August 10, 2012 at 14:45:07
As Bill Clinton is resurrected by the Democrats,
George W. Bush is being erased by the GOP -- as if an entire eight years
of American history hadn't happened.
While Bill Clinton stumps for Obama, Romney has
gone out of his way not to mention the name of the president who came
after Clinton and before Obama.
Clinton will have a starring role at the
Democratic National Convention. George W. Bush won't even be at the
Republican one -- the first time a national party has not given the stage
at its convention to its most recent occupant of the Oval Office who
successfully ran for reelection.
The GOP is counting on America's notoriously
short-term memory to blot out the last time the nation put a Republican
into the Oval Office, on the reasonable assumption that such a memory
might cause voters to avoid making the same mistake twice. As
whoever-it-was once said, "fool me once ..." (and then mangled the rest).
Republicans want to obliterate any trace of the
administration that told America there were weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq and led us into a devastating war we couldn't win; turned a $5
trillion projected budget surplus into a $6 trillion deficit; gave the
largest tax cut in a generation to the richest Americans in history;
handed out a mountain of corporate welfare to the oil and gas industry,
pharmaceutical companies, and military contractors like Halliburton
(uniquely bThe GOP is counting on America's notoriously
short-term memory to blot out the last time the nation put a Republican
into the Oval Office, on the reasonable assumption that such a memory
might cause voters to avoid making the same mistake twice. As
whoever-it-was once said, "fool me once ..." (and then mangled the rest).enefiting the vice president); whose officials turned a blind
eye to Wall Street shenanigans that led to the worst financial calamity
since the Great Crash of 1929 and then persuaded Congress to bail out
the Street with the largest taxpayer-funded giveaway of all time.
Besides, the resemblances between George W. Bush
and Mitt Romney are too just too for comfort. Both were born into
wealth, sons of prominent politicians who themselves ran for president;
both are closely tied to the nation's corporate and financial elites,
and eager to do their bidding; both are socially awkward and, as
candidates, tightly scripted for fear of saying something they
shouldn't; and both presented themselves to the nation devoid of any
consistent policies or principles that might give some clue as to what
they actually believe.
They are both, in other words, unusually shallow,
uncurious, two-dimensional men who ran or are running for the presidency
for no clear reason other than to surpass their fathers or achieve the
aims and ambitions of their wealthy patrons.
Small wonder the Republican Party wants us to
forget our last Republican president and his administration. By
contrast, the Democrats have every reason for America to recall the
Clinton years.
http://robertreich.org/
Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of
California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations,
most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He
has written twelve books, including (
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