President Obama = President Carter? (or is Obama = Bush 2.0 on the economy?)

Outside the Beltway ^ | 7/23/2009 | Steve Verdon

[SeekAndFind]

President Obama = President Carter

That is what Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie argue in their Washington Post article.

Barely six months into his presidency, Barack Obama seems to be driving south into that political speed trap known as Carter Country: a sad-sack landscape in which every major initiative meets not just with failure but with scorn from political allies and foes alike. According to a July 13 CBS News poll, the once-unassailable president’s approval rating now stands at 57 percent, down 11 points from April. Half of Americans think the recession will last an additional two years or more, 52 percent think Obama is trying to “accomplish too much,” and 57 percent think the country is on the “wrong track.”

[...]

…Obama must be furtively reviewing the history of recent Democratic administrations for some kind of road map out of his post-100-days ditch.

So far, he seems to be skipping the chapter on Bill Clinton and his generally free-market economic policies and instead flipping back to the themes and comportment of Jimmy Carter. Like the 39th president, Obama has inherited an awful economy, dizzying budget deficits and a geopolitical situation as promising as Kim Jong Il’s health. Like Carter, Obama is smart, moralistic and enamored of alternative energy schemes that were nonstarters back when America’s best-known peanut farmer was installing solar panels at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Like Carter, Obama faces as much effective opposition from his own party’s left wing as he does from an ardent but diminished GOP.

Or is it President Bush 2.0?

The key to understanding Obama’s predicament is to realize that while he ran convincingly as a repudiation of Bush, he is in fact doubling down on his predecessor’s big-government policies and perpetual crisis-mongering.

[Paladin2]

Zer0 is Hoover II on the economy.

[xcamel]

Barak Hoover O’Carter.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Compared to 0bama, W was Calvin Coolidge.

[jersey117]

Bush’s economy didn’t sour until the last two years. The first six were pretty darn good for all classes considering what he had to contend with. You never heard Bush say “I inherited the dot com bubble” or “I inherited bin laden”. He was a real leader and a real man. Obama is a wimp. He’s like the kid in school who blamed the dog for eating his homework.

[eraser2005]

People need to be careful looking at poll numbers and coming up with a final comparison already.

The general economy and poll number trends are actually not that different than what we saw in 1981-1983.

[ConservativeDude]

for the most part, this is a good article. However, two points are noteworthy.

First, yes, Clinton was much better on the economy than Obama. However, Clinton and Cisneros were responsible for the creation of the Fannie/Freddie scheme as we know them today and they were responsible for pressing this idiot’s dream of home ownership for everyone. That is a very large part of why we are here today.

Second, GW Bush was obviously no fiscal conservative. And yes, Obama was elected by some of the idiot independents who believed that “no one could spend more than Bush”. Well, if given the choice, I would sure rather return to the days of Bush’s spending over where we are today....

[Cheap_Hessian]

I blame the economic crash on the Fed and the current poor economic policy on the Democrat congress. Obama is just adding a new annoying face to it, but he is outsourcing most his policies to congress.