The President's Fault
by Jeffrey Folks

For over six years now, from the very moment when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in a fiercely contentious election, the Democrats have been determined to regain power by any means possible. Early on, they decided that the way to do this was to discredit the president on every possible issue.

Following the tragedy of 9/11, with the president's approval rating at an all-time high—in fact, the highest of any president in American history—there was a brief moment when the Democrats held back. They were afraid to strike, uncertain what tact to pursue in the wake of the unprecedented tragedy that had struck America.

But then they wasted little time in crafting a response to President Bush’s growing popularity. This response was centered on a single theme, to be repeated again and again, drilled into the minds of the public through every liberal opinion-maker. The idea was simple and crude, just crude enough to be effective. Everything wrong with the country was the President’s Fault; everything right was just happenstance.

In the post-9/11 age, there was plenty of blame to pass off on the president. First of all, the president had not done enough to prevent the attacks. He had not been able to read the minds of the terrorists. He had not deployed masses of armed guards and air marshals at every American airport in advance of the attacks. He had not saturated every potential target, every port, every subway, every bus station, every office or apartment tower, with the level of security that might have made an attack less likely. Notwithstanding the fact that it was humanly impossible to do so.

When hurricane Katrina struck in the summer of 2005, it was once again the President’s Fault. This despite the fact that local officials are charged with maintaining the levees, not the president. Actually, it was the President’s Fault that they hurricane formed in the first place, since the president had not done enough to deal with global warming. Had we reduced global warming by parking all the cars in America, shutting down all of our factories, and lowering all of our thermostats, the hurricane would never have formed the first place. Hurricanes would be a thing of the past.

Once the hurricane struck, it's was the President’s Fault all over again. It was the President’s Fault that we did not have tens of thousands of aid workers standing in readiness for this event, and for every other potential hurricane, earthquake, tornado, fire, flood, or other natural or man-made disaster that might turn up. Of course, that kind of manpower simply doesn't exist, nor could it be funded if it did. And yet it was the President’s Fault.

If we are to believe what the Democratic candidates for the presidency are telling us, the long reach of George W. Bush extends even further. For the past year, at least, Hillary Clinton has routinely referred to Iraq as “the President’s War.” This despite the fact that she voted to approve it before she decided that she would not have voted to approve it.

It seems, however, that Hillary’s astonishment at the president’s powers are not limited to the conduct of war. According to Hillary and her Democratic colleagues in Congress, every negative event of the past seven years is the President’s Fault. The high price of gas is the President’s Fault. The cost of prescription drugs is the President’s Fault. The cost of home insurance in coastal areas is the President’s Fault. Airline delays are the President’s Fault. The drought now ravaging the central United States is the President’s Fault. Western wildfires are the President’s Fault. Those exceptionally mild winters of recent years were the President’s Fault, except when they were unusually severe—as in the south states this year. Then the cold weather was the President’s Fault.

Of course, when gas prices decline, as they have in the past month, this is not the President’s Fault. When prescription drugs are made more affordable to seniors, this is not the President’s Fault. When terrorists are rooted out and attacks on the U.S. and its allies prevented, this is not the President’s Fault. When storms fail to materialize, this is not the President’s Fault.

By every objective measure, Americans now enjoy an unprecedented level of prosperity and well-being. The American economy has been growing during the past six years at a record pace. Employment stands an all-time high. The wages of American workers are increasing at record rates. The 2001 recession that President Bush inherited from Bill Clinton was halted by wise and vigorous economic policy, especially by the passage of historically large tax cuts, which have spurred the economy on.

According to a July 3rd report from the Wall Street Journal, the index of manufacturing activity for June showed unusually strong gains. A July 7th front-page story in the same publication noted that we are now enjoying a “goldilocks economy” with sustained job growth, strong wage gains, and controlled inflation. The unemployment rate stands at a remarkably low 4.5%. For the remainder of the year, the economy is projected to grow at an optimal rate of three to four percent.

Those tens of millions of American workers, well over half of the workforce, who are invested in the stock market, either directly or through 401(k)s or IRAs, have seen their retirement savings grow at impressive rates since George W. Bush took office. The U. S. stock market is up 7% year to date. International markets, in which many workers are partially invested, are up twice that amount. All working Americans, even those with less than average earnings, share in this growing affluence. The net worth of American households has doubled since George W. Bush took office.

Just as important, this prosperity is not confined to America. We are now witnessing a moment of unparalleled global prosperity, better health, higher education, and improved well-being for billions of human beings around the world. America’s support for free trade and open markets has had much to do with this rising tide of prosperity, and for those open markets, much of the credit must go to one man.

Strangely enough, I have not heard any of this good news reported in the national media. Those evening news anchors who claim to be impartial seem to view everything bad as the President’s Fault. At the same time, they totally ignore the sustained economic expansion that we've seen in the last six years. They ignore the president’s success in protecting this country against further terrorist attacks. They ignore the progress we are making in Iraq, or the President’s diplomatic successes in dealing with volatile situations like those in as Libya, North Korea, and Iran.

Likewise, they ignore the enormous success of the president's health savings account program and of the new prescription drug benefit for seniors. They fail to see how the president's appointments of Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court have resulted in a climate of greater judicial restraint. Then there is the president's appointment of Henry Paulson as Secretary of the Treasury and of Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve. It would be impossible to find better individuals for these positions.

The fact is that once we look beyond the liberal blame game, we see that we have enjoyed a magnificent period of sustained economic prosperity and national security during the Bush presidency. We have benefited from the enormous tax cuts that the president implemented. We have improved our medical care by shifting services away from government bureaucrats and toward private providers. Most important of all, we have forestalled hundreds if not thousands of terrorist attacks that otherwise would have been carried out had they not been prevented by the president's intelligence programs—programs that Democrats like Hillary Clinton like to deride as “domestic spying.”

It seems that the Democrats want to blame everything on the president, even those natural disasters that no one can control. But if we are to blame the president for those things which no one can control, shouldn't we also give him credit for those things that were actually his fault? If we are to blame the president for every flood, fire, shooting, price increase, heat wave, or other negative occurrence that takes place anywhere in the world, shouldn't we also give him credit for the wonderful prosperity and national security that he has done so much to bring about?

The fact is that President Bush is responsible for seven years of sustained economic expansion, for record employment and record wages, for all-time high stock markets, for the fact that Americans are now healthier than at any time in our history, and for the fact that we have not suffered a terrorist attack within our borders since 9/11. Yes, the last seven years have been the President’s Fault, and they have been seven years of successfully leading the country through enormously challenging times. Seven years of prosperity, seven years of curbing the excesses of government, seven years of shelter from terrorists.

If we are to blame the president for everything else, we must blame him for these things, too. Yes, it's the President’s Fault, and I applaud him for it.

Dr. Jeffrey Folks taught for thirty years in universities in Europe, America, and Japan. He has published nine books and over a hundred articles on American culture and politics in national journals and newspapers. He is currently writing on issues in American literature, media, family, and education.