Don't be stupid again...

As President Obama’s polls dip, as Congress is widely disdained, and as the economy slumps, suddenly George Bush is missed. Why so?

1) The Obama record. We naturally compare Bush to his chief critic and successor Barack Obama — and find the latter increasingly wanting as time goes by. Obama turned Bush’s misdemeanor deficits into felonious trillion-dollar annual shortfalls. He will pile up more debt than any other prior president.

Indeed, if reelected, Obama will borrow more than all previous administrations combined. Bush was tarred in 2004 for a “jobless recovery” when unemployment hovered near 6%. It is now almost 10% and Obama still harps about “jobs saved.” Scott McClellan may have been singularly inept; we are not so sure after Robert Gibbs. For every Brownie there is a worse Van Jones or Anita Dunn. For Katrina we have BP. Bush’s NASA did space; Obama’s seems to prefer Muslim outreach. Bush’s prescription drug benefit was an unfunded liability; ObamaCare is a trillion-dollar financial black-hole.

Obama’s lackluster record is improving Bush’s legacy every day.

2) Obama as Bush. Senator and then candidate Obama demagogued Bush on a variety of issues, which, as president, he simply flipped and endorsed. Remember Bush’s gulag at Guantanamo? Or how about the terror-producing Predators? Or the need for an immediate pull-out from Iraq? Or those terrible renditions and tribunals?

In case after case of national security, Obama dropped the cheap rhetorical one-upmanship, and, when invested with the responsibility of governance, simply adopted, or even trumped, the Bush protocols.

Candidate Obama claimed the surge failed and all combat troops should be out of Bush’s Iraq war by March 2008. President Obama now calls Iraq a “remarkable chapter” as his vice president claims it as one of the administration’s “greatest achievements.” In short, almost daily, Obama is following the Bush anti-terrorism policies — the irony made worse by petulance and ingratitude in not acknowledging his debt.

3) Bush Did It. It is a uniquely American trait to shun whining and petulance. Rugged individualism and can-do optimism used to be ingrained in our national character, and even in our 11th hour have not wholly disappeared. So the public is tiring of Obama’s Pavlovian blaming of Bush. After 20 months, it is time for the president to get a life and quit the “heads you lose/tails I win” attitude about presidential responsibility.

cont @

‘Bush … Come Back, Bush, Come Back’