Editorial: Bush Had Nothing To Do With Financial Crisis

HT to Noel Sheppard

FACT: Media assertions the Bush administration was to blame were politically motivated falsehoods intentionally designed to get Barack Obama elected president.

FACT: On Saturday, the financial publication Barron's offered readers an editorial by Hoover Institution visiting fellow Scott S. Powell which presented facts that were routinely withheld from the public during the campaign assuring the Democrat candidate victory in November.

Powell touched on a lot of issues here that should be at the front of the current stimulus debate but sadly aren't.

In particular, the partisanship in the nation today prevents an honest assessment of the past thereby dooming us to repeat the same mistakes.

Take for example the Great Depression. For almost 80 years the left and their media minions have done everything within their power to blame all that era's ills on Herbert Hoover while crediting Franklin D. Roosevelt with the eventual economic recovery despite the former presiding over only two years of the Depression.

Yet, after eight years of unprecedented federal spending under Roosevelt, the unemployment rate was still a staggering 14.6 percent in 1940, and the Gross Domestic Product was still under its pre-Depression level.

Isn't this important, especially since our federal debt is already quite high?

Unfortunately, because of the partisanship, such can't be discussed. The left have so much time and money invested in Roosevelt supposedly being the greatest president of the 20th century that an honest assessment of what did and did not work back then is verboten.

But isn't that absurd? Assuming we really are on the verge of another Depression -- an assumption I don't necessarily agree with yet, mind you -- shouldn't we be examining everything we did before and during the last one in order to chart a more effective course this time?

The fact is the last Depression began in 1931 and despite all Roosevelt's good intentions didn't end until America entered World War II in 1941. Once the war ended, we went back into a very serious recession suggesting that nothing Roosevelt implemented had a lasting positive economic impact.

Isn't this relevant, especially given the Congressional Budget Office's report last week predicting current stimulus plans will actually hurt the economy in the long run?

Sadly, the answer is "No," for the left are so protective of Roosevelt's legacy that any analysis of his economic policies is totally unacceptable even as our nation grapples with solutions to our current financial problems.

Is this the way adults should behave? Is this really the best we can get from our elected officials?

Given the known failings and wastefulness of last year's TARP, wouldn't we be well-advised to halt all current stimulus discussions until a thorough and impartial analysis of previous plans -- INCLUDING those implemented by us during the '30s and by Japan during the '90s -- was accomplished thereby increasing the likelihood of success while reducing the chance of us making exactly the same mistakes?

If the answer is "No," the only conclusion is that Party, at this critical juncture in our nation's history, is indeed more important than policy, and partisanship is asphyxiating our capital.

George Washington must be rolling over in his grave.

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

Man, when the media want to take down a president (Nixon, Clinton,W.) and destroy his legacy (save Clinton) they really take historical accuracy and political/presidential achievements and throw them right into the wood-chipper, don't they?
Don't they have the real ability to sometimes be ugly, hardcore bastards?
And because of this, other, less qualified, more radical, socialistic men become president.

Good job.