For the past 120-odd days, President Obama's efforts to address the flagging economy have mainly been compared to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. If one is looking for lessons in economic policy, this is undoubtedly a reasonable place to start. If the question is politics, however, there may be more to learn by comparing Mr. Obama to George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11.
Let's start with the most remarked-upon phrase from the Obama transition, Rahm Emanuel's "rule one": "Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things."
In the eyes of those on the political left, Bush's invasion of Iraq was an example of a president seizing upon a crisis to do something big. (Recall Bush's own famous comments about "small ball.") As the story goes, the Bush administration, dominated by neoconservatives with pre-existing ambitions to increase American hegemony, launched an unnecessary and ill-advised war and sold it to the Congress and the public on the basis of ginned-up evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
Conservatives unsurprisingly bristled at this characterization. First, they thought it was wrong and unnecessary to call the President's integrity into question. There is, after all, a difference between lying and being mistaken or pursuing wrongheaded policies. Second, the crisis was happening on the Mr. Bush's watch, and he clearly felt a strong responsibility to protect the country. It seemed a little too easy for those without that responsibility to stand on the sidelines and complain about absolutely everything the pesident did, as if they wanted him to fail.
As seen by many on the right, Obama's first 120 days have likewise been about seizing on a crisis to implement a deeper policy objective. The need for "economic stimulus" has meant the funding of nearly every pet project on the Democratic establishment's wish list. Soaring budget deficits (even when compared to those under President Bush) will ensure that taxes are eventually increased, even if that unpleasant fact is delayed until the economy can make a little progress. A "soft" nationalization of major banks and industrial concerns is under way. There is talk of radically reshaping the health care system through the budget process so as to avoid debate and accountability. Combine that with Obama's campaign remarks to Joe the Plumber about "spread[ing] the wealth around," and it looks to some like the economic crisis is being used to advance the cause of socialism in America. (And this without raising the subject of Obama's apologetic foreign policy and his making nice with the likes of Hugo Chavez.)
Obama's supporters have reacted to these criticisms of their man much as Bush's supporters did. Most of them would not call themselves socialists and don't appreciate that dirty word being applied to the president. Obama, after all, professes admiration for free markets, even if he is more inclined to regulate than his Republican opponents. And he would make the tax system more progressive. Big surprise. That doesn't make him a socialist; it only confirms what we already knew about him, that he is a liberal Democrat. Bush was a conservative. That doesn't make him a heartless lying warmonger. Or, at least it shouldn't.
Similarly, some of the carping about the president's aggressive efforts to restore the country's economic fortunes must feel to Obama's supporters much like Democratic criticisms over the conduct of the war felt to conservatives in the Bush era. Obama is doing his best to make sure the economy doesn't fall off a cliff on his watch. Just as Bush's success in fending off domestic terrorism in the wake of 9/11 created a safe environment that may have made his gargantuan efforts in the direction of national security feel like overkill, any success Obama's policies actually achieve may reinforce the appearance that he has gone too far and spent too much in his efforts to resolve the economic crisis.
So what is there to learn from comparing Obama to Bush? Conservatives may want to have a look at their rhetoric and make sure they treat the president better than many Democrats treated Bush. They may also want to be sensitive to the danger that, when their criticisms of Obama's policies aren't measured or don't contain substantive proposals of their own, they may come across to the public as self-indulgent whiners who aren't taking the country's real problems seriously.
Mr. Obama and his supporters should likewise recognize that they are in real danger of repeating some of the previous administration's mistakes. Imagine, for example, how different Bush's second term might have been had he taken his war critics more seriously. Taking them seriously need not have equated to withdrawing from Iraq, but had Bush implemented the surge a couple of years sooner, both Iraq and Bush's presidency might have been in remarkably different shape than they were when he left office.
What is the analog to the war for President Obama? It is almost certainly his domestic policy, particularly as it relates to the budget and the economy. On these issues, the President shows little sign of listening to his critics. Even though he is working in the context of a budget already strained by defense and bailout spending, Obama has not even made a pretense of reining in the Congress, and this with budget-busting and economically threatening measures on health care and the environment still to come. If the President is hearing his critics' concern about inflation and economic drag created by new taxes (i.e., cap-and-trade) and regulation, he certainly isn't acting like it.
The most obvious economic danger is that we will get a short-run rebound followed shortly thereafter by a devastating round of inflation. President Obama will understandably want to take credit for the former without being saddled with responsibility for the latter. ("Mission Accomplished," anyone?)
It's fine to talk about your good intentions, the difficult circumstances in which you find yourself, and the dangers of doing nothing, but a few years from now the president may find that having his heart in the right place wasn't enough. If he has any doubts about that, he only need look to George Bush.
William S. Brewbaker III is a professor of law at the University of Alabama.