Blame Bush for Housing Bubble? Not Smart

Blaming Bush for everything that is wrong with the world is becoming an entertaining habit for those with nothing important to do. The rest of us are starting to understand that many of the critical problems we are forced to deal with had their origins long before Bush. By focusing on Bush, people are distracted from the far greater destruction being committed right under their noses.

In December, the New York Times published a 5,100-word article charging that the Bush administration’s housing policies had “stoked” the foreclosure crisis—and thus the financial meltdown. By pushing for lax lending standards, encouraging government enterprises to make mortgages more available, and leaning on private lenders to come up with innovative ways to lend to ever more Americans—using “the mighty muscle of the federal government,” as the president himself put it—Bush had lured millions of people into bad mortgages that they ultimately couldn’t afford, the Times said.

Yet almost everything that the Times accused the Bush administration of doing has been pursued many times by earlier administrations, both Democratic and Republican—and often with calamitous results. The Times’s analysis exemplified our collective amnesia about Washington’s repeated attempts to expand homeownership and the disasters they’ve caused. The ideal of homeownership has become so sacrosanct, it seems, that we never learn from these disasters. Instead, we clean them up and then—as if under some strange compulsion—set in motion the mechanisms of the next housing catastrophe.

And that’s exactly what we’re doing once again. As Washington grapples with the current mortgage crisis, advocates from both parties are already warning the feds not to relax their commitment to expanding homeownership—even if that means reviving the very kinds of programs and institutions that got us into trouble. Not even the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression can cure us of our obsessive housing disorder. _CityJournal

Unlikely bedfellows from Krugman to Sailer to Kos push at their restraints to blame Bush for long lists of mis-steps and contretemps of which other presidents -- including the current one -- are far more guilty. And the Democratic Congress? The Congressional wrecking ball gets a free pass from the chattering class. People are distracted by the blame game, and don't notice that the Obama /Pelosi reich is pumping up the bubble once again.

Will you stop blaming Bush long enough to notice that you are being set up for yet another round of "you've just been had?" Probably not, as long as the chatterers and wankers keep the blame game going at full volume. But watch your back. While being entertained by the wanksters, you are about to be buggered from behind without even the courtesy of KY jelly.