Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Editorial: Bush nails his legacy
The president's final State of the Union speech exposed the multiple failures of his leadership.
From the RoundTable blog
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President Bush's final State of the Union address Monday captured well the seven years of his leadership. It was a laundry list of wistful wants, of hollow, shallow gestures and a lament of opportunities squandered.
One moment early in the speech captured well the emptiness of Bush's words, the legacy of his presidency, his party's collusion in endorsing colossal failures and his continuing plot to mislead Americans.
A tough-talking Bush warned Congress: "If you send me an appropriation bill that does not cut the number and cost of earmarks in half, I'll send it back to you with my veto." At this, the right side of the House chamber rose in applause.
Bush continued, "And tomorrow I will issue an executive order that directs federal agencies to ignore any future earmark that is not voted on by Congress."
Perhaps on living room couches throughout the country, Americans, too, cheered that pork barrel spending will be under control. But it's just another instance of Bush smearing lipstick on a pig.
First off, that executive order won't save one penny this year. It won't kick in until Bush is out of office. Bush could have applied it to 2008 spending, but he chose not to. In fact, he could have done it any one of the previous seven years.
Bush came into office at a time when Congress was earmarking about 8,000 special projects for a cost of about $18 billion a year, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, whose mission is to track pork. By 2006 and after five years of Bush leadership and GOP control, earmarks had ballooned to $29 billion.
Last year, Bush stood before a Congress that voters -- outraged by the excesses and hubris of Republican leadership -- had turned over to Democratic control and asked it to "cut the number and cost of earmarks at least in half."
Democrats didn't need Bush's prodding. While they failed to abolish earmarks, they did enact reforms that allow for better tracking of which congress member backed which pet project. The number of earmarks is still far too high, around 11,000, but the dollar amount is down to $14 billion.
Bush's cowboy-swaggering veto threat simply continues the pattern of a president prone to write his own reality.
His speech was littered with his other failures -- lack of Social Security reform; a worsening economy; a runaway deficit that he thinks will disappear by 2012 even as he pushes for more borrowing and making his tax cuts permanent; an illegal immigration problem that continues to grow unchecked; and a much-belated acknowledgment that global warming is a real threat, though not one requiring real action from his administration.
It was hard to find an item on Bush's checklist that could be marked mission accomplished.
If the speech is a preview of Bush's final year, there is no cause to hope that he has expanded his expertise beyond squandering opportunities and treasure.
