The Evidence Mounts: Obama Will Avoid The Bush Errors

This AP story carried in today’s Huffington Post is important because it highlights the problems we have had with ideological leadeership:Bush Administration Weakened Lending Rules Before Crash

The important issue here is not just the hard right ideological content of the Bush Administration’s policy decisions. It is also that we should all be leery of any policy derived from pure ideology. Our emphasis should be on the practical rather than the purity of the politics.

One of the reasons it is such a welcome change to have a president who thinks about issues is that we can abolish ideology as the be all and end of all of policy making. Instead we can implement pragmatic and competent solutions that solve actual, rather than perceived, problems. And we can avoid a failure to act when the problem seems to have a more risky but ideologically correct solution.

Bush’s evident failure in the mortgage debacle [as described by AP in their article] is exactly the kind of policy failure we get when ideology rather than pragmatism rules the decision making process. These kinds of errors are far more likely when the president is also as disinterested and disengaged as Bush apparently was.

Obama is to be applauded for his purposeful pursuit of competence. Even if that pursuit comes at the cost of watering down the progressive agenda being pressed by the more left wing Democrats.

This is why I am annoyed at the criticism being leveled at some of personnel choices. There is a premium right now on competence. The damage Bush has done is enormous. It will take years to undo. A sudden lurch to the left will not help. Instead a steady and persistent emphasis on sound governance will allow the left to capture the high ground. If Obama can persuade the country that the Democrats are the party to trust on security, economics, health, etc. simply by being sensible rather than ideological he will allow the center-left to dominate politics for a generation. Progressive solutions will then not simply be trusted they will be preferred. As a liberal that’s what I believe will happen when the average voter can compare the social experimentation of the Reagan/Bush era with what I hope will be the Obama era.

The evidence to date is impressive: Obama seems to be determined to launch a generational shift. That’s good news for the country, even if it annoys some of his more ardent supporters.