Dropping the Training Wheels

Wesley Pruden says Obama can't keep blaming everything on Bush. It's his government now:

Disconnecting the training wheels is a scary prospect for every apprentice biker, even with Daddy standing close by. We can sympathize with Barack Obama's fright as his moment approaches. It's not easy suddenly being on your own, paying the price of falling with your own skinned knees and bruised elbows.

Nevertheless, the dreadful moment approacheth. Anticipating D-Day, Peter Orszag, the president's budget director, said Monday that the scarier than expected economic news - the deficit out of control, tax receipts down and costs of bailouts and "stimulus" plans up - is all the fault of George W. Bush: "It's an economic crisis President Obama inherited."

But Mr. Obama has already been president for more than a hundred days, and passing the hundred-day mark, irrelevant milestone as it may be, was cited as dead-solid proof that the president is the messiah he told everyone he was. Reality, however, has begun to cast a shadow over the White House, still as faint as the bright golden haze on the meadow but visible enough. "Blaming George" still makes a tingle run up the legs of all the hymn-singing true believers, but outside the embrace of the cult, that tingle is beginning to sting instead. This is Mr. Obama's government now.

The White House on Monday said the new estimate of the budget deficit would nearly reach $2 trillion - that's trillion, with a "t" - and that's nearly 13 percent of the entire gross domestic product. Pretty gross any way you spin it, and the president's men (and women) are spinning it as best they can. Alas, the country's predicament, if not yet the president's, is probably worse than it looks.

The projected budget deficit is four times larger than the deficit record set last year. We can blame that one on George, but George, big spender that he was, turns out to have been a tightwad. Maybe this is the "change" Mr. Obama promised. Yes, he did.

I expect that we'll hear Obama operatives blaming Bush well into the 2012 election year. Nothing bad that happens during this term will be Obama's fault.