Book Review: George W. Bush: The GOP’s CEO
How George Bush thoroughly screwed up our economy and what needs to be done to fix the economic mess.
Reviewed by Lawrence J. McNamee
It’s Still the Economy, Stupid: George W. Bush, The GOP's CEO
by Paul Begala
Simon & Schuster, 198 pages, 2002
As the November presidential election nears, there is no shortage of “Bush-bashing” literature for the reader to choose from. Democrats, independents, and some critical Republicans have all weighed in on the genealogy, psychodynamics, foreign policy style, and ethical framework of the incumbent presidential candidate. I thought it appropriate to look for a critique of George W. Bush’s record on economic policy and found one in Paul Begala’s It’s Still the Economy, Stupid.
The author is a partisan Democrat from Texas, who along with James Carville of Louisiana was a top political advisor to former president Bill Clinton. I did not open the cover of It’s Still the Economy, Stupid expecting a Fox TV News-style appraisal of Bush’s economic policy, and I wasn’t disappointed. While Begala does not hide his admiration for the “Man from Hope” and the New Democrat mix of progressive federal policy and realistic expectations, much of his humor-tinged criticism of the current Chief Executive’s economic policy is worth the reader’s consideration.
The author asks some important questions which deserve answers. How did we go so quickly from a surplus to a staggering deficit? If Clinton’s economic policies caused the current sluggish growth rate and decline in jobs, why weren’t economists in the 1990s raising alarms during Bill Clinton’s eight years in office? Conservative economists predicted economic downturns which never came, but no one I know of envisioned a situation after 2001 where we would have a modest economic recovery for America’s investor class and continued bad news for American workers. When It’s Still the Economy, Stupid was written, the consequences of President George W. Bush’s beliefs about Iraq and a $50 dollar-a-barrel price for oil were not yet a reality. Paul Begala’s charges against the Bush administration in 2002 are serious enough to make a reader in 2004 wary of a second Bush term.
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