Bush Bashing Won't Stop Anytime Soon

Ezra Klein crunches the numbers and comes up with a lower total than you think

(NEWSER) - Mitt Romney has taken to carrying around a debt clock, blaming President Obama for the ever-climbing number it shows. But the clock doesn't show how much Obama has actually added to that debt, so Ezra Klein set out to find out. "There are two answers," he writes in the Washington Post . The first, which is "simple and wrong" is $4.7 trillion. That's what you get when you subtract the debt when Obama took office (about $10.5 trillion) from the current debt (about $15.2 trillion). More»

(NEWSER) - President Obama’s agenda plays a very small role in the massive deficits facing the country, but it won't do anything to correct them, wither the New York Times reports. After reviewing a decade’s worth of Congressional Budget Office reports, the paper explains how the government turned a $800 billion surplus into a $1.2 trillion deficit: More»

Apart from being ideological opposites, Bush and Obama are identical!

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama is often compared to FDR or Ronald Reagan. But what about the last guy? Obama has taken office in the midst of a crisis and has lofty approval ratings—much like the 80% Bush had after 9/11. And both have taken a fairly similar political approach to their respective tests, writes Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post. More»

Obama officials condemn disorder; ex-Bushies cry blame game

(NEWSER) - The case files of many Gitmo detainees are incomplete, disorganized, or strewn around the executive branch, complicating President Barack Obama’s plan to close down the detention center, reports the Washington Post. Incoming officials discovered the chaos when given access after the inauguration. One former official says he sometimes had to threaten to release prisoners to force the CIA to "cough up a sentence or two." More»

While Bush hated doubt, Obama's 'delighted' by it

(NEWSER) - George W. Bush’s insecurity and aversion to doubt—“the psychological traits of an asphyxiated and pampered son”—led to his botched presidency, Maureen Dowd writes in the New York Times. Rather than being a source of presidential insight on Iraq and Saddam, Bush’s father was relegated “to the status of a blankie,” providing needed emotional support while Junior spent eight years “trashing the Constitution, the economy, and the environment.” More»