C’mon Greenspan, Tell Us How You Really Feel
You don’t have to be Alan Greenspan to understand government spending has been off the charts in the last seven years. You also don’t have to be more than a ’shoe clerk’ to know the GOP controlled Congress during that time. And you also don’t have to be a rocket scientist to suspect Greenspan’s assessment has more to do with his recently released book and its promotion than politics. So the question will be whether or not Alan Greenspan, in addition to promoting his book, was looking for a way to distract attention from the Clinton skeletons and recent news of many campaign irregularities to focus on President Bush’s liberal use of the government wallet.
Two things come to mind from the start. Greenspan’s compliment of former President Bill Clinton’s handling of economic issues should not be selective. It would be nonsense to criticize the GOP majority in Congress for economic woes during the Bush Administration when they were also the majority for most of the Clinton Administration. And if the Clinton Administration had chosen to aggressively respond to terrorist threats, 9/11 and its aftermath including the war in Iraq may have not happened at all or not on Bush’s watch. You may wish to argue the decision to go to war, but Clinton doing nothing about bin Laden, et al, does not give him a pass. Leaving it for the next guy gives you a share of the responsibility.
Whether or not this story stays alive for the remainder of the 2008 race as suggested remains to be seen. It may be all talked out before the end of 2007. And Mr Greenspan, good luck with the book sales.
Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com
Greenspan Memoir a Gift for Democrats, Grenade for Republicans
By Matthew Benjamin
Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) — Alan Greenspan, a conservative central banker, has tossed a political grenade into the 2008 elections and it exploded right under his Republican Party.In his memoir, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,'’ the former Federal Reserve chairman skewers President George W. Bush and congressional Republicans for what he said was reckless spending and a politically driven economic agenda and said they deserved to lose control of Congress in 2006. By contrast, he praised former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and his economic record.
September 18th, 2007 at 6:38 am
When Bush became President, the Republican Party disavowed their past fiscal responsibility…just as Greenspan said. As for Bin Laden, it was Bush that was told planes would be heading for high rises, not Clinton.