dmcowen674
No Lifer
7-3-2014
http://news.yahoo.com/-it-s-obama-s-presidency--but-bush-s-world-083705971.html
It's Obama's presidency, but Bush's world
Believe it or not, it was 10 years ago this month that Barack Obama, then a candidate for the U.S. Senate, introduced himself to America with a speech that shook the Fleet Center in Boston. The main theme of that Democratic convention was the litany of George W. Bush's failures an unpopular and unending war in Iraq, a faltering image abroad, a stagnating middle class. Obama gave eloquent voice to those frustrations, arguing that all of them could be addressed if only we reunited the electorate.
Probably Obama himself would not have guessed then that he would ascend to the White House just four years later. But he certainly wouldn't have imagined that a full decade on, nearing the halfway point in his second term, he would find himself dragged down by precisely the same set of issues that vexed his predecessor.
After a month that saw Iraq unravel and job growth continue to plod along, while the stock market soared, the central paradox of the Obama years, as historians will undoubtedly view it, has never been clearer.
It's Obama's presidency, but he's still governing in Bush's world.
It's hard to think of any second-term president in the past century, at least, who's been so completely consumed by issues he inherited. With the notable exception of the health care law, which will stand as his signature initiative, Obama's agenda has been dominated by crises that predated his tenure
The defining issue of Obama's presidency remains an economic recovery that continues to leave behind most Americans while enriching a relative few
The question great thinkers will long debate, of course, is exactly why Obama has remained so imprisoned by his predecessor's choices. Will history treat Obama as a victim of the dire circumstance?
Bush didn't create the uncorking of religious and nationalist extremism, or the rise of borderless capital and the decline of American industry, or the retirement of the boomers, or the steadily rising temperatures in the Arctic.
It's true he didn't seem very well-equipped to deal with any of them, and his policy solutions democratization by force, bottomless tax cuts, the deregulation of industry mostly made things worse.
Ultimately, history will likely record both Bush and Obama as presidents grappling in different ways with the same array of overarching change, at the dawn of a long period of readjustment. We may yet find some national consensus about how to confront it. In the meantime, we might as well settle in.
http://news.yahoo.com/-it-s-obama-s-presidency--but-bush-s-world-083705971.html
It's Obama's presidency, but Bush's world
Believe it or not, it was 10 years ago this month that Barack Obama, then a candidate for the U.S. Senate, introduced himself to America with a speech that shook the Fleet Center in Boston. The main theme of that Democratic convention was the litany of George W. Bush's failures an unpopular and unending war in Iraq, a faltering image abroad, a stagnating middle class. Obama gave eloquent voice to those frustrations, arguing that all of them could be addressed if only we reunited the electorate.
Probably Obama himself would not have guessed then that he would ascend to the White House just four years later. But he certainly wouldn't have imagined that a full decade on, nearing the halfway point in his second term, he would find himself dragged down by precisely the same set of issues that vexed his predecessor.
After a month that saw Iraq unravel and job growth continue to plod along, while the stock market soared, the central paradox of the Obama years, as historians will undoubtedly view it, has never been clearer.
It's Obama's presidency, but he's still governing in Bush's world.
It's hard to think of any second-term president in the past century, at least, who's been so completely consumed by issues he inherited. With the notable exception of the health care law, which will stand as his signature initiative, Obama's agenda has been dominated by crises that predated his tenure
The defining issue of Obama's presidency remains an economic recovery that continues to leave behind most Americans while enriching a relative few
The question great thinkers will long debate, of course, is exactly why Obama has remained so imprisoned by his predecessor's choices. Will history treat Obama as a victim of the dire circumstance?
Bush didn't create the uncorking of religious and nationalist extremism, or the rise of borderless capital and the decline of American industry, or the retirement of the boomers, or the steadily rising temperatures in the Arctic.
It's true he didn't seem very well-equipped to deal with any of them, and his policy solutions democratization by force, bottomless tax cuts, the deregulation of industry mostly made things worse.
Ultimately, history will likely record both Bush and Obama as presidents grappling in different ways with the same array of overarching change, at the dawn of a long period of readjustment. We may yet find some national consensus about how to confront it. In the meantime, we might as well settle in.
