All Presidents spend money – or rather get the Congress to do it. The spending amount is due to their economic and political philosophy. Bush and Obama both got into office having made a lot of promises. Both entered with their own agenda and ideology. Both were smashed against the wall with the reality of being President (i.e. the collective nation is not as nice as your constituents at rallies. The rest of the world does not care much what you promised to the American people - they have their own agenda. The things you didn’t know before entering the Presidency (restricted information) now seem like really, really, big problems, and the Economic dynamics are much greater and more complex than Econ101)
Bush was faced with his problems: Twin Towers, Katrina, Middle east tension, Oil price manipulation . . .on and on. . . He is mostly a free market Conservative with a compassion for older people. And regardless of what a person thinks about the middle east. . . the lack of free flow of oil for this country – considering that there is so much attention given to not using resources in our own country – will devastate this country making the Great Recession look like a mud puddle in an ocean of poverty.
Obama, too has had his issues, too: a sinking global (not just American) economy. The world economy did not collapse simply because of what greedy bankers and Wall Street did (although that certainly did not help), how to maintain a better-than-horrific stability for those caught up in the collateral damage of globalization (i.e. comparative advantage, free trade, etc); How to deal with the Middle East. . .ongoing theme for the next several Presidents. Obama has a great deal of compassion for minorities and people that haven’t been able to (through lack of opportunity, training, circumstances or desire) move into better economic situations. Those same people were slammed even harder during this economic dump. He has also had the same millennia-old problem (that Bush did) of thugs in the middle east that refuse to compromise and would rather manipulate the media instead of come up with real solutions. He runs left of center and created a pretty big expectation for what he would cure while in office. However, like any ideologue, answers come from only one side of the isle.
The money methods are what we argue about, though. One person is a Keynesian, the other free-market. Both have a place. The market will eventually balance out after the storm of capital redistribution, all by itself. Keynes just thought that he could make the landing softer by increasing government spending. . . . True, but it has a cost – debt and inflation.
What we will always be arguing here, folks, are the periphery of the real core issues. And at the base of the core issues are how can I make someone else do what I am sure is right. Good Luck.
Don't worry. Not all my posts will be this long.
