If you ever wanted to know how a lame duck President runs out the clock, this week offered you a great example. Now 88 months into his 96-month term, President Bush decided it was time to assign blame for the US’s current economic woes.

He said that fault for the US’s economic morass belongs to opposition party Democrats.

Apparently, President Bush feels they’ve undone in 16 months the stirring economic policies his Republican brethren crafted while they controlled congress during his term’s first six years.

And, yes, there is plenty of blame to go around. After all, both parties totally whiffed on the benefits of the economic stimulus plan that was to be the war in Iraq. All that’s done so far is run up a tab that has easily eclipsed a half-trillion dollars, as well as inflict catastrophic costs on the lives of US military and Iraqi families.

As far as the economic stimulus part goes, I suppose a case can be made that the war has been very good for the corporations that supply the 30,000 well-armed mercenaries, whoops, I mean private security forces that now work in Iraq. Their war-zone salaries alone cost the US about $6 billion a year.

Still, as the President tries to convince us that, in less than a year and a half, those crazy tax-and-spend Democrats have wrecked a thriving US economy, it should be noted that during the GOP’s six-year run as the majority on the Hill, Bush vetoed just one (sort of) spending bill.

It was a bill that would have lifted the federal ban on funding embryonic stem cell research. But, that was it… one veto in six years.

But, since the Democrats gained their destructive congressional majority, Bush has tripled his veto output.

Last October he vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have expanded children’s health insurance. He said that the $30 billion extra (spread out over five years) that Congress added to the plan was too expensive. He only wanted to bump the plan’s budget by $5 billion.

Under the Democrat’s venal economic watch, Bush also vetoed a bill that would have limited the CIA’s use of “harsh” interrogation techniques.

And, he nixed a $124 billion war-funding bill… but not because it was too expensive. He killed that bill because it would have set target dates for troop withdrawals from Iraq.

That’s it.

Pash Da Boddle

Other than that, be it six years of GOP spending or 16 months of Democrats signing checks, President Bush’s attitude can only really be described as “whatever.”

By the way, I stole that “whatever” from Eugene Robinson, who writes for The Washington Post.

While I’m at it, I am going to purloin a great Robinson line. Back in October he wrote, “To say that George W. Bush spends money like a drunken sailor is to insult every gin-soaked patron of every dockside dive in every dubious port of call.”

So, the president is trying to defend and deflect. That is a very “presidential” thing to do. Maybe he’s finally growing into the job.

But, to accept no blame for the US economy’s current state is also a very Karl Rovian thing, as well.

If Elected I’ll Serve

Now, I am not so arrogant to think that I could have done an overall better job as president during the past seven years and four months.

But, I think I might have done a better job understanding the issues… or at least being more up front with Americans about the effect my stances would have on them. For, my biggest disagreement with the current president is about his weak dollar policy.

It’s a policy that has honked me off for years.

In fact, as your president I would have promised not to engage in monetary policy before I had at least consulted the experts at the Federal Reserve Bank.

Between naps, golf and visits to the White House wine cellar (okay, and long lunches with Scarlett Johansson and Sheryl Crow) I would have begun my monetary research online, say at a Fed website.

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