Krugman says Obama doesn't blame Bush enough?

By Warner Todd Huston

One of the worst writers in political punditry, a man with a little deserved reputation as a thinker and analyst, is New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. Sometimes the things he says are so absurd that it is hard to believe that even he believes what he is writing.

Aside from his discreditable insistence that Keynesian economics is a viable economic system despite the mountain of evidence against it, Krugman is also consistently wrong about politics.

Krugman's January 17 piece is a perfect example of the nonsense that he tries to pass off as political analysis. In the piece headlined "What Didn't Happen," Krugman is seriously trying to claim that one of Barack Obama's biggest failings is that he doesn't blame Bush enough for his own failings.

Yes, you read me right, incredulously Krugman is saying that Obama doesn't blame Bush enough.

Amazingly after claiming that not enough of the taxpayer's money was wasted on the stimulus to nowhere, Krugman then says Obama's not blaming Bush enough.

Mr. Obama didn't... shelter himself from criticism with a narrative that placed the blame on previous administrations.

Really? Paul Krugman is seriously trying to say that Obama hasn't blamed Bush enough? Unfortunately for Krugman, the facts are clear and the facts show that blaming Bush has been a mainstay of nearly every policy speech and press conference Obama has made and has been so since he took office if not before.

In March, for instance, Washington Post reporter Scott Wilson wrote a piece that noted that, "Obama has reminded the public at every turn that he is facing problems "inherited" from the Bush administration..." In that piece Wilson notes how time and again Obama blamed everything he faced on Bush.

And it didn't stop in March. In May Obama defended his counterterrorism policies by saying that he was cleaning up a "mess" left by the Bush administration.

In June, even the New York Times was reporting that the main tactic that the Obama administration was using to avoid blame was in "blaming the guy who came before."

In October Obama claimed that he was using a "mop" to "clean up somebody else's mess."

"Another way of putting it is when I'm busy and Nancy (Pelosi) is busy with our mop cleaning up somebody else's mess — we don't want somebody saying you're not holding that mop right. Why don't you grab a mop? Why don't you help clean up?"

Later another columnist, this time Mona Charen, noted as late as Dec of 2009 that Obama was still blaming everything on Bush.

So, just what is Krugman talking about? The blame Bush strategy has been preeminent since Obama took office, if not before that. Anyone with a simple Internet search engine can easily track down dozens of examples of Obama's penchant for blaming Bush for every failing. One can also find members of the Administration following along with their boss with the meme. So, how is it that Krugman has missed this all of this time? Perhaps he's missed it just like he's missed that mountain of evidence that discredits his pet economic theories.

It seems pretty plain that whatever Mr. Krugman doesn't want to believe his ostrich-like reflexes makes sure he never hears.

© Warner Todd Huston