Last night, I was having a discussion with a wise friend of mine. The talk soon turned to the economy and how President George W. Bush is getting all of the blame for sending us to hell in a broken hand basket. He smiled and stopped me in mid sentence.
“Bill Clinton laid the foundation for this,” he said.
Blinking, I looked at him and started to say, “No.”
But he went on: “Who fought for NAFTA? And if Bill Clinton left the economy in such great shape then Bush wouldn’t have been able to fuck it up in two years. Because, we [working people] have been in a recession. Now that rich people are starting to feel it, they [the media] want to talk about it.”
He got me to thinking, have I been wrong about President Bush? I mean, yes he’s a raging idiot and a war monger, but did he really ruin the economy? Yes and no.
Even my friend admits that Bush’s war budget has hurt the U.S. economy. NAFTA, he says, is one of the reason why so many jobs are being packed up and sent overseas.
I found out that while Clinton signed NAFTA, it was actually authored by President George H. Bush and Clinton never changed it. And the promises of creating new jobs and a huge benefit to the American economy never materialized.
So score one for Bush. But, I asked him, what about the crash of these banks?
1999, he said.
What?
He reminded me of the banking overhaul Clinton and congress passed in 1999.
Wow. We do have short memories.
Think about it, he said, Bush is too stupid to bring this country down alone. And that’s one thing we’re in total agreement on.
This article appears in Oct 7-14, 2008.
