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The Blame Game
As Americans prepare to vote, many of us are breathing a sigh of relief. Not necessarily because our favorite candidate is the likely winner, but because this drawn out, lengthy presidential election process is nearly over. What happened during the last year of presidential politicking and why will be the subject of many articles, books, and likely even a couple of movies. With less than two weeks before that November 4 date, let me offer up one observation from the sidelines.
From the vantage point of someone who has been involved in the political process for 30 years, this has been one of the most vitriolic campaigns, filled with divisiveness, name calling and little discussion of issues or debate of the facts in a couple of decades. This jam-packed, non-stop press conferences, accusation filled contest has been a god-send for talk show hosts, political junkies and 24 hour news shows, but until Labor Day of little notice to most voters.
Close analysis would yield little in the way of meaningful dialog on topics which are of real concern to most Americans. Much of the past year has yielded little more than a political food fight. First in the primaries with more candidates than your average Kentucky Derby, nearly a dozen Democrats and a similar number of Republicans at one time or another testing the waters or throwing their hats into the presidential ring.
But in all of this name calling and mud slinging, there is one name that has been mentioned more than any other, he has been the chief recipient of the flung dirt, and that individual is George Bush.
Over the last year, any Democrat candidate couldn’t take a breath without squeezing in a negative word about President Bush. During the Democrat Presidential debates there was a chorus of anti-Bush statements. Never before have so many people maligned a President over issues he had little or no control over. Just one year ago the Dow Jones average was at a record high, consumer confidence was near a two year high, gas was selling for $2.50 per gallon and unemployment was 4.7%.
Today, the Dow Jones average has lost over 5,000 points, consumer confidence hit a 30 year low, gas prices peaked at almost $4.50 per gallon and unemployment is 6.1% and rising. All of this attributed to the policies of the Bush Administration --- I don’t think so!
Perhaps it has more to do with a simple fact that the last year has been filled with a constant refrain of “blame Bush.” If something was wrong, it was Bush’s fault, if something bad had happened, Bush caused it, if people didn’t like something Bush supported it.
Maybe we should stop and think about the concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If one repeats the same thing over and over, sooner or later people believe it to be true. The Democrats have successfully used this “brainwashing” process for the last four years with a drone from several hundred Congressmen and from every Democrat Presidential candidate, the mantra has been the same --- “blame George Bush.”
The tenor of the criticism has been so consistent that many Republicans joined in, blaming Bush for everything, from global warming to not killing Bin Laden. This blame game has been so popular and persistent; it’s difficult to understand how government can still function with such a tyrant in the White House. One would almost think that we live under a dictatorship akin to Castro or Chavez.
After listening to the endless Democrat presidential debates, most Americans must believe we have a Parliamentary from of government. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are all part of the majority party in the U.S. Senate. If the deficit went up, they voted for the spending; if oil companies received tax breaks, they approved them; if the funding priorities were wrong, they set them. President Bush doesn’t have a vote in the U. S. Senate or in the U.S. Congress. Everything that the Democrats in Congress blame George Bush for is at least partially if not substantially their fault. Do most Americans even know that the Democrats have controlled both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate for the last two years? Is it a coincidence that the economy has been in a freefall under congressional Democrats watch? Or that Congressional approval ratings have reached an all time low?
So if Barack Obama becomes President, I hope he “changes” his tune and stops blaming George Bush, because he will be occupying the seat where the buck stops.
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