> They were put into office to get out of the wars and
> fix the economy. They did as near to nothing as they thought they
> could get away with.
I was thinking about this when Jon Stewart gave Obama a bit of razz for Larry Summers, and Barry actually said that he'd "done a heckuva job" -- Jon almost blurted out "Brownie!" ...
Anyway, all comedy aside, I think it's interesting that the last 10 years of "Presidential Leadership" adds up to a series of vast underestimates of what it takes to fix a problem. I can't quite believe that these guys are sitting around and wondering: what should we do that's the least we can get away with? These aren't stupid people. In fact, I would have to say that the first decade of the 21st century could be characterized by two administrations *deep* with Smart People(tm) ... and yet we have all these cases of applying what can be clearly seen later (and sometimes even during!) as what I'll call *underwhelming force* -- what happened to that old idea in the US of overwhelming force?
Bush had his Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina ... Barry already has racked up botches of stimulus, finance reform, "health care" and lingering unemployment (some of which are related) for exactly the same reasons: lack of Bold Action and a belief that less could be enough.
/jordan