Barack Obama is, overall, a worse President than George W. Bush

Making a fair comparison between Presidents Bush and Obama is difficult because we don't know how Obama's tenure will pan out. We also don't know how history will view the Bush presidency. If Iraq turns out to have planted the seed of democracy in the Muslim world, then Bush will be credited with a tremendous achievement. Con offered no solution to the problem of making a fair comparison so soon. I think the only resolution of the problem is to only consider issues for which the evidence at this time is reasonably conclusive. 1. Obama ran and was elected upon the promise of a new era in government built upon transparency. That was without question a lie. Nothing has been more characteristic of the Obama Administration than backroom deals. In the health care debate the Administration negotiated payoffs to Nebraska, Louisiana, Vermont, Connecticut, and Montana. He made secret deals with labor unions whereby they have received pension bailouts and special health benefits at public expense. He won't talk to epublicans. Obama said he wasn't going to do that, and nothing has prevented him from keeping his promise other than his putting leftist ideology ahead of transparency. Bush didn't promise a new era of transparency, but he was by every measure more transparent than Obama. You may not like Bush policies, but there were few secrets about what he was going to do. 2. Obama ran and was elected upon the promise of bipartisanship. He explicitly promised not to use reconciliation as a mechanism to jam through legislation on a strictly partisan basis. This was another enormous lie. Obama ran as a leftist, to be sue, but he offered voters the assurance that there was no danger from his radical ideas because he would agree to requiring Republican support. Nothing prevented him from getting true consensus, he simply made an outrageous lie. Bush, by contrast, actually achieved true bipartisanship in passing the Medicare prescription drug program and, working with Senator Kennedy, key education legislation. Obama's concept of bipartisanship is that he gets to decide what is acceptable to Republicans, then Republicans are supposed to accept it. Clinton demonstrated how true bipartisanship operates, working successful with Gingrich on many accomplishments. People expected that from Obama, but Obama lied. 3. The Obama Administration has proved itself incompetent up and down the line. With no executive experience, Obama has bungled everything from closing GITMO to bringing terrorists to trial to managing the recent oil spill. The huge Stimulus Bill was promised to keep unemployment below 8.5% and to create millions of new jobs. The money was frittered away without accomplishing anything. I'm sure Obama wanted it to work, it was a case of pure incompetence. In a recovery, 70% of new jobs are traditionally created by small business, but Obama cut off small business. Instead, the only category of workers to post gains during the severe recession was government. Bush is blamed for mismanaging Katrina, but his error was delaying a mere four days while the Democrats in charge of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana claimed local authority and resisted Federal efforts. After the total incompetence of the Democrats in charge was demonstrated, Bush overruled them. Bush's error was attempting to honor states rights. Obama has bumbled over the oil spill for 45 days, not visiting the site for 17 days and referring pleas for critical assistance from Governor Jindal to committees to study. After two weeks delay, permission to build berms to protect marshes have been approved for only 6 of the 24 cited locations. Bush's failure on Katrina was acute, Obama's is chronic. 4. Con asked, "why is there so much complaint now, after everything that happened in the previous administration?" The answer is that it is because Obama's promises of transparency and bipartisanship were the biggest lies in modern politics. If Obama had honestly promised a hard-left agenda pushed through with Chicago-style threats and backroom deals, he wouldn't have been elected. To some lying is a perfectly acceptable way to install a Leftist agenda, but most people expected what Obama promised. With Bush, everyone knew what they were getting. That made the Left unhappy, but the public recognized it as a fair deal. The current outrage is unprecedented because Obama's campaign lies are unprecedented. Critics claimed that Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq, but in fact Bush believed Saddam had WMDs, as did President Clinton and the intelligence agencies of the U.K., France, Germany, and Russia. Saddam perpetuated the fraud of his having WMDs. Bush invited journalist Carl Bernstein, who exposed Watergate, to interview all the Administration's officials and to document the steps leading up to the decision. That openness is in stark contrast to Obama's secret dealings. 5. Obama has set the country on a path to fiscal destruction. It is plausible to blame Bush for a year or two of increased deficits related to recovery from the housing collapse, although on three separate occasions Democrats rebuffed Bush attempts to regulate Fannie and Freddie, and those agencies were at the heart of the collapse. However, Obama predicts massive deficits for eight years. http://blog.heritage.org... The method is to get enough voters addicted to government goodies so that they will refuse to act responsibly until ultimate collapse. Greece shows how it works; there were riots when the government proposed increasing the retirement age from 53 to 55 in response to their impending meltdown. Obama's naive ideology is such that he believes that taxing the wealthy will solve the problem, but he plans spending such that taking every penny from the rich wouldn't cover it. http://online.wsj.com... I didn't like Bush's deficit spending, but it was nothing compared to Obama. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost about $100 billion a year, combined, and should have been paid for, but it was peanuts compared to Obama. 6. Bush increased drilling to reduce dependence on foreign oil. Obama has cut drilling, which means more imports. Obama's cap and trade legislation would drive heavy industry out of the U.S. to China and India. We are exporting our coal to China, where it provides energy for the steel they sell back to us. It doesn't help the environment, it just hurts us. Obama is the worse president because of his egregious lies about transparency and bipartisanship, his total financial irresponsibility leading us to financial collapse, his unthinking devotion to leftist ideology, and his administrative incompetence. He has staffed his Administration with political hacks and ideologues, and that is destroying the nation. Bush made errors, but he was honest and competent, and he as able to work with opponents, unlike Obama.