The budgetary trend lines were such that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan began to fret about the challenges the Fed might face in influencing interest rates if the entire U.S. government debt were paid off, thus leaving no debt obligations to sell.
But Greenspan's nervousness was soon quieted. In 2001, George W. Bush seized the White House after blocking a full counting of legally cast votes in Florida, with the help of five Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Then, though lacking a popular mandate Bush also had lost the national popular vote to Al Gore Bush governed as if he had won by a landslide. He pushed through a new round of tax cuts weighted in favor of the wealthy and, after the 9/11 attacks, launched two open-ended wars on borrowed money.
By the time Bush left office in 2009, the annual deficit had gone to $1.3 trillion (from a $236 billion surplus). Total federal debt had risen almost $5 trillion to $10.7 trillion. And the projected 10-year budget outlook called for $8 trillion more in red ink.
Despite this record of economic failure trillions more in debt but no net increase in jobs many Americans appear to have learned no lessons from either the Bush-II presidency or the legacy of Reaganomics. Any thought of raising taxes, addressing long-term problems like health costs, or investing in a stronger domestic infrastructure remains anathema to large segments of the population.
Indeed, across the news media, it is hard to find any serious or sustained criticism of the Reagan/Bush economic theories. Far more blame is heaped on Obama for not having fully turned around the financial and economic crisis that he inherited.
Less than a year into Obama's presidency, voters in Massachusetts may be on the verge of electing a conservative Republican in a special Senate election, according to some polls. That result would enable the GOP to filibuster every significant Obama initiative, from health care to job programs. Many pundits anticipate Republican victories in congressional elections next November.
Who's to Blame?
Some of the fault for these Democratic political troubles can fairly be laid at Obama's door, though surely not all.
Fearing a new Great Depression, Obama did continue Bush's policies for bailing out large banks whose greed and recklessness contributed to the 2008 financial meltdown. Obama also alienated his "base" by rejecting calls for investigating Bush-era national security crimes, expanding the Afghan War, and accepting compromises on health-care reform.
Tactically, Obama was played for a sucker when he let health-care negotiations with "moderate" Republicans like Olympia Snowe of Maine drag on past his initial deadline of August. By slow-rolling the process, the Republicans bought time to organize right-wing populist opposition to the reform package and then marched the GOP (Snowe included) in lockstep behind a Senate filibuster of the legislation.
The unified Republican filibuster forced Obama and the Democratic leadership to make deals with conservative Democrats and Sen. Joe Lieberman, an Independent who seemed to enjoy bedeviling the legislative process. To get Lieberman's support, the public option and other popular elements were jettisoned, causing many on the Left to denounce Obama as a sell-out.
Because of all the legislative delays, the health-care bill now hangs on the outcome of the Massachusetts election to fill the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat on Jan. 19.
More generally, few Americans appear to be paying any heed to the lessons of the past three decades. Instead, many are simply reprising the same mistakes.
Republicans and the Right are determined to protect the Reagan-Bush legacies by blocking Democratic domestic legislation that might take the country in a different direction. To stop that possibility, they continue to whip up anti-tax, anti-government furies.
Meanwhile, the Democrats still come across as flaccid protectors of an Establishment that many Americans understandably hate. And the American Left mostly sits in the bleachers booing all the players, rather than getting into the game.
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