Areas of Agreement

Although tea-baggers and true believers of the Left and Right would probably sputter with rage at the suggestion, there seems to be a lot the Bush and Obama agree on. No doubt electing Obama has had a more positive impact than electing another white male, and the budget is somewhat different than it would have been with a Republican President and a Democratic Congress, there are still aspects of their policies where Obama looks a lot like his predecessor. For example:

Global Warming: According to Time, both Bush and Obama favor starving the poor polar bears by not stopping global warming. We still haven't ratified Kyoto (although there's probably not much point, as its moratorium is coming to an end). Perhaps its too early in his presidency to make a judgment, but so far, environmentalists can't be too happy.

Bailouts: Hate to have to break it to you, tea-baggers, but Bush proposed this idea. Leading conservative bankers said it was necessary. Goldman may be paying it back, but if they hadn't taken it in the fall, they'd be dead now. Try listening to a few billionaires and Nobel laureates, not a dead atheist fiction writer who had no economic experience other than her dad's pharmacy being stolen by the Bolsheviks.

Defense Spending: Everybody's so upset over Gates new plan to cut the F-22 and the DDG-1000 programs. But, they're forgetting two things. One, Gates got his job from Bush, not Obama, and Two, the Bush Administration was trying to "right-size" the military during Rumsfeld's years, too. Remember how Rummy wanted to move away from large, lumbering heavy mechanized forces and toward lighter, fast reaction units? Well, What Obama is doing is in some ways a continuation of that (unpopular) plan. Hopefully, he'll be cutting spending for the services and platforms that don't play a major role in the low-intensity-conflicts we'll be fighting for the next thirty years or so, but keeping spending for the Army and Marines on priority.

The Wars: I don't see much difference between the presidents on Afghanistan. six one way, half-dozen the other. And Iraq, well, now that violence is ticking up every month, let's see if Obama is willing to stick to his guns on the pull-out if it really does look like our absence would result in chaos.

Dissent: Both presidents show a disturbing way of handling people or organizations which criticize their plans. The Bush white house was not shy about loosing the attack dogs on anybody who thought they were going too far, were making mistakes, or were just plain wrong. Similarly, President Obama' vilification of those banks and hedge funds which dared to assert their property rights smacks of an imperial presidency just as did Bush's, albeit in a different area of law: corporate vs. civil liberties. But before you start to say how much less of a problem it is, remember that civil liberties don't can your soup or heat your apartment or drive your economy. Corporations do.

GITMO: Not so simple now that you're the boss, is it, Barack? Funny how we aren't releasing these people en masse. Fine; it never would have been a problem if Bush hadn't resurrected Clinton's (or his dad's?) weak argument that habeas corpus doesn't apply on leased Cuban soil, but you haveto admit, Obama doesn't seem to have any better ideas what to do about them.

Secrecy: Despite promises of the most transparent administration in recent memory, the Obama Administration has decided to bar the release of alleged abuse photos, much as the Bush administration wished to. My friends at ACLU headquarters are irritated, but Obama's sudden insight that releasing these pics can only harm America's image overseas, put American troops overseas at greater risk, and will do nothing to heal or fix the damage done during the Bush years demonstrates a more realist, practical approach to the presidency than we had been given to expect. A pity it couldn't have come without all the hype over these pictures being released over the last month.