Obama equals Bush

President Obama has been in office 17 months and now the baby is all his. The President is still moderately popular on a personal level, hovering around 50% approval, but when it comes to his policies, his poll numbers have fallen like a rock. His approval rating stands at an all-time low of minus 9.

Most people, including me, have been pulling for him. We want the country to do well, and we have been willing to give him a fair chance, but his time has just about run out. The Independents and Republicans are not his only critics. Many of his most loyal followers feel betrayed.

We cannot deny that Bush handed Obama a mess. The economy was struggling, and the war was dubious, but one of Bush’s worst failings involved the housing crisis. Oh sure, his team can deflect some of the blame for the Fannie Mae/ Freddie Mac debacle by pointing to the likes of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, Democratic Congressman. They certainly played major roles as the instigators of the dumb “make a loan to anybody” policies that eventually caused the downfall in the national real estate market. But, the truth is the Republican President and his pals were willing to ignore all of the signs of risk as long as employment was high and people were refinancing their homes. As far as they were concerned those forces were creating plenty of people to tax and support the war.

In fairness to the former President, the Democratic Congress has done him no favors. The House is the body that originates bills and provides the money to spend. They came up with a stimulus package, but they are obviously playing politics because they have delayed releasing the money until it will buy them votes in the 2010 mid-term elections. But most politicians see through their “I will do anything to get reelected” policies and the polls say they are playing with fire. Besides, we all know that most of those “shovel ready” projects were not needed and even if they are implemented any “work” from them is short term. Real jobs would be much better.

So we can conclude that the Republican Bush handed Obama a big fat mess and the Democratic Congress made things worse for him, but we still look to the current President to set the course and solve the problems. Obama is not doing a very good job of it.

This is where Bush and Obama are so much alike. Bush was in over his head and so is Obama. Then to compound matters, they each charted their own course without much regard for anybody else. Bush went after Iraq and Obama wants to finance a transformation of the Country to something much less driven by Capitalism and more dependent on the Government, as evidenced by the Health Care debacle. That was the biggest power grab in American history and worse yet; the small amount of bi-partisanship that was exhibited was on the “opposes” side….that is a few democrats joined the Republicans, who all voted “No”.

They both alienated their most ardent supporters, right from the beginning. Bush spent money like a drunken sailor and did nothing about the illegal immigration issue. He also created a brand new Federal agency; The Department of Homeland Security. As for Obama, he has not drawn down the war, he has not created any “green” jobs or any others, he has not sufficiently investigated Dick Chaney nor closed Gitmo prison as promised although that may still happen.

Bush used fear and the media to justify some questionable policies such as the way he manipulated the UN; and, Obama uses fear and the media to manipulate his adversaries, such as Fox News.

There are many similarities of these two Presidents and one thing is for sure: The supporters of each man would say that they failed to live up to expectations.

what similarities have you noticed?

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