Jagger69
Three lullabies in an ancient tongue
Interesting comparative perspective on the two:
Source is here:
http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/article_d2a730c5-09f5-528c-888b-de62ff022369.html
Obama's decisions edge toward those of Bush
By Steven Thomma • McClatchy Newspapers STLtoday.com
WASHINGTON • He ran as the anti-Bush.
Silver-tongued, not tongue-tied. A team player on the world stage, not a lone cowboy. A man who'd put a stop to reckless Bush policies at home and abroad. In short, Barack Obama represented change.
Well, that was then. Now, on one major policy after another, President Barack Obama seems to be morphing into President George W. Bush. From tax policy to terrorism, the national debt to use of the armed forces, Obama has repeatedly made policy decisions that differ greatly from his campaign rhetoric.
Big differences remain between Obama and Bush, to be sure. His two nominees to the Supreme Court differ vastly from Bush's picks. Obama does want to end the tax cuts for the wealthy. He also pushed through a massive overhaul of the nation's health insurance system.
But some of the differences between the two presidents are measured in gray, not black and white as once seemed the case.
Debt • In 2006, Bush had cut taxes, gone to war and expanded Medicare, and increased the national debt to $8.2 trillion from $5.6 trillion. He needed approval from Congress to raise the ceiling for debt to $9 trillion.
The Senate approved the increase by a narrow vote of 52-48.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., voted no, saying: "Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership."
Now, though the national debt has increased to $14 trillion, Obama needs Congress to approve more debt.
What about Obama's own vote against the president in a similar situation? A mistake, the White House said.
Taxes • As a senator and presidential candidate, Obama opposed extending the Bush tax cuts on household incomes greater than $250,000 a year past their expiration on Dec. 31, 2009.
In 2007, he said he was for "rolling back the Bush tax cuts on the top 1 percent of people, who don't need it." In a 2008 ad, he said, "Instead of extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest, I'll focus on you."
But when the issue of extending the Bush tax cuts came to a head last December, Obama went along with Republican demands to extend all the tax cuts, not just those on incomes below $250,000. His final deal with the Congress also added a one-year cut in the payroll tax for Medicare and Social Security.
Obama said again last week that he wanted to let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire, this time on Dec. 31, 2012.
Terrorism • As a presidential candidate, Obama vowed a broad reversal of Bush's policies toward suspected terrorists. Most pointedly, he said he'd close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and try suspected terrorists in civilian courts.
"I have faith in America's courts," he said in a 2007 speech. "As president, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions."
He ran into a (shitstorm) of opposition, however. Members of Congress balked at transferring suspected terrorists to U.S. prisons. New Yorkers balked when his administration said it would try accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in lower Manhattan.
Last month, he changed course, saying he'd keep Guantanamo Bay open and would try Mohammed before a military court.
Echoing Bush, Obama also has asserted that he has the power to hold suspected terrorists without charges or trial, and that he has the power to kill U.S. citizens abroad if his government considers them a terrorist threat.
Military • In his campaign, Obama signaled that he'd be far more circumspect than Bush was in using military power. He did say he'd send more troops to Afghanistan, which he has done, and that he would attack al-Qaida in Pakistan, which he has also done.
But he opposed the Iraq war from the start and said he didn't think the president should wage war for humanitarian purposes or act without congressional approval, absent an imminent threat to the U.S.
"The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation," he told The Boston Globe in 2007.
On March 19, the U.S. attacked Libya on humanitarian grounds, absent any threat to the U.S. and without approval from Congress.
Some of the changes in Obama can be attributed to the passion of campaign rhetoric's giving way to the realities of governing, analysts say.
"He is looking less like a candidate and more like a president," said Dan Schnur, the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. "He has discovered that it's much easier to make promises on the campaign trail than it is to keep them as president."
Some of the surprising continuity of Bush-era policies can be tied to the way Bush and events set the nation's course, particularly on foreign policy. "Morphing into Bush was not a willful act," said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "It was acquiescence to the policies his predecessor shaped and the cruel realities that Obama inherited."
Source is here:
http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/article_d2a730c5-09f5-528c-888b-de62ff022369.html
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