Bush's Financial Katrina

ThinkProgress.org has more on the Hoover metaphor. For more on Bush's empty reassurances, see the "Legacy No. 2?" section of yesterday's column.

Is Awareness Dawning?

Matthew Benjamin and Alison Fitzgerald write for Bloomberg: "The accelerating crisis in U.S. financial markets may pressure the Bush administration to abandon its reluctance to act more aggressively to avoid a meltdown.

"President George W. Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson so far have responded to the upheaval by proposing a series of voluntary measures. The collapse of Bear Stearns Cos. amid a credit crunch and the near certainty of a recession are likely to prompt Paulson to get Bush to embrace a more activist approach, Democratic lawmakers say.

"'Paulson will tell him what to do,' said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, who has spoken recently with the former chairman of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. 'Paulson gets the depth of the problems.'"

The Economic Legacy

Massimo Calabresi writes for Time: that "what was supposed to be the legacy saver for the Administration is shaping up to be its last, worst bad news story. . . .

"Some economists are now predicting a recession that could last into 2010. By then, the Bush presidency will be a memory, and it looks as if the last year of crisis, not the seven years of expansion that preceded it, may be what people remember."

But as the New York Times editorial board so effectively noted on Sunday, many of Bush's vaunted economic accomplishments weren't much to crow about in the first place.

And talk about a legacy: As the Calculated Risk blog recently pointed out, Bush may now be on his way to leaving behind a $10 trillion national debt when he leaves office.

Cheney's Obsession

It's an argument that even Bush no longer tries to make. But it looks like Vice President Cheney will go to his grave trying to convince people that Iraq and al-Qaeda had some sort of collaborative relationship before 9/11. Five years ago, of course, that was one of the main justifications for going to war.

Joshua Partlow and Peter Baker write in The Washington Post that Cheney "used the opportunity" of his visit to Iraq yesterday "to reassert that there was 'a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda' before the U.S. invasion, despite reports that have found no operational ties between the two. . . .

"Cheney's argument that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was tied to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda came despite a Pentagon study last week that found 'no smoking gun' to prove an 'operational relationship.' But the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine that supports the war, published an article saying the report's executive summary oversimplified its findings, which it said bolster Cheney's case. . . .

"Cheney brought along [to Iraq] Stephen Hayes, the article's author and a biographer of the vice president, who asked why the White House was not pressing its argument further. Cheney said he had long known that Hussein supported a range of terrorist groups and that the new report 'pretty conclusively makes that case.'