(NEW YORK) MintPress — Noticeably absent from last week’s Republican National Convention in Tampa was former President George W. Bush, who left office in 2009 with a 22 percent approval rating. Ironically, he appears to be mentioned more at this week’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.
“Bush is sort of political herpes. He is just going to erupt from time to time and just at the most inopportune moments. It’s not that he will push himself onto the stage, I think he has rightly slunk away, but the virus still exists in the body,” chided Paul Begala, advisor to former President Bill Clinton. “It can’t be the whole of the argument. But they did run the country for eight years.”
During which time they spent hundreds of billions of dollars on two unpopular wars that helped balloon the federal deficit. Not to mention Bush’s huge tax cuts, which also drove up the red ink, and
the Republican’s financial industry bailout in 2008, which cost a whopping $700 billion.
When former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke at the RNC, she avoided any discussion of the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, for which she was criticized by her predecessor in the position, Madeleine Albright.
Albright and Begala are among a group of prominent Democrats who continue to blame Bush for most of the nation’s problems.
Indeed, in a recent speech she gave in Missouri, Albright said that it would be fine with her if President Obama went on blaming his predecessor “forever.”
Speaking this week at the DNC, Albright explained, “We were talking about what were the issues that President Obama was left with when he took office, and also, what were the issues that President Bush was left with when he took office.
“Somebody in the audience asked, ‘How long are you going to blame the Bush people?’ And my answer was ‘forever,'” she said. “I do think that the problems that they left have been very, very complicated and difficult and that President Obama, systematically over the last three and three-quarter years, worked to get us out of that hole.
“Nothing in the statement I made would indicate that I don’t think President Obama doesn’t have to take responsibility for the things he has been involved in,” Albright added. “However, it is not past human understanding to realize that if someone has put you in a 20-foot hole, that that bears something about where you stand.”
Republicans retaliate
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has denounced this approach and vigorously supported his brother.
“Mr. President, it’s time to stop blaming your predecessor for your failed economic policies,” he said in Tampa. “You were dealt a tough hand but your policies have not worked. In the fourth year of your presidency a real leader would accept responsibility for his actions and you haven’t done it.”
He later made similar remarks on Meet the Press.
And on Fox and Friends recently, Rice said, “It’s not working,” of the Democrats’ tactic of passing the buck. “After three-and-a-half years, whatever is happening in this country is owned by the occupant of the White House, and that’s what the American people think,” she argued.
“President Bush led in really, really difficult times. He kept us safe. He led with honor and integrity. I think the American people are seeing that and history will judge him that way.”
Court of public opinion
In fact, a recent Gallup poll shows most Americans still point the finger at Bush for the economic downturn. Gallup has tracked Americans’ beliefs on the issue since July 2009.
Though it’s much closer than it was then, Bush still gets an enormous share of the blame.
Sixty-eight percent of people Gallup surveyed blamed Bush either a “great deal” or “moderate amount,” compared with 52 percent for Obama. There’s been very little change on the issue since the middle of 2010.
In something of a surprise, nearly half of Republicans surveyed still hold Bush accountable as well. Forty-nine percent assigned some or a “great deal” of blame. In addition, a whopping 67 percent of Independents blame the Bush administration.
This suggests that Obama’s argument this week that he is on the right track and needs more time to turn the economy around could fall on receptive ears.