Bush the Gambler

Today, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is holding the first in a series of hearings on the financial meltdown. Said committee chairman Henry Waxman: "To restore our economy to health, two steps are necessary. First, we must identify what went wrong. Then we must enact real reform of our financial markets. . . .

"We can't undo the damage of the past eight years. That's why I reluctantly voted for the $700 billion rescue plan. But we can start the process of holding those responsible to public account and identifying the reforms we need for the future."

More on the Wreckage

David Rothkopf writes in a Washington Post opinion piece: "Two September shocks will define the presidency of George W. Bush. Stunningly enough, it already seems clear that the second -- the financial crisis that has only begun to unfold -- may well have far greater and more lasting ramifications than the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"That's because while 9/11 changed the way we view the world, the current financial crisis has changed the way the world views us. And it will also change, in some very fundamental ways, the way the world works. . . .

"The financial chaos has brought down the curtain on a wide range of basic and enduring tenets also closely linked with the Reagan era, those associated with neoliberal economics, the system that the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has called 'that grab-bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting, allocate resources efficiently and serve the public interest well.' Already this crisis has seen not just our enemies but even some of our closest allies wondering whether we are at the beginning of the end of both American-style capitalism and of American supremacy."

The Boston Globe editorial board writes: "The next president will inherit a daunting set of national security problems. Captivated at the start by an illusory belief that the United States could, and should, impose its will on the world's bad actors by shock and awe, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld drove the world's sole surviving superpower into a diplomatic, strategic, and fiscal ditch."

Howard Fineman writes in Newsweek: "At the zenith of his presidency, George W. Bush wore a flight suit-- but now he's leaving his successor in a straitjacket. . . .

"Either Barack Obama or John McCain will have to lead a country crippled by debt--and that was before the $700 billion federal bailout of private lenders--and burdened by an array of practically inescapable military commitments. 'It's close to an impossible situation,' Leon Panetta, the White House chief of staff in Bill Clinton's first term, told me. 'The next guy, whoever he is, will be a one-term president--if he is lucky.'"

Bush's Victories

Dan Eggen writes in The Washington Post that "to the White House, the tide of negative headlines has obscured a series of significant legislative victories for a president wrongly written off as a lame duck.

"After a rough start and a setback in the House, for example, the White House managed to get its historic $700 billion financial rescue plan passed by Congress last week over strong opposition from many conservative House Republicans. The White House also won other legislative victories in recent weeks that, in quieter times, might have attracted wider notice.

"Take oil drilling. Bush over the summer lifted an executive ban on offshore oil drilling along much of the coastal United States and urged Congress to do the same with its own prohibition. . . .

"[J]ittery Democrats" late last month abandoned their opposition, "allowing an annual drilling ban to expire as part of a spending package passed in the House and Senate late last month.