush's above-the-fray posture has had more disastrous results. No one questions the invasion of Afghanistan, the first stage in what has become an endless war. The second stage was the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which Democrat Sen. James Webb, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam war, and a former Secretary of the Navy, described recently as "the dumbest thing we've ever done."
As for an overall judgment on Bush's ostensibly "compassionate conservative" politics, the late Bob Novak said it best: "He's no conservative. He's a Connecticut liberal, just like his granddaddy."
Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that the central conservative insight is that culture matters more than politics. But in this regard, George W. Bush was an odd conservative because he didn’t care much about culture; he believed that people everywhere were pretty much the same. In the mid-1990s, when Pete Wilson and Pat Buchanan were demonizing Mexican immigrants, Bush insisted that they were just like everyone else. “Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande River,” he told a reporter. “And see, what I understand is, is that when you’re a man who got kids to feed, and are you making 50 cents and you can look up north and see the chance to make $50 and your kids are hungry, that you are going to come.”
Prominent Republicans barely ever discuss illegal immigrants in the humanizing terms that Bush did.
After September 11, Bush described Muslims in the same universalistic way. A few months after the attacks, he insisted that “Islam is peace,” a view dramatically at odds with the one being propagated by most conservative talking heads. (A 2002 poll of evangelical Protestant leaders found that only 10 percent thought Bush was right.) But Bush’s brand of Christianity was genuinely ecumenical. Although he had transformed his life through Christ, he knew that lots of former addicts had done so through born-again Islam. As president, he sought out people like Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya who told him that the people of Iraq yearned for democracy, and were capable of building it. And it was this belief that made him receptive to the arguments of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who as ambassador to Indonesia had been emboldened by watching the world’s largest majority-Muslim country move from dictatorship to democracy. Two months before the Iraq War, Bush declared, “The human heart desires the same good things, everywhere on Earth. In our desire to be safe from brutal and bullying oppression, human beings are the same. In our desire to care for our children and give them a better life, we are the same. For these fundamental reasons, freedom and democracy will always and everywhere have greater appeal than the slogans of hatred and the tactics of terror.”
My take:
These insightful observations get to the heart of George Bush's shortcomings as president. Earlier, people who are familiar with the Bush family have noted that Mexican nannies bounced Bush on their knees when he was a child, and that his brother, Jeb, is married to a Mexican national.
So, Bush had a strong sentimental attachment to Mexican immigrants. This, along with the fact that family wealth meant that he never had to compete for a job, allowed Bush to cast a benign eye on illegal immigration from Mexico.
Other people, who did have to compete for jobs with illegal immigrants, paid the price for Bush's sanguine attitude.
In the Middle East, Bush's above-the-fray posture has had more disastrous results. No one questions the invasion of Afghanistan, the first stage in what has become an endless war. The second stage was the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which Democrat Sen. James Webb, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam war, and a former Secretary of the Navy, described recently as "the dumbest thing we've ever done."
As for an overall judgment on Bush's ostensibly "compassionate conservative" politics, the late Bob Novak said it best: "He's no conservative. He's a Connecticut liberal, just like his granddaddy."
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