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President Obama’s habit of blaming George W. Bush for the economy got some affirmation yesterday from a new AP-GfK poll showing 51% of Americans think Bush is more responsible for our sagging economy than Obama.
We can expect that Obama and his team will use this finding as a basis for continued attacks on Bush when confronted with bad economic news (which according to the CBO, we should be prepared to hear about all the way through the 2012 elections).
This would be a mistake. Even as he has employed his consistent shift-the-blame tactics, Obama has been taking quite a hit. Yesterday’s Pew poll shows that not only has his approval rating flipped since the first of the year, but that the percentage of Americans who see him as a strong leader and able to get things done has dropped significantly.
So, before he and his team take too much assurance from the AP-GfK finding, it’s worth digesting these words from an independent voter quoted in the AP’s own write-up of the poll results:
“I think Bush had a hand in it, too. Obama's not totally responsible," said Mary Parish, 68, of Troy, Tenn. An independent who voted for Republican John McCain in 2008, she said she doesn't believe Obama has what it takes to heal the economy. “He's a smooth-talking man. But he does not know what he's doing.”
In other words a voter who blames Bush isn't necessarily going to vote for Obama.
Blaming Bush or natural disasters or whatever won’t be enough (for the latest on the Obama team’s use of these tactics, watch former Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee on Hannity last night).
Voters have their eye on the economy and Obama – and Obama's political opposition – and will judge for themselves.
The same Pew poll showing a drop in confidence in Obama shows that the percentage of voters saying there’s “no chance” they would vote for Romney is less than the percentage who say they would consider voting for him. And the numbers are split evenly on Perry, even after quite a bit of negative media attention to his Bernanke gaffe and views on science and religion.
Obama is running not against Bush’s past record, but against his own record of runaway deficit spending – and for the time being, against a former executive with a track record of success in the private sector (Romney) and an executive with a track record of success managing the fastest-growing state economy in the nation (Perry). Both have the ability to make Obamanomics look even worse than they do now, and no amount of Bush blaming will help the President. All he and his team have to do is look at his numbers over the course of the summer as his continued blame-game tactics have continued apace.
Republicans should not respond to these attacks by "distancing themselves" from Bush. He is the leader of the party and a fine American. He certainly ran up the deficit, but he was a man with a mission and he had a war to fight, and wars cost money. The death of Bin Laden and the downfall of Gaddafi are down to Bush's conviction that democracy could take root anywhere in the world with support from America.
Defend Bush and turn the attack onto Obama, who has had an easier ride but accomplished nothing.
Posted by: Dawn Carpenter | August 26, 2011 at 10:22 AM