Bush Forges Weak Links to Legacies of Democratic Predecessors (Ronald Brownstein Whine Alert)

Los Angeles Times ^ | 01/31/05 | Ronald Brownstein

[goldstategop]

The comparison to Roosevelt is just as strained. Progress for America, a conservative group, has run television ads arguing that Bush, in his drive to restructure Social Security, is displaying the same "courage and leadership" that Roosevelt did in creating the program during the Depression.

No one doubts that Bush is willing to take political risks. But he is taking those risks on behalf of an agenda that, for better or worse, inverts Roosevelt's vision of how to increase economic security for ordinary Americans.

With ideas like personal investment and healthcare savings accounts, Bush is proposing policies that would shift more of the risk for funding retirement and healthcare from large collective institutions (like Social Security or group health insurance) to individuals in the name of expanding ownership and choice.

Roosevelt's goal was precisely the opposite: to create public programs that shifted the risk for life's challenges (like retirement or disability) from individuals to society overall.

[goldstategop]

Ronald Brownstein is whining that Bush is a Republican pretending to be a Democrat. The President trying to transform the public's relationship with the government by empowering individuals to decide on their own retirement instead of having the government decide it for them. Bush isn't fooling any one in invoking his Democratic predecessors. Different times call for different solutions. Its ironic the Democrats are trying to pretend to be someone they're not but its a stretch for Brownstein to accuse President Bush, to loosely paraphrase the thrust of his argument, of, "pretending its a Democratic agenda." What a laugh.

Denny Crane: "I want two things. First God and then Fox News."

[anniegetyourgun]

I don't know which I hate more, the LAT or the NYT.....but not to worry, I have disdain enough for both.

[Wesley Addison]

A lobbyist, on his way home from work in Washington, D.C., came to a dead halt in traffic and thought to imself, "Wow, this seems worse than usual."

He noticed a police officer walking between the lines of stopped cars, so he rolled down his window and asked, "Officer, what's the hold-up?"
The officer replied, "The President is depressed, so he stopped his motorcade and is threatening to douse himself in gasoline and set himself on fire. "He says no one believes his stories about why we went to war in Iraq, or the connection between Saddam and al-Qa'ida, or that his tax cuts will help anyone except his wealthy friends; the press called him on the lie about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger, and now Campbell Brown is threatening to sue him for a sexual innuendo he made at a recent press conference. So we're taking up a collection for him."

The lobbyist asks, "How much have you got so far?"
The officer replies, "About 14 gallons, but a lot of folks are still siphoning."

[MJY1288]

Did you get that very old Clinton joke from your friends over at DU?

[Wesley Addison]

I don't know where it originated. Why don't you check with any number of our fearless leaders who have a direct pipeline to the Great and Powerful OZ?