Bush Administration Credibility

"It's Not 1929, but It's the Biggest Mess Since" by Steven Pearlstein, The Washington Post, December 5, 2007.

Pearlstein writes:

What's important to understand is that, contrary to what you heard from President Bush yesterday, this isn't just a mortgage or housing crisis. The financial giants that originated, packaged, rated and insured all those subprime mortgages were the same ones, run by the same executives, with the same fee incentives, using the same financial technologies and risk-management systems, who originated, packaged, rated and insured home-equity loans, commercial real estate loans, credit card loans and loans to finance corporate buyouts.

Pearlstein writes that the financial crisis is much worse than most people recognize because, in his opinion, it is not only the subprime mortgage business that is in crisis, but also many other businesses that exploited Collateralized Debt Obligations. I was struck, however, by the fact that a relatively little known financial reporter is more credible on this matter than the President of the United States, but that is undoubtedly true. I don't believe the President when he talks about economic policy. (Indeed, the economic policy imposed on Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority was so bad that it is a major cause of the problems we now face in that country.)

We have had the exposure this week that the Bush administration has been creating unwarranted fears about nuclear weapons in Iran. We know that the Bush administration did the same in the run up to the war in Iraq. It has mislead the public about the progress of that war. It mislead teh public about the warnings it had before 9/11. It has mislead the public about the treatment of captives and hostages in Iraq, Guantanamo, and in prisons to which they were sent through extraordinary rendition. It has mislead the public about the surveillance of our citizens and the dismantling of civil liberties, not to mention the politicization of the corps of federal prosecutors and Justice Department. Terrorism alerts are no longer believed, and the administration's effectiveness on the arms control, decommissioning of nuclear weapons, and the control of U.S. borders is inadequate.

Hurricane Katrina was an especially damaging example of Bush overstatement ("Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!") , and the government response still does not match up with Bush administration rhetoric.

The international development community is convinced that the Bush administration has little credibility in its assistance commitments. While U.S. foreign assistance has increased notably during the administration, it has been politicized, made more supportive of U.S. military interventions, and has promised more than it delivered (in part due to the unwillingness of Congress to allocate the needed resources.)

The scientific community has been up in arms over the bowdlerization of government scientific reports on climate change, endangered species, and other environmental matters. The decision to prevent the use of federal research funds for research on embryonic stem cells was defended using radically incorrect information. The (probably useful) program on avian flu preparation was similarly defended with an inaccurate estimate of the gravity of the threat that disease represented.

I attach a couple of YouTube videos by others saying better than I can that we can not trust this administration's statements. This lesson is again being conveyed to the world, and not only is the credibility of all Americans decreased by association, so too are the risks increased to our foreign policy objectives and to our place in the world.

Read Top 20 Bush Lies!