Cross-posted at Tall Tales
President-elect Obama, Senator Reid, Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic National Committee should all send thank you notes to President Bush today.
Instead of quietly retreating -- and giving Republicans an opportunity to shift attention (and misplaced blame) to Obama and the Democrats amidst the deepening economic crisis -- Bush took the spotlight again today in a high-profile speech on Wall Street, where he reminded everyone that he was still in charge as "we are faced with the prospect of a global meltdown."
Not to be unclear, Bush went off script and repeated it again, for emphasis:
I'm a market oriented guy, but not when I'm faced with the prospect of a global meltdown
It was an absolutely stunning speech, in which Bush acknowledged the financial crisis, defended the massive level of government intervention so far, but then inexplicably launched into a full-throated defense of the free market. The latter half of the speech was perfectly summarized by John Harwood on CNBC with the following three words:
Channeling Larry Kudlow
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Kudlow, he is quite possibly the most dedicated disciple of supply-side, deregulatory economic policies on television, and he has been a relentless cheerleader for the trickle-down Bush economy.
Here he is in January 2008:
I'm a guy who looks at the basic fundamentals of the economy. And I see good things happening.
And in January 2007:
The budget deficit has plunged while the economy has soared. Think of it as the Bush Boom—think of it as another ‘W’ in the win column for supply-side economics ....
And in July 2006:
The bottom line here is that Bush’s pro-growth tax cuts worked. After all the dust settled, the supply-side was right.
Having been so relentlessly wrong about the economy over the past few years, you might think that Kudlow's deregulatory prescriptions for the future would be dismissed out of hand.
Not by Bush. Here he is today, doubling down on deregulation:
History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market – but too much.
History has shown?
Only if you ignore the two greatest economic crises of the past 100 years.
- The Republican Great Depression, which was caused by the deregulatory, supply-side policies of Calvin Coolidge and Andrew Mellon.
- The Republican Recession of 2008-, which was caused the deregulatory, supply-side policies of George W. Bush.
And when did we have the broadest prosperity and least income-inequality in America?
During the highly regulated, high-top-marginal-tax-rate era of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
History isn't President Bush's only weakness.
He also seems to have difficulty with current events.
Here he is in July 2007:
I want the American people to take a good look at this economy of ours. The world is strong -- the world economy is strong. I happen to believe one of the main reasons why is because we remain strong.
And, yet today, Bush admits:
The financial crisis was ignited when booming housing markets began to decline.... This crisis did not develop overnight
The housing markets began to decline in 2006, and we started hitting record foreclosure rates in early 2007.
So, why exactly was Bush still insisting in July 2007 that the U.S. and global economies were "strong"?
Today's speech by Bush gives Democrats yet another opportunity to remind the country of exactly who led us into this crisis; how out-of-touch they remained along the way; and how unwilling they remain to give up on their failed policies.
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Kudlow and Bush Quotes Collected in Yeah, Right pages 55, 57, 63 & 67
Online Sources: Kudlow 2008; Kudlow 2007; Kudlow 2006; Bush 2007
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