by Jules Witcover

In all the teeth-gnashing over President Obama's handling of the Gulf oil leak crisis, the country would do well to consider old standup comic Henny Youngman's reply to the question, "How's your wife?" His answer, for younger, unacquainted readers: "Compared to what?"

The "what" in the current political context is George W. Bush. As voters contemplate the epidemic of woes with which his White House successor must cope, they would do well to speculate on how the most recent Republican president might be faring now were he still in office. Or, more importantly, how the country would be faring.

To be sure, such contemplation can be no more than conjecture, based on one's individual assessment of the two men, their temperaments, their styles of leadership and their political philosophies. But from where I'm sitting, where the American presidency has been observed at close quarters going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s, it's an easy call.

Under which president, the second George Bush or Barack Obama, would the country be better off in the current circumstances? Would it be better served having a man of snap decisions, hot temperament and limited communication skills in command, and one with strong ties to the huge oil industry in charge?

Or is it better served by a president who is given to calm consideration of options, who is cool to the point of seeming aloof, who can articulate problems clearly and with intellectual detachment, with no attachments to the oil business?

Taking into consideration not only these perceivable differences between Bush and Obama as president but also Bush's record of performance over his eight years in the office and Obama's first 15-plus months in charge, it's difficult to believe the nation's voters will want to put the Republicans back in control of Congress so soon come November.

Quite aside from Obama's questionable handling to date of the oil spill crisis and Bush's widely condemned coping with Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, the eight years of Republican control were among the most reckless and damaging to America's image and prestige around the world in the last half-century.

The shattering of our reputation for multilateral foreign policy decision making by Bush's invasion of Iraq, and his embrace of brutal human rights practices in detaining, imprisoning and torturing suspected terrorists and others in violation of the Geneva Conventions, robbed this country of much of its good name abroad.

At home, the failure to regulate a banking industry on Wall Street gone wild with reckless speculation and greed plunged the nation into the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, requiring drastic remedial action even before Bush departed.

Bush's eight-year performance enabled Obama to win the presidency in 2008 on a platform of change, appealing to the better natures of the American people and rejecting tired and arrogant GOP leadership.

As president, rather than harping on the failed policies of the Bush years, Obama chose to focus on his own agenda. But almost from the start he was overwhelmed by the unfinished inheritance of those years, from two wars in the Middle East to the economic calamity on Wall Street and other unanticipated woes, most recently the man-made disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

His efforts to dig the country out of the Bush morass have diverted Obama in important ways from his own objectives, limiting his first year to a single major achievement, enactment of health care reform. His effort to bring a new climate of bipartisanship to Washington has collided with open Republican obstructionism, but still he perseveres.

A measure of GOP concern in harnessing Wall Street excess is seen in House Minority Leader John Boehner's airy dismissal of the Democratic financial reform bill as "killing an ant with a nuclear weapon." Some destructive ant.

Yet the conventional wisdom holds that Boehner and his party are headed for major gains in the approaching congressional elections in November. It's baffling to me that only a year and a half after the departure of arguably the worst American presidency yet, the voters of short memories may be poised, when the polls open in the fall, to throw the Republican rascals back in.

 

Available at Amazon.com:

The Feminine Mystique

The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy

The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics

Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks

The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House

 

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