Quote:
Originally Posted by TheGame
Well, my answer that we've been dealing with both conservative socialists, and liberal socialists. They go about things different ways, but in the end everyone is pushing us towards socialism. Which is why I posed the question.
However, that's just my opinion, I'm curious what yours is.
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Well, while Bush did push the spending up a good bit, I don't think the nature of his spending ever went in the direction of owning portions of private companies, unlawfully terminating contracts to stakeholders or worse yet, "firing" the CEO's of privately held companies. I think we can confiendently say Bush would never have made those decisions, whether or not you view them as the appropriate actions. It just so happens those actions bounce between being socialist and fascist, and in ways that have never been done before, or not since FDR.
In other social spending, Bush funded a LOT of private charity with public funds, including religious groups. Pres. Obama seems to want to put those funds towards public groups instead, like AmeriCorps.
As for healthcare, Bush pushed for mainly private plans such as health savings accounts instead of a universal public option. In social security, Bush also pushed for privatization as opposed to socialization. This was probably his greatest failure as a president (domestically, not changing tactics in Iraq was his greatest overall failure).
When it comes to the economy, Bush was hands-off, and I think he viewed it as being it's own boom to self-correcting bust animal.
As for Clinton, he too failed to install a universal public option, but when it comes to free trade and the economy, he was pretty hands off as well with Alan Greenspan having more say than he did, IMO. Clinton is a tough comparison, though, because so much of his presidency was without severe issues like Bush and Obama has experienced. It's difficult top say what he would have done in Obama's place.
IMO, the only person to compare President Obama to is really FDR in terms of policy... maybe LBJ or Carter, but even Carter never thought to intervene in the direct running of private industry.
But history is history, and this topic is about Pres. Obama's current policies, and their nature, not an attempt to cast blame or view that nature in a negative light or to change the subject to the policies of someone else.