“I ended Tuesday less confident about the direction of economic policy than I was in the morning,” wrote Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. His problem with the economic part of the speech was its conventionality. “In response to an unprecedented economic crisis – or, more accurately, a crisis whose only real precedent is the Great Depression – Mr. Obama did what people in Washington do when they want to sound serious: He spoke, more or less in the abstract, of the need to make hard choices and stand up to special interests. That’s not enough. In fact, it’s not even right.”
Krugman said that “this is, first and foremost, a crisis brought on by a runaway financial industry. And if we failed to rein in that industry, it wasn’t because Americans ‘collectively’ refused to make hard choices; the American public had no idea what was going on, and the people who did know what was going on mostly thought deregulation was a great idea.”
President Bush achieved the one big thing he and all Americans demanded of his administration. Not a single man, woman or child has been killed by terrorists on U.S. soil since the morning of Sept. 11. A measure of the administration’s success is the criticism it has drawn. Bush made a choice to take no chances with American lives, and to live with the liberal backlash over waterboarding. His most controversial and difficult decision, the war in Iraq, was consistent with his post-9/11 doctrine to regard “any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism . . . as a hostile regime” and pre-empt threats to America from rogue regimes and proliferators. The failure to discover WMDs gave opponents the opening to claim the war was fought on false premises, but Bill Clinton, Democrats on Capitol Hill and every major intelligence service also believed Saddam had WMDs. The world remains a very dangerous place. Yet thanks to Bush’s post-9/11 willingness to act decisively, and at the risk of his own popularity, Americans are safer today than on Sept. 10, 2001. – Wall Street Journal editorial
Bush said little of interest (in his farewell address). He dwelled mostly on 9/11 and the so-called war on terror, characterizing the invasion of Iraq as part of his effort to take “the fight to the terrorists.” He suggested that although the Iraq war was the subject of “legitimate debate,” there “can be little debate about the results. America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil.” Was the nation’s safety ensured because Bush invaded Iraq and did not finish the fight in Afghanistan? No doubt, he and his ever-dwindling band of defenders will continue to insist that it is so – just as a rooster might insist there is a connection between his crowing and the rising of the sun. And Bush defended himself for having been willing to make the tough decisions – as if making hard choices is the same as making wise ones. Given that he is passing to Barack Obama a country burdened with two unresolved wars and an economy in severe decline, Bush certainly would rather look forward than face the present-day consequences of his actions and inaction. – David Corn, CQPolitics
“I ended Tuesday less confident about the direction of economic policy than I was in the morning,” wrote Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. His problem with the economic part of the speech was its conventionality. “In response to an unprecedented economic crisis – or, more accurately, a crisis whose only real precedent is the Great Depression – Mr. Obama did what people in Washington do when they want to sound serious: He spoke, more or less in the abstract, of the need to make hard choices and stand up to special interests. That’s not enough. In fact, it’s not even right.”
