At the heart of President Obama’s widely-panned economic speech in Cleveland yesterday was an attempt to turn the 2012 election into a referendum on former President George W. Bush by connecting him to Mitt Romney. “From 2001 to 2008, we had the slowest job growth in half a century,” Obama said during the 54 minute snoozer. He later added, “Governor Romney and his allies in Congress believe deeply in the theory that we tried during the last decade — the theory that the best way to grow the economy is from the top down.”
In one sense, it’s understandable that Obama is tempted to pursue such a strategy. After all, it was the ferocity of the nation’s backlash against Bush that put Democrats in control of Congress in 2006 and made Obama’s meteoric political rise possible. Without Bush’s unpopularity, a “hope and change” message from a freshman Senator wouldn’t have had much resonance. But once a president is in office, the nation doesn’t care about how bad the last guy was – all they care about is whether or not the new president is getting results.
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The weakness of the “blame Bush” strategy was already evident by January 2010, when the Politico’s Jonathan Martin wrote:
Yet when Democratic nominees for governor in Virginia and New Jersey and for Senate in Massachusetts sought to tie their GOP opponents to the still-unpopular former president, the strategy didn’t resonate. Voters were more focused on the current administration or local political issues — and the onetime Democratic magic formula seemed yesterday’s news.
Despite this, Democrats decided to run against Bush in 2010. Just look at a sampling of news articles in the year leading up to the Republican takeover of the House.
Talking Points Memo, Dec. 17, 2009:
“This is not going to be 1994 all over again,” Van Hollen told reporters at a briefing at the DNC. “The fundamentals are very different today.”
Their strategy: GOP just wants to rewind the clock to Bush era.
Politico, May 24, 2010:
It doesn’t matter that George W. Bush left office 16 months ago.
The White House’s mid-term election strategy is becoming clear – pit the Democrats of 2010 against the Republicans circa 2006, 2008 and 2009, including Bush.
The Huffington Post, July 13, 2010:
The Hill, Aug. 20, 2010:
We all know how that worked out for them.
Despite this history, Obama is eager to return to the Bush-bashing well. Some liberals were touting a Gallup poll released this week showing that 68 percent of Americans still believe that Bush deserves a “great deal” or at least a “moderate amount” of blame for the nation’s economic woes, seemingly providing Obama with another opening. But when Gallup took the same poll in late August 2010, 71 percent of Americans blamed Bush — and it didn’t stop the GOP tidal wave roughly eight weeks later. What’s more important in the new poll is that a 52 percent majority also blames Obama for the current state of the economy – and he’s the one whose name is going to be on the ballot.
