It's Official: We're Worse Off Than Before Bush Took Office...

Mother Jones pointed out today that the stock market has now fallen below where it was when Bush took office almsot eight years ago.

Remind em again... Which party is good for business? I've been told a lot that investing in the stock market is a sure thing over time. But a lot of people's retirement accounts are pretty bad off at the moment.

The President, Big Business, and the Price of Gas

I wrote recently in another place about how the President really is to blame for the price of oil to some extent. How can I say that? In case you don't want to read the long version, I'll sum it up here:

• Petroleum is sold in U.S. Dollars. When a Russian business buys oil from a Nigerian exporter, the deal is priced in U.S. Dollars. When Australians buy oil from Indonesia, the deal is prices in U.S. Dollars. OPEC sells oil in U.S. dollars.
  
• The U.S. Dollar has weakened considerably against other currencies in the past few years. The euro, British pound, and Canadian dollar, for example all cost more now than they did a few years ago. The U.S. dollar is worth less than it used to be.
  
• Oil is more expensive in America because OPEC wants to keep getting the same amount of euros and pounds for a barrel of oil that it did last year and the year before. The only way they can do that is charge more for it, in U.S. Dollars.
  
• The reason the U.S. Dollar is weak is that President Bush has made policy decisions that make it weak.

You don't believe me...

There are a couple of things to consider. Let me start by saying that I understand that being President probably isn't easy. There are hard decisions. I'll accept that.

Four and a half years ago President Bush decided to invade Iraq. I don't mind saying that I think he misled Congress to get their consent to go to war - and that that was probably a crime. The projections at the time were rosy: it would be over in six months and we'd be welcomed as liberators. Iraqis would be so happy with us that they would pay for the invasion with their own oil. Fifty some odd months later those projects seem laughable. Iraqi oil hasn't help the U.S. pay off this fiasco. And President Bush has paid for the war instead by selling huge amounts of Treasury bills to other countries; he's borrowed money to fight a war while cutting taxes and increasing spending at home. Ronald Reagan's deficit meets Lyndon Johnson's unpopular war...

One result of that borrowing has been a weaker dollar.

How could it have been different? Most countries, when they go to war, institute an austerity program of some sort and raise taxes. If back in March of 2004 (a year into this war and at a time when the October 2003 budget was being formed) President Bush had suggested an austerity program to Congress and led it by making cuts to his own programs, would he still be President? That was an election year. If President Bush had repealed part of his tax cuts to pay for the war, would he still be President? I suspect the answer to both questions is "no." But political self-preservation is not an honorable motive for public policy decisions.

While the relationship between the price oil and the strength of the Dollar has received a lot of attention in the press, there is another effect that a weaker Dollar has - one that isn't getting quite as much press. A weaker Dollar is good for export industries in America and bad for imports. Boeing jets are cheaper in France now, and they French may buy more of them. BMW's are more expensive in the U.S. now, and many Americans may decide to buy a Lincoln or a Cadillac, instead.

A weak dollar is good for America's big businesses. And in it not inconceivable that the Bush administrations Dollar policy has been designed to help big business.

Remember that when the price of gas goes to $5 a gallon at the pump - probably just before the 2008 election...

Could You Vote for Hillary?

Eight years ago (give or take a few months) people started asking me if I could vote for Al Gore. It usually wasn't really a question - it was more of an accusation. They'd tell me that Gore was arrogant and over-educated (I always wondered what was wrong with being over-educated). They'd tell me Gore was stupid, that he thought he'd invented the Internet (which, obviously, he hadn't), and that Al made fun of Oliver North at a 1987 Senate hearing where North told Congress that one day Osama Bin Laden was going to be a problem (You remember that email? The truth is that Gore wasn't on the committee and never questioned North). Then they'd tell me something like that Bush had better judgment and would make a good president - and they'd finish with something about how a Bush presidency would be good for public education in America....


Four years ago those same people started asking me if I could vote for John Kerry. And, again, it usually sounded more like an accusation than a question. They'd tell me that Kerry was a hypocrite because he only threw cheap ribbons that can be replaced anyway instead of real medals at whatever that protest event was. They'd tell me Kerry didn't really earn those three purple hearts, anyway, and that they knew he didn't because Swift Boat Veterans for Truth said he didn't (and we all knew they were a disinterested party speaking on behalf of God and justice). And they'd tell that Kerry was really just a pansy who owed most of what he'd accomplished in life to money he got from his wife with the funny accent. Then they'd tell me that it was unpatriotic to vote against Bush in the middle of a war (even if he started it)....

Now those same people have started asking me if I could vote for Hillary. And it sounds like an accusation again.

I voted for Kerry. I think I voted for Gore, but that was a long time ago and I'm not absolutely positive.

When the Democratic Primary comes around in my state, I'll probably vote for John Edwards. For reasons I can't really quantify, reasons that have as much to do with personality as with politics, I don't really like Hillary all that much. But on November 4th, 2008, if the choice comes down to Hillary Clinton or Fred Thompson, or maybe Hillary vs. Newt Gingrich, I will not stay home and curl up in bed and pull the covers over my head.

The Republicans have spent eight years trying to privatize public education and take America backwards in time to before it was a Great Society. They started an expensive war to satisfy personal agendas. And when it's all said and done I'll go out on November 4th next year and vote for whomever I think is most likely to clean up the mess that George W. Bush and the GOP have made of America. And I'll do it at least in part because it's my patriotic duty.

The answer, then, is "yes." I'll almost certainly vote for someone else when Virginia holds its Democratic Presidential Primary on February 12th. But if it comes to that, I could vote for Hillary on November 4th next year. Quickly, and without much reservation...

Naïve and Irresponsible...

Barack Obama said Monday during the Democratic debate that he would meet during his first year in office with the leaders of Cuba, Syria, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, and maybe a few other governments that I'm forgetting - governments whose leaders despise America, whose leaders may even sponsor terrorism. Obama tried to set up that proposed course of action as a contract to the failed foreign policies of President George W. Bush.

The press exploded with criticism of Obama for his statements. Hillary Clinton called the idea "naïve and irresponsible." And Clinton's criticism of Obama has changed the tone of the campaign.

Is Obama's proposal naïve and irresponsible? I'd say yes. And the contrast he's trying to set up doesn't work.

President Bush has had most of seven years now to come to terms with the rouge states of the world. It is no shame that he didn't have Kim Il Sung to dinner in 1991. But Bush's foreign policy in general has been characterized by stubborn refusal to ever change direction - a "don't confuse me with the facts" approach that says "we started out in this direction and if we keep going this direction we'll eventually get somewhere."

Hillary says that she doesn't want to be used for propaganda purposes. Those governments will make propaganda anyway. They will tell their people and their allies what they want, regardless of truth.

There is groundwork that has to be laid, though. And the idea that heads of state can meet on short notice without laying the groundwork for some sort of accomplishment is, well, naïve and irresponsible. Would it better than the reckless and stubborn policies of the Bush administration? Yes. It might even accidentally accomplish something; but any accomplishment would be largely accidental.

If Obama had said that he hoped to meet with such leaders in his first term, after laying the groundwork for some constructive dialogue, then the contrast would have worked.

Obama's mistake? He's in too much of a hurry. But changing course and entering into dialogue (even with North Korea's Kim Il Sung or Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) doesn't give away anything when the current course is not working.