Krugman: Bush’s Deficit Bad, Obama’s Deficit Good
by Larry Elder

Left-wing economist, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman hates deficits in tough economic times — when the president of the United States is named George W. Bush.

Krugman, in a November 2004 interview, criticized the “enormous” Bush deficit. “We have a world-class budget deficit,” he said, “not just as in absolute terms, of course — it’s the biggest budget deficit in the history of the world — but it’s a budget deficit that, as a share of GDP, is right up there.”

The numbers? The deficit in fiscal year 2004 — $413 billion, 3.5 percent of the gross domestic product.

Back then, a disapproving Krugman called the deficit “comparable to the worst we’ve ever seen in this country. … The only time postwar that the United States has had anything like these deficits is the middle Reagan years, and that was with unemployment close to 10 percent.” Take away the Social Security surplus spent by the government, he said, and “we’re running at a deficit of more than 6 percent of GDP, and that is unprecedented.”

He considered the Bush tax cuts irresponsible and a major contributor — along with two wars — to the deficit. But he also warned of the growing cost of autopilot entitlements: “We have the huge bulge in the population that starts to collect benefits. … If there isn’t a clear path towards fiscal sanity well before (the next decade), then I think the financial markets are going to say, ‘Well, gee, where is this going?’”

Three months earlier, Krugman said, “Here we are more than 2 1/2 years after the official end of the recession, and we’re still well below, of course, pre-Bush employment.” In October 2004, unemployment was 5.5 percent and continued to slowly decline. At the time, Krugman described the economy as “weak,” with “job creation … essentially nonexistent.”

How bad will it get? If we don’t get our “financial house in order,” he said, “I think we’re looking for a collapse of confidence some time in the not-too-distant future.”

Fast-forward to 2010.

The numbers: projected deficit for fiscal year 2010 — over $1.5 trillion, more than 10 percent of GDP.

This sets a post-WWII record in both absolute numbers and as a percentage of GDP. And if the Obama administration’s optimistic projections of the economic growth fall short, things will get much worse. So what does Krugman say now?

We must guard against “deficit hysteria.” In “Fiscal Scare Tactics,” his recent column, Krugman writes: “These days it’s hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on a news program without encountering stern warnings about the federal budget deficit. The deficit threatens economic recovery, we’re told; it puts American economic stability at risk; it will undermine our influence in the world. These claims generally aren’t stated as opinions, as views held by some analysts but disputed by others. Instead, they’re reported as if they were facts, plain and simple.”

He continues, “And fear-mongering on the deficit may end up doing as much harm as the fear-mongering on weapons of mass destruction.” Krugman believes Bush lied us into the Iraq War. Just as people unreasonably feared Saddam Hussein, they now have an unwarranted fear of today’s deficit.

Questions: Didn’t Krugman, less than six years ago, call the deficit “enormous”? Wouldn’t he, therefore, consider a $1.5 trillion deficit at 10 percent of GDP mega-normous? Didn’t he describe the economy with 5.5 percent unemployment as “weak”? Isn’t the current economy, at 9.7 percent unemployment, even weaker? If the 2004 deficit was “comparable to the worst we’ve ever seen in this country,” wouldn’t today’s much bigger deficit cause even more heartburn?

Nope. Now a huge deficit is actually a good thing: “The point is that running big deficits in the face of the worst economic slump since the 1930s is actually the right thing to do. If anything, deficits should be bigger than they are because the government should be doing more than it is to create jobs.” The deficit “should be bigger”?!

Long term, Krugman says, we’ve got concerns about revenue and spending. But as for now? “There’s no reason to panic about budget prospects for the next few years, or even for the next decade.” In 2004, Krugman warned that without a “clear path towards fiscal sanity” before “the next decade,” we faced a “crunch.” Presumably, we now have this “clear path.”

Let’s review. In 2004, an unhappy Krugman criticized Bush’s “weak” economy and “miserable” job creation. Running an “enormous” deficit was a bad thing. Times were awful — “by a large margin” the worst job crash and performance since Herbert Hoover. Today the deficit is four times as large in an even weaker economy with much higher unemployment. Times are awful. Now, though, the deficit is a good thing and should be even bigger.

Krugman’s flip-flop on the deficit demonstrates a modern economic equation. Hatred of Bush + love for Obama = intellectual dishonesty.

Obama makes Bush his blame czar
It’s now Obama’s war, his jobless rate, his debt, etc.
by Mark Steyn

Valerie Jarrett announced the other day that “we’re going to speak truth to power.”

Who’s Valerie Jarrett? She’s “Senior Adviser” to the president of the United States – i.e., the leader of the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth. You would think the most powerful man in the most powerful nation would find a hard job finding anyone on the planet to “speak truth to power” to. But I suppose if you’re as eager to do so as his Senior Adviser, there’s always somebody out there: The Supreme Leader of Iran. The Prime Minister of Belgium. The Deputy Tourism Minister of the Solomon Islands. But no. The Senior Adviser has selected targets closer to home: “I think that what the administration has said very clearly is that we’re going to speak truth to power. When we saw all of the distortions in the course of the summer, when people were coming down to town hall meetings and putting up signs that were scaring seniors to death.”

Ah, right. People “putting up signs.” Can’t have that, can we? The most powerful woman in the inner circle of the most powerful man on Earth has decided to speak truth to powerful people standing in the street with handwritten placards saying “THIS GRAN’MA ISN’T SHOVEL READY.” Was it only a week ago that I wrote about this administration’s peculiar need for domestic enemies?

The Senior Adviser seems to have forgotten that sheis the power. Admittedly, this is a recurring lapse on the part of the administration. There was Barack Obama only the other day, blaming everything on the president – no, no, silly, not him, the other fellow, the Designated Fall Guy who stepped down as head of state in January to accept the new constitutional position of Blame Czar. Musing on problems in Afghanistan, Obama blamed the “long years of drift” under his predecessor. The new president – OK, newish president – has been Drifter-in-Chief for almost a year but he’s too busy speaking truth to the former power to get on top of the situation. It could be a while yet. In his more self-regarding moments, such as his speech to the United Nations, he gives the strong impression that the “long years of drift” began in 1776.

Rocco Landesman, head honcho at the National Endowment for the Arts, seems closer to the reality of the situation. In his keynote address to the 2009 “Grantmakers in the Arts” conference, Landesman hailed Obama as “the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar”. He didn’t mean a “powerful writer” as in a compelling voice, gripping narrative, vivid characterization, command of language, etc. He meant a “powerful writer” as in Caesar was king of the world, and now Obama is. He came, he saw, he stimulated: “If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.”

I suppose so. He could invade somewhere and force the natives to accept degrading roles in NEA-funded performance art. He could take out the Iranian nuclear program by carpet-bombing it with unreadable literary novels. That is, if you “accept the premise” that the United States is the most powerful country in the world. Rocco Landesman may, but it’s not clear, from his actions (or inactions) in Eastern Europe, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere, that the president does. But, even so, it seems an odd pitch to “American artists.” Rocco Landesman, Speaking Goof to Power, isn’t the first Obama groupie to enjoy the kinky frisson of groveling obsequiousness, but he’s set an impressive new standard in public revelation thereof. Rocco’s aunt, Fran Landesman, is the great lyricist of “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most” as well as “The Ballad Of The Sad Young Men.” But surely there are few sadder middle-age men than her nephew, prostrating himself before his master as the most literate global colossus in two millennia.

Meanwhile, Larry David is now doing televised NEA exhibits on his HBO show “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Christians are said to be “angry” at him because of an episode in which, after he accidentally sprays his urine on a picture of Jesus, his assistant mistakes the droplets for tears and calls in her mother to witness the miracle of Christ weeping. Ha-ha! Oh, those brave transgressive artists! Of course, Christians aren’t “angry” in the sense that two U.S. residents arrested last week are. The pair – one an American citizen, the other Canadian – were so “angry” about the Muhammad cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that they hatched a plot to kill the artist and his editor. As many commentators pointed out, Mr. David’s splashy stunt is a dreary provocation: It’s easy to be provocative with people who can’t be provoked. If he were to start urinating in a more Mecca-ly direction, he’d find an entirely more motivated crowd waiting for him at the stage door.

But I liked the point made by the Anchoress, a writer at the magazine First Things: Putting Muhammad, et al aside, if Larry David had a yen to urinate hither and yon, wouldn’t it have been “braver” to have done it to the religious icon du jour? That’s to say, Barack Obama. And then maybe Ashton Kutcher could have marveled at how even Obama’s image was empathizing tearily with all 687 million Americans without health insurance. Or, alternatively, dribbling warm champagne from his Norwegian Nobel banquet toast. C’mon, Larry. Sure, you might not have a career afterward, but, unlike any Islamo-provocations, you’re not gonna get killed. Just fired, and probably damned as a racist. But at least you wouldn’t be a simpering suck-up to power like Rocco Landesman and the other creeps.

At some point the Caesar cult has to manifest itself in an achievement – I mean a real achievement, not merely some dud prize handed out by Norwegian Lefties. Afghanistan is his now: Notwithstanding “years of drift,” whether it winds up as victory or defeat is his call. It’s Obama’s war. It’s Obama’s economy. The stimulus bill is his stimulus, and for $787 billion it created 30,000 new jobs (according to the government) or (according to the Associated Press) 25,000. Either way, you do the math. It’s Obama’s unemployment rate, Obama’s dollar, Obama’s debt. Pace Valerie Jarrett, the truth is you are the power. And those on the receiving end of it are going to be speaking a lot louder in the months ahead.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIHz5tevLAw

Opposing Presidential Unity
by Lorie Byrd

After eight years of savaging George W. Bush, those on the left now believe that supporting the President is good for the country. Supporting the new President, that is.

Barack Obama has only been in office one week, but he has already provided plenty of ammunition for his opponents on the right. In addition to his failure to cure all the ills of the country instantaneously on just the power of his Obamaness, the new President has made a few missteps. Instituting a ban on lobbyists working in his administration only to issue a waiver to the ban the following day, and nominating as Treasury Secretary a man who failed to pay all his taxes, are a couple that have received some attention. If President Bush had done either one of these things he would not only have been strongly criticized by those on the left for it, but the most sinister of intentions would have been ascribed to his actions. What a difference an election makes.

While those on the left demand those on the right now bow at the alter of Obama in the name of unity, many continue to bash President Bush in ways that can best be described as childish and petty. From the verbal “nana nana boo boo” President Bush received from some in the crowd at the inaugural ceremony to the classless digs at Bush on the new White House website, the new administration and its followers seem to have trouble following their own new rules for national unity. Journalist Nina Easton noted that not once in Barack Obama’s inaugural speech did he give Bush credit for any of the things he did right. She specifically referred to the portion of the speech in which he said the new administration would stop ignoring poor countries and their needs. She pointed to what George Bush has done for AIDS and malaria in Africa. “He has saved tens of thousands of lives and this was a moment when I think Obama, in his spirit of bipartisanship, could have given him credit at least on that.” But President Obama could not bring himself to do that, even as he called on the country to unite.

This is not surprising coming from a man who could not even acknowledge the success of the surge in Iraq until it became impossible to deny, and who even then refused to admit he had made a mistake to oppose it. Bush’s opponents, including most of the American media, attacked him for not being able to admit his mistakes. Such attacks on Barack Obama from the media have been (and most likely will continue to be) nonexistent.

Although Republicans already have valid grounds to criticize the new administration, it remains to be seen whether or not they will mount a successful coordinated opposition.

For too long, Republicans have failed to effectively make the case for conservative principles. Too many Republicans, including President Bush, have their fingerprints all over the bailout and proposed stimulus plan, making it hard for them to criticize President Obama’s fiscal policies. There are some Republicans in Washington still committed to fiscal responsibility and conservative principles, but they will face an uphill battle voicing opposition to a President so strongly supported by the media.

Republicans will find it difficult to oppose the popular new President, but at a minimum they must make a strong and clear argument against raising taxes and multi-billion dollar bailouts if they want to retain what is left of their conservative base. It will not be enough to sit back and wait for liberal policies to fail. The same way the media resisted reporting the progress that was being made in Iraq, they will resist telling the public when Obama-Pelosi-Reid policies fail. It will be up to the Republican opposition to inform the public of the specifics of the new administration’s proposals and to use what little political power they have left to oppose bad policy.

Those on the left were allowed by the media to make vicious and unfair attacks on President Bush without scrutiny of their validity. Republicans will not be extended the same courtesy. Republicans will have to make their strongest arguments on the most important issues and resist engaging in the type of nasty, unfair attacks that were routinely aimed at the Bush administration.

The message has been repeated over and over again by those on the left and in the media that the new President is bringing the country together. Many of his followers say he is ushering in a “new age.” Those who don’t get with the Obama program are going to be in for a rough ride, but if Republicans don’t stand up for conservative principles, they might as well pack their bags and go home.

The Bush Legacy
by Dr. Thomas Sowell

Whatever history’s verdict on the Bush administration might be, it is likely to be very different from what we hear from the talking heads on television or read from the know-it-alls on editorial pages.

President Bush’s number one achievement was also the number one function of government– to protect its citizens. Nobody on September 11, 2001 believed that there would never be another such attack for more than seven years.

Unfortunately, people who are protected from dangers often conclude that there are no dangers. This is most painfully visible among those Americans who are hysterical over the government’s intercepting international phone calls, in order to disrupt international terrorist networks.

Many, especially among the intelligentsia, are also obsessed with whether we are being nice enough to the cut-throats locked up at Guantanamo, some of whom have already been turned loose to resume a life of terrorism. The rights of the Geneva Convention do not apply to people who neither obey the Geneva Convention nor are covered by the Geneva Convention.

That a President of the United States protected us from deadly enemies may not seem like much of an accomplishment to some. But it may be more fully appreciated when we get a President who eases up on that protection, in order to curry favor at home and abroad.

We can only hope that it will not take the sight of an American city lying in radioactive ruins to wake people up to the dangers that George W. Bush protected us against, despite an unending chorus of carping.

No one in his right mind would say that the Bush administration was flawless. But many of their worst political mistakes were the kinds of mistakes that decent people often make when dealing with indecent people, both domestically and internationally.

The idea with which President Bush arrived in Washington, that he could gain bipartisan support by going along with the Democrats, and not vetoing any bills that Congress passed, ignored the fact that it takes two to tango.

Having proclaimed his goal as bipartisanship, it was he who was blamed when the bipartisanship failed to materialize. Wooing Ted Kennedy and going along with massive government spending did not stop Kennedy from getting up in the Senate and loudly proclaiming that Bush “lied, and lied and lied!” about Iraq.

Whatever the merits or demerits of going to war against Saddam Hussein, the question whether he had weapons of mass destruction immediately at hand makes a better talking point than a serious argument.

President Bush was not the only national leader who thought Saddam Hussein had such weapons, nor were such weapons the only reason why the Iraqi dictator posed a continuing danger that all diplomatic efforts, over more than a decade, had failed to extinguish.

This issue can be debated, and no doubt will be debated for years, if not generations, to come. But the irresponsible charge that “Bush lied” for some nefarious purpose– to trade “blood for oil” or to generate business for Halliburton, for example– is more than a slander against him. It undermines our whole nation and gives comfort to our enemies around the world.

Domestically, the Bush legacy leaves a lot to be desired. Going along with the McCain-Feingold bill restricting free speech was perhaps the Bush administration’s biggest dereliction of duty. Maybe they figured that they could pass the problem along to the Supreme Court to stop it, since this bill so clearly violated the First Amendment to the Constitution.

But the Supreme Court was also guilty of a dereliction of its duty and let the McCain-Feingold bill stand.

Advocating amnesty for illegal aliens was another political disaster, especially when accompanied by denials of the obvious.

Although the Bush administration went along with the chorus of calls for promoting home ownership among people who could not afford home ownership, President Bush at least sounded a warning while others were still pushing lenders to lend to people who proved unable to repay their loans.

A mixed bag? Aren’t we all? But an honorable man.

Bush’s Imminent Rehab
by Charles Krauthammer

Except for Richard Nixon, no president since Harry Truman leaves office more unloved than George W. Bush. Truman’s rehabilitation took decades. Bush’s will come sooner. Indeed, it has already begun. The chief revisionist? Barack Obama.

Vindication is being expressed not in words but in deeds — the tacit endorsement conveyed by the Obama continuity-we-can-believe-in transition. It’s not just the retention of such key figures as Secretary of Defense Bob Gates or Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner, who, as president of the New York Fed, has been instrumental in guiding the Bush financial rescue over the last year. It’s the continuity of policy.

It is the repeated pledge to conduct a withdrawal from Iraq that does not destabilize its new democracy and that, as Vice President-elect Joe Biden said just this week in Baghdad, adheres to the Bush-negotiated status of forces agreement that envisions a U.S. withdrawal over three years, not the 16-month timetable on which Obama campaigned.

It is the great care Obama is taking in not pre-emptively abandoning the anti-terror infrastructure that the Bush administration leaves behind. While still a candidate, Obama voted for the expanded presidential wiretapping (FISA) powers that Bush had fervently pursued. And while Obama opposes waterboarding (already banned, by the way, by Bush’s CIA in 2006), he declined George Stephanopoulos’ invitation (on ABC’s “This Week”) to outlaw all interrogation not permitted by the Army Field Manual. Explained Obama: “Dick Cheney’s advice was good, which is let’s make sure we know everything that’s being done,” i.e., before throwing out methods simply because Obama campaigned against them.

Obama still disagrees with Cheney’s view of the acceptability of some of these techniques. But citing as sage the advice offered by “the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history” (according to Joe Biden) — advice paraphrased by Obama as “we shouldn’t be making judgments on the basis of incomplete information or campaign rhetoric” — is a startlingly early sign of a newly respectful consideration of the Bush-Cheney legacy.

Not from any change of heart. But from simple reality. The beauty of democratic rotations of power is that when the opposition takes office, cheap criticism and calumny will no longer do. The Democrats now own Iraq. They own the war on al-Qaeda. And they own the panoply of anti-terror measures with which the Bush administration kept us safe these last seven years.

The Right Standard for Judging George W. Bush
by Michael Medved

As he prepares to leave the White House after eight monumentally eventful years, what’s the right standard for judging the performance of George W. Bush?

The basis for answering that question has changed radically over the course of the last seven years, very much to the president’s detriment.

After the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001, and Bush’s almost instantaneous rebirth as a determined “War President,” most Americans expressed clear ideas of what they expected of the commander in chief. The conventional wisdom of the time declared that his presidency would rise or fall based on his ability to keep the nation safe. If the United States sustained a series of crippling new attacks the world understood that history would judge Bush as a failure. If, against all odds, he succeeded in turning the tide against our terrorist adversaries and managed to keep the nation secure from homeland assaults, then the president would emerge from his terms of office as a successful, and probably heroic, chief executive.

The concentration on the Iraq War after March of 2003 altered the criteria for evaluating the Bush Presidency. The conflict in Iraq, like all wars, proved messy, unpredictable, frustrating and often mishandled. For better or for worse, the American people identified the struggle as the defining gamble of the Bush administration and leading commentators declared that the president would provoke either contempt or gratitude based on the outcome of that war. If the United States failed in its mission of establishing a durable, pro-western government in Iraq, Mr. Bush stood no more chance of a favorable judgment by history than did Johnson or Nixon after the collapse of the U.S. investment in Vietnam. If, on the other hand, Mr. Bush defied the fanatical anti-war (and often anti-American) protesters and all the media nay-sayers, and somehow managed to produce a positive outcome in Iraq, then that alone seemed to guarantee a positive verdict by posterity on his presidency.

Despite all the passion and confusion surrounding this issue, numerical measures at the end of 2008 provide an undeniable indicator of the spectacular turnaround in Iraqi affairs and the level of the president’s historic success. Since the beginning of the war, the New York Times called on Jason Campbell and Michael O’Hanlon of the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution to gather statistics for a series of presentations under the heading, “The State of Iraq: An Update.” In December, they presented numbers comparing the situation in November, 2008 with November, 2006. US troop deaths, for instance, went down to 12, from 69 two years before (and from 137 in November, 2004). Iraqi Security Forces deaths went down from 123 to 27. Iraqi civilian deaths from the war plummeted at a similar rate—from 3,475 to 500.