After today's U.S. credit worthiness downgrade by S&P (now a rating agency is running the country?), the likely 2012 presidential candidates were out in force. I was particularly struck by an oft repeated, though varied, refrain of Ms. Bachmann, the latest Sarah Palin wannabe:
This President has destroyed the credit rating of the United States through his failed economic policies and his inability to control government spending by raising the debt ceiling.
She isn't lying, exactly; she's just playing fast and loose with the words to circumvent certain truths. For example, Bachmann refers to raising the debt ceiling in a way that implies that the President is doing something out of the ordinary. Far from it. According to "The Debt Limit: History and Recent Increases," a report by D. Andrew Austin of the Congressional Research Office (Updated April 29, 2008, available at http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/105193.pdf ), the debt limit has been raised 69 times since 1962. In fact, President Bush II raised it every year he was in office after 2001. Yes, every single year. That was after a brief respite of a few years late in the long forgotten and rarely mentioned Clinton administration when we, uh, had no debt to speak of.
Also a bit shaded is that the President destroyed the credit rating all by himself. No one helped. No TP republicans like, well, Ms. Bachmann, played any role what-so-ever in the disgraceful drama that played out over the last few weeks. No, certainly no fine, upstanding Americans (who are running for president) had a hand in the political jockeying that caused S&P to comment that:
The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policy making becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed.Unless the President suffers from multiple personality disorder, I think brinksmanship, or brinkswomanship, requires multiple players.
I was going to e-mail Ms. Bachmann about my concerns over her statements--and possibly her knowledge of recent economic history--but her congressional website only accepts messages from people in the zip codes she serves. I tried her campaign website, but I couldn't find a way to leave a message without joining a mailing list or making a contribution. It doesn't matter. I'm sure that whoever writes her scripts know full well the history here. If she does, then her misleading shadings of the truth only serve to damage the credibility of her followers, who will likely repeat her position for lack of their own ability to fact check. If she doesn't, then she has no business running for president. I think my next post will raise the question, "Where are all the smart, sane women and why doesn't one of THEM run for president?"
Ms. Bachmann isn't the only POTUS hopeful heaping the full load on the president but somehow she's got my attention.
The upside is that, failing in my attempts to contact her, half-hearted as they were, I've started blogging again.
