George Bush’s legacy

This was cowritten with my colleague, Washington Bureau Chief Adrian Wooldridge

The frat boy ships out

 

Jan 15th 2009
From The Economist print edition

 

Few people will mourn the departure of the 43rd president

HE LEAVES the White House as one of the least popular and most divisive presidents in American history. At home, his approval rating has been stuck in the 20s for months; abroad, George Bush has presided over the most catastrophic collapse in America’s reputation since the second world war. The American economy is in deep recession, brought on by a crisis that forced Mr Bush to preside over huge and unpopular bail-outs.

America is embroiled in two wars, one of which Mr Bush launched against the tide of world opinion. The Bush family name, once among the most illustrious in American political life, is now so tainted that Jeb, George’s younger brother, recently decided not to run for the Senate from Florida. A Bush relative describes family gatherings as “funeral wakes”.

 

Few people would have predicted this litany of disasters when Mr Bush ran for the presidency in 2000.

As Bigger Piece of Economic Pie Shifts to Wealthiest, U.S. Deficit Heads Downward

By Greg Ip and Deborah Solomon

979 words

17 July 2006

The Wall Street Journal

A2

English

(Copyright (c) 2006, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

IN ANNOUNCING a big drop in its estimate of this year’s federal budget deficit, the Bush administration was quick to credit itself.

“Tax cuts worked to generate economic growth, and economic growth is now working to raise revenues,” White House budget director Rob Portman said last week during an online discussion with the public.

But this explanation falls short. While tax revenue is growing far faster than the Bush administration forecast in its budget projections in February, the nation’s economy isn’t.

What has changed isn’t the size of the economy, but how the economic pie is divided. The share of national income going to corporations and the wealthiest individuals, already large, has expanded, while the share going to typical wage earners has shrunk. Because corporations and the wealthy generally pay income tax at higher rates than does the typical wage earner, that shift benefits the federal Treasury.