Searching for fresh scapegoats

For the past 3 years, President Obama has blamed George Bush for our country's economic woes. The Administration has now come to realize that, as time passes, this strategy will become less and less effective. We can imagine, for example, how laughable the spectacle will be if Mr Obama runs for reelection in 2012 by blaming the President whose last day in office was nearly 4 years ago.

So, instead of exercising effective leadership and getting America's fiscal house in order, something this inexperienced and ideologically rigid President seems incapable of doing, over the last 6 months Mr Obama and his supporters have been engaged in a search for new parties they can pin the blame on.

We have heard the following assertions:

• It was the tsunami in Japan that caused the recent slowdown.
• It is the fault of the Europeans, who can't get extinguish their sovereign debt crisis (for example, as reported just this last week by the German magazine Der Spiegel, the German periodical, Bild, wrote: "The President's scolding [on the European debt crisis] is a pathetic attempt to distract attention from his own failures. How embarassing.")
• It is racism (including now, it seems, racism on the part of white liberals).
• It is the fault of all the millionaires and billionaires who aren't paying their fair share of taxes and fly around in their corporate jets.
• It is the intransigent, lunatic, do-nothing Repulicans.
• It is George Bush's fault (whoops, old habits are hard to break).

It's just not going to be possible for Obama to win if his campaign has to address inconvenient facts like:

• We have 9% unemployment.
• We are still running trillion dollar deficits.
• We have lost our AAA credit rating for the first time in our history.
• The only proof that the stimulus saved or created any jobs at all is Mark Zandi's computer model that was originally used to predict that the stimulus would save or create jobs.
• We have thoroughly alienated our most trustworthy ally in the Middle East, Israel, while Iran continues to develop nuclear weapons.
• Obamacare is deeply unpopular and may be overturned by the Supreme Court by next summer.

Instead, the only possible route to reelection is to find a fresh set of scapegoats to blame all of our woes on, to demonize the opposition, to label those who disagree with you with every term for crazy that you can find in the thesaurus (looney, unhinged, imbalanced, nutcase, wingnut, mad, fringe, and so on, ad nauseam).

We are in for an ugly spectacle over the next 14 months. Sadly for Mr. Obama and the rest of the Democrats, the blame game will likely only further alienate the moderates who are already fleeing the President in droves. To win the election, the Republican candidate need only stick to the facts and focus on being statesmanlike and optimistic. The other side will drown in its own vitriol.