Best Bush Article Yet
Published March 05, 2004
The article also describes the economic environment fairly. It shows that while the economic situation in this country is suspect at the moment, over the course of the last four years, things have changed which have made certain decisions by President Bush turn out badly, even if the ideas were sound when they were enacted.
- Bush was right to propose tax cuts in 1999. The economy was booming. The surplus was ballooning. Liberals were itching to spend the money on new programs, despite Bill Clinton's promises to pay down the national debt. Bush wanted to get the money out of Washington before that happened. That's why, under his plan, the size of the tax cut was to grow from year to year. The point was to keep the surplus from piling up, refunding more and more money as it poured in from a growing economy.
As the economy turned at the end of the 90's and then spun out after September 11th, it was a different environment than when the original decisions had been made by the Bush administration. Given these concessions to the situation, I think it is fair to criticize the lack of reaction to make up for the changing market conditions. Without this perspective it hurts my ears as another example of blind Bush bashing.
This is going to be an interesting election season. There are plenty of valid criticisms to be made on both sides during this election. It will definitely be a lot more interesting if I can weigh the candidates and issues with criticisms like this as opposed to the ad hominem attacks which have persisted over the last year or so.
So, go read the article and let me know what you think.
Craig Lyndall rants, raves and writes other stuff at FilteringCraig.com and at The Cleveland Sports Curse
- Best Bush Article Yet
- Published: March 05, 2004
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- Section: Politics
- Writer: Craig Lyndall
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That is true, but the initial war action in Afghanistan to remove the Taliban was not very controversial, was it? I don't want to argue over Iraq because we will never get anywhere, but we did need to mobilize our military after 9/11, at least for Afghanistan.
I agree that the invasion of Afghanistan was part of the war on terrorism, but overall that war is not a relative success: invading Iraq had nothing to do with that war.
Had we stopped the invasions with Afghanistan, we could have used some of the resources expended on Iraq in actually doing the job in Afghanistan and pursuing terrorism around the globe (instead of increasing it).
The huge expenditures that were made and are being made because of the invasion of Iraq will continue to have huge negative effects, globally and domestically.
Hal, I said I didn't want to argue over Iraq, because we won't agree. I stand by that statement.
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(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/13429)
one point that is often ignored about the state of the economy post-9/11 is that while the events of that day had significant negative effects, the decision to go to war magnified them.
not surprisingly, most companies shelved new project plans in hopes of dealing with them in the new year...but once the war buildup began, that uncertainly put those plans off for at least another six months.
and we're still waiting.