i guess obama might as well blame bush while he still can. now i would say that bush and his cohorts are unequivocally to blame for the iraq war, mindless detainee abuses, attenuation of civil liberties etc. but the economy? it's obviously a tremendously complicated story with blame all around. we're amazingly focused on finding whipping boys, when obviously, for example, all the major banks are in the same boat, virtually all american manufacturers and most retailers are in trouble along the same lines. obviously there really is a business cycle. obviously, regulation failed in various respects. if you're going to blame bush for the first phase of the bank bailout, then of course you might note that it passed a democratic congress, and that obama endorsed it.

but when it turns out that we have an utterly unsustainable debt and deficit in perpetuity and that this crunches the recovery, for example, then we'll have obama to blame, in large measure. if the dollar collapses, for example, it will be too late to blame bush. if there are three more bank bailouts at a trillion apiece and another trillion dollar stimulus and the whole thing kind of grinds into semi-permanent stagflation, it'll be too late to blame bush.