Late FOD

Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton, has published a couple of books on former presidents - one about Jimmy Carter, and one about George W. Bush. It's the latter that is relevant to FOD.

Somewhere in Texas, former President George W. Bush must be smiling. When President Obama and the Republican leadership reached a deal on extending all of the Bush tax cuts, the current president ratified a key policy from the former administration.

While Obama ran as the candidate who would fight to overturn Bush's record, a huge number of his (Bush's) policies remain in place.

This says a lot about President Bush. One of the key measures that we have to evaluate the success of a president is not simply how many of his proposals pass through Congress but also how many of his policies outlast his time in office. (For example) Many of Franklin D. Roosevelt's programs, including Social Security and the Wagner Act, survive into our time.

For the record, I do a little social science research. One of the basic tenets of the field is to make sure you define your terms clearly and up front. So IMO 'success' of a president is not a measure of how many of his policies linger, but rather how well those policies address the problems they were intended to solve. For example, FDR's Wagner Act protects certain union activities and constrains the actions employers can take against unions. It may very well have been beneficial in the 1930s, when companies routinely engaged in union-busting, but today it is an outdated and unnecessary relic.

Thus far, President Bush has been doing well on that score (that is, having his policies carry over into his successor's administration).

Most of his counterterrorism policies have survived. Although Obama has begun to draw down the troops in Iraq, he has acknowledged that a substantial number will remain in place, and he has expanded the war in Afghanistan. Until the disastrous Gulf Oil spill, the administration supported expanded offshore drilling and did little to fix the regulatory bodies responsible for monitoring these operations.

Congress is deliberating an extension of President Bush's biggest domestic policy of across-the-board tax reductions.

The tax cuts grew out of the supply-side tradition that has been central to conservatism since the 1980s. From the time of his campaign in 2000, Bush enthusiastically embraced supply-side economics, based on the argument that the wealthy would invest the money from their tax cuts into the economy.

In 1978, while testifying to the Senate Finance Committee, the economist Alan Greenspan said, "Let us remember that the basic purpose of any tax cut program in today's environment is to reduce the momentum of expenditure growth by restraining the amount of revenue available ..." Or as George W. Bush liked to say, "I've learned that if you leave cookies out on a plate, they always get eaten."

Amen, brothers. Tell it like it is.

Barack Obama made his attacks on the tax cuts a pillar of his campaign in 2008 and continued to oppose extending the reductions for the wealthiest Americans. As late as September 2010, the president attacked Minority Leader John Boehner during a speech in the Republican's home state of Ohio by criticizing Republicans for supporting the "same philosophy that led to this mess in the first place: cut more taxes for millionaires and cut more rules for corporations."

Let me add my voice to the growing chorus of people who are pointing out that the choice today is not about cutting taxes, but rather about either (1) preserving the status quo, or (2) raising taxes. And the people affected are not millionaires, but rather families and small business making more than $200,000 per year. Good money, but not exactly what I'd call millionaires, or even rich.

But in the end, Obama reversed himself, and he did so in dramatic fashion. House Democrats were caught off guard as the negotiations excluded the Democratic Caucus. Obama justified his decision by telling his supporters that he had no choice.

Since he was going to lose anyway on extending the tax cuts, he said that he should just accept this outcome and get the best deal possible, which included an extension of unemployment benefits.

Yeah, right. And if rape is inevitable, just lay back and enjoy it. (Sorry, ladies. I don't mean to be insensitive, but the comparison is just too good to pass up.)

So much for principles.

Now that the tax cuts have received bipartisan support from the leader of the Democratic Party, they would be doubly difficult to eliminate in two years when the debate occurs once again.

And what the hell was he thinking, making it a two-year extension. That guarantees it will be a big issue in the 2012 election. Amateur hour.

The political victory is not simply one for Republicans but also for former President Bush, whose policies continue to demonstrate their strength and durability.

A president once dismissed as a lightweight, as an accidental president, clearly left his imprint on Washington. The Democrat who replaced him, a politician who won amidst the anger and frustration with Bush, has ended up accepting many of the policies his Republican predecessor put into place.

i know I do.

You never know what you've got till it's gone...