From:
Bush and Obama: Standards & Similarities
(The New American) -- by Charles Scaliger --
According to Alex Barker writing in a November 9 blog entry for Britain’s Financial Times, President George W. Bush once confided to several British officials, including then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown, “I’d have endorsed Obama if they’d asked me.”
Although former President Bush’s spokespeople have vehemently denied that the President ever said any such thing, Bush’s statement seems in line with what too few partisan Democrats and Republicans are willing to acknowledge: that differences between former President Bush and President Obama are mostly cosmetic.
It may be clichéd to observe that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats, but most of us still nurture the fond hope that there is some difference between an allegedly conservative Republican President like George W. Bush and a liberal Democrat like Barack Obama. Certainly the two men differ strikingly in style. Where Bush was verbally awkward, Obama is the soul of eloquence (at least when his teleprompter is working). Where Bush cultivated a good ol’ boy persona, Obama exudes effete elitism. Where Bush typically played the hardliner against his political enemies, Obama has often appeared conciliatory. These, in addition to obvious contrasts in race and upbringing, are the sorts of differences that the media love to dwell on, as though the most crucial attributes of the President are a nimble intellect and a winning personality.
But whatever their various distinguishing traits in their private lives, our political leaders must be judged foremost by their actions in office. And in these, there has been, for several generations, little variation from one President to the next. Our most recent two Presidents are no exception; in matters of bread and butter policy, their similarities far outweigh their differences, while in matters of fundamental political principle, they differ not a whit.
As to the sort of policy decisions that adorn electoral platforms, consider how striking the similarities between Bush and Obama have proven to be, both during Bush’s presidency (when Obama was in the Senate and regularly voted in favor of Bush initiatives) and during the Obama presidency, when the President has mostly carried on the policies of his predecessor.
Make War, Not Love
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, likely to be remembered as President Bush’s most important undertakings, have been carried on under President Obama almost precisely as President Bush would have done, had he been elected to a third term in office. It was President Bush, after all, who envisaged winding down the war in Iraq sometime after 2010, rejecting out of hand any notion of an earlier withdrawal. Candidate Barack Obama conspicuously distanced himself from this policy, promising to end the war in Iraq soon after taking office — only to change his position once elected. We’re now more or less following the timeline for Iraq recommended by President Bush, which was cemented by a “Status of Forces Agreement,” and signed with the Iraqi government shortly before Bush left office. That agreement committed the United States to withdraw military forces by the end of 2011. Many thousands of American troops are still in the country, the gigantic new fortress-like U.S. embassy in Baghdad — the most expensive in the world — opened for business in January 2009, and the bombings and violence continue unabated in that tragic land. It should now be plain to all observers that, despite the much-ballyhooed withdrawal of combat troops, the U.S. occupation of Iraq, as emblemized by its Residency-esque new embassy, is to be as permanent as the British Raj in India.
In Afghanistan, meanwhile, President Obama’s surge is an obvious imitation of President Bush’s attempts to put down insurrectionists in occupied Iraq. And, as with Iraq, the infusion of tens of thousands more American troops in Afghanistan has led only to more violence and to higher American casualty rates...
Internationalist Notions
In an arena not so often noticed in these post-Cold War times, Obama has more or less stayed the course set by Bush in his relationship with Russia, continuing to press for the expansion of NATO into Russia’s sphere of influence even though — as Moscow often points out — NATO’s entire raison d’être, containment of the Soviet Union, is completely out of date.
Which raises an interesting question: Why, two decades after the implosion of the Soviet Union and the lifting of the Iron Curtain, does NATO still exist at all? The now-misnamed North Atlantic Treaty Organization has now become a sort of catch-all military alliance entrusted with projects — like the war in Afghanistan — seemingly far removed from its original mission. It has swallowed up nearly all of the former Eastern Bloc countries and not a few former Soviet republics, giving every appearance, as the Russians charge, of trying to perpetuate the Cold War encirclement and containment of Russia...
Finagling the Finances
Our bloated global military and unending wars aren’t the only thing sapping our national resources. Another more universally recognized peril is the towering national debt, which is now reckoned in the tens of trillions of dollars. The economic collapse of 2008-2009 led to trillions of dollars of new government spending under the guise of economic stimulus — spending that began, lest we forget, under President Bush, who pushed through a $700 billion stimulus (the bank bailout) that only made things worse. No sooner was Obama in office than he began pushing for a second, even more gargantuan stimulus package.
In tandem with these faux stimuli, both Presidents committed billions more to bailouts of select corporations, from financials to automotives, which were arbitrarily deemed “too big to fail.” The American public gnashed their teeth at such blatant favoritism, but the elites in Washington and Wall Street got exactly what they wanted, with Presidents Bush and Obama equally willing to extract the tributary payments from the taxpayers’ hides. Two years on, the economic and financial crisis shows no sign of abating, and the national debt continues to spiral further and further out of control. Not surprisingly, but rather ironically considering how Republicans and Democrats on the whole vilify each other, federal spending has increased about 10 percent per year under President Obama, and it increased at a nearly 10-percent rate under George W. Bush, as well.
As with foreign policy, the monetary and fiscal policy of the United States government has not varied for several generations. We are now beginning to reap the fruits of decades of improvident government spending propped up by the greatest effusion of funny money the world has ever seen...MORE...LINK
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Tuesday, November 30, 2010
As with the entire corrupt Republicrat elite, the policy differences between Bush and Obama are merely cosmetic
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2 comments:
"Where Bush typically played the hardliner against his political enemies, Obama has often appeared conciliatory."
What have you been smoking? Bush wanted to compromise with his opponents and did so repeatedly with Ted Kennedy, who showed him nothing but contempt in return. He didn't want them to hate him. Obama has clear and obvious contempt for his political opponents.
"They bring a knife, we'll bring a gun". Telling McCain "I won" during a heated exchange. Claiming they want dirty air and water, and to cut insurance from kids with autism and Down's Syndrome. "Punish your enemies". For pete's sake, "voting is the best revenge". Obama is not conciliatory in the least, he's a very aggressive partisan hardliner in the Saul Alinsky mold.
http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2011/09/26/obamas-unpresidential-contempt-gop/
It's obvious for all to see he's so far from the uniter he claimed to be in 2008. He's divisive and demagogic, the Chicago hardliner certainly doesn't act conciliatory.
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