I am going to be out of town and unconnected this weekend, but here is a quick post to hold you over until Monday.
When Barack Obama took over the presidency, he faced an economic crisis and a precarious international situation with two seemingly endless wars and dwindling American prestige and moral authority in the world.
Democrats, including Obama, rightfully sought to place a good bit of the blame on George W. Bush's administration, for failing to adequately regulate the financial markets, for a dramatic rise in the country's debt, and for at least one frivolous and terribly costly war.
But at one point, whether it started in the campaign or in the first months of Obama's presidency, we started to see republicans respond to these critiques of Bush with something to the effect of, "Always dwelling on the past... democrats are trying to blame everything on Bush, but the American people want us to focus on solving the issues of the present."
Unfortunately, for the most part it seems like this has been an effective strategy: democrats are mentioning Bush a lot less, and when they do it does not resonate the way it used to. Incidentally, a lot of the electorate has turned to even more conservative politicians than the Hispanophone compassionate conservative Texan--Rick Perry is direct proof that the GOP thinks Bush is ancient history for most Americans.
They are aided in their strategy by the number of major events that have occurred since 2008: The recession, the health care debate, the rise of the Tea Party, the BP oil spill, the 2010 elections, Citizen's United, the budget debates, the debt-ceiling catastrophe, and now what is either an unsettled market or a second recession. All of these important political news stories are competing for brain space, and consequently, even though Bush was president up to January 2009, it feels like he was president in the 80s.
It also helps that Bush has kept an unusually low profile for a former president.
In conclusion, the name "Bush" has already lost much of its evocative power and negative connotation. This is bad news for Americans, because so many of the issues we are dealing with today really do stem from his policies: some of the greatest wastes of our blood, treasure, and international clout were carried out on Bush's watch. He took the thriving economy and a surplus he inherited from Clinton and turned it into the Great Recession and a huge debt crisis through totally unnecessary policies, like tax cuts for the wealthy, the Iraq War, and a cavalier attitude towards regularing the financial markets. If we are no longer even allowed to look three years into the past for the sources of our problems, well... you know the cliché, those who ignore history are bound to elect Rick Perry!
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