With the modestly optimistic job report that was released last week, it seems that the economy and the job market are on the track back to recovery. Throughout the Bush administration, jobs created in the private sector were at a miserable low. During the Clinton administration, they were near an all-time high. Well, who is better at creating and sustaining jobs in the private sector, Democrats or Republicans? You would think that Democrats prefer to create public jobs, and Republicans to favor private jobs, ideologically, right? Here’s the raw data too. (h/t to kos)
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Filed under: Political Pondering
http://campbellbrown.blogs.cnn.com/2009/12/05/the-era-of-blame-bush-for-obama-is-over/
– an interesting ranting that mentions this job report as a side note and calls it a “light at the end of the tunnel.”
But the true point of this article can be found in the last few paragraphs, to summarize: ‘be responsible. be prepared to accept the consequences of the decisions you’ve made regardless of the circumstances.”
Quite possibly that is the hardest lesson to be learned. One that some may argue bush never learned.
it’s a bit of a stretch but roland’s article also aims to say, “quit bitchin’ about bush and the past. We got obama!” Our nation should be proud of the man we put in office.
Let’s take a moment to consider the best way to form an argument that proves “Obama is performing his job succesfully.” Let’s impose an assumption on this ‘outside the box post’ and say that it is attempting to prove (part) of the “obama is successful” argument. In summation, this blog post said, Obama created more jobs then bush did, therefore obama is better. It compares Obama’s successes to bush’s failures. One could also compare Obama’s successes to bush’s successes… which would be the stronger argument for the sake of Obama?
Clearly the second one, right? For the first (comparing obama success to bush failure)is actually making two arguments: 1) that obama rocks, and 2) that bush sucks. But if bush sucks as much as you keep saying, then obama being ‘better’ then bush is frankly just not that big of a deal.
Surely you will say, “but obama is much much better then bush.” Although it’s only been a year – agreed. So don’t use bush as the litmus test.
And then shirley, you will say, “but bush’s decisions are inseparable to the decisions obama was forced to face.” fine. so be it. but they are still obama’s decisions. And i’m sorry for calling you shirley.
So now, I challenge you to compare obama and his policies concerning private job growth to another man – hopefully a democrat – who also increased private jobs with a change in government policy.
Admittedly, this outside the box post actually addressed the debate: which american political party has a better resume of improving private job rates. But by involving yourself in this argument the same kunundrum arises: don’t bash your opponent if you want to use his reputation to prove that your side is superior. Again the strongest argument would be to say, “here are the things republicans do well.” Then say, “democrats have had more success in those realms. PLUS, democrats also succeed in these other areas.”
Okay, enough from me now.
In the meantime, forget about bush, support obama – but don’t forget to hold him to the accountability which we have all persecuted bush.
thanks for the taking the time to respond. I did not intend at all to throw bush under the bus here. I was just reading through the last 2 administration (bush and clinton) and just reading off the graph. The conclusions I drew were only from the data, not really my opinion at all. I do agree with you though, it’s more important to look at the future then the past in terms of comparing presidents, but the point of this graph is to look at past performance. Obama will have many of his own problems to deal with, I can assure you that, and I will call him out on them if I disagree (like I did in my last post about his speech).