George W. Bush: An Easy Act to Follow
The first rule of being a new coach is to always follow a loser. Ron Hart applies that logic to Barack Obama, who is effectively taking over the Detroit Lions after years of the Marinelli Magic. Writes Hart about Dubya's legacy:
Bush has been a big-government disaster. He was the "outside the Beltway" Texas governor who was going to cut spending and bring Washington under control. Instead, he oversaw the biggest expansion of government in modern times. And the most tragic effect of the Bush legacy is that he has set the conservative/libertarian ideology back 20 years. He did so by not being a conservative or a libertarian.
Now all that is left for him is to pardon a few folks and try to burnish his legacy. To date he has pardoned fewer felons than his predecessors. My guess is that even criminals don't want a pardon from W because they don't want to be too closely associated with him.
And this:
[Obama] has an easy act to follow in George W. Bush, who solidified his position with me as perhaps our worst president when he ignored the will of the country and Congress in giving Detroit all that bailout money (better known as "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic"). Bush, with help from Dick Cheney, has tried to establish an imperial presidency. In doing so he has always found the desires of Congress and the American people to be quaint and amusing. But W feels he knows best. That would be fine, if he had been right more often.
As a result of bad choices and the betrayal of fundamental principles, W's approval ratings are the lowest of any modern president. The only thing Bush is still above is the law.
Read all about Bush's "disaster socialism" in the January issue of Reason.
