[spence]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

On MSNBC tonight, both Chris Matthews and President Obama stated that Obama "inherited" the economic mess from the Republicans. Of course, since this was MSNBC, that statement goes completely unchallenged.

What were you doing watching MSNBC?

The United States is a democracy, not a dictatorship. The legislative branch has more influence on the legislative agenda than the executive branch.

Depends...Quite often the Executive branch is quite assertive to ensure the Congressional agenda is in alignment with the President's objectives.

Since January 2006, the Democrats have controlled the legislative branch. When they took over the legislature from the GOP in January 2006 , the Dow was at 12,600, and unemployment was at 4.6%.

Hmmm, if things were so good why did the Democrats take over the legislature?

The president (Obama), vice president (Biden) and Secstate (Clinton) were all prominent, influential senators in the majority party. As such, it seems to me that they have a great deal of ownership of economic performance since their party took control.

You're talking about 3% of the Senate...and not any of them sat on committees with direct impact to the economy.

The financial de-regulation that allowed things like derivitives, credit default swaps, and collaterized debt obligations, was passed by a republican legislature in the late 1990's, and signed into law by President Clinton.

I recall reading some time ago "The legislative branch has more influence on the legislative agenda than the executive branch." If you subscribe to this they it sounds like the GOP should be the target of your wagging finger.

Before the economy collapsed, the GOP introduced a bill that would have prevented Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from writing so many subprime mortgages. That bill was fillibustered by 2 senators named Chris Dodd and Barack Obama, 2 senators who got more campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie than anyone else.

I'm not aware of any Dem filibuster just before the economy tanked. Most of this story is from 2003-2005 and when looked at in detail reveals mistakes by both sides of the leadership. This has been discussed in detail in older threads.

The GOP, when they controlled the legislature for the 1st 6 years of the Bush presidency, allowed Bush to rack up a ton of debt. My point is, the GOP is not without fault here.

That's because despite what they pretend to aspire to, the GOP has a really chronic debt problem. Google up the rate of debt change as a percentage of GDP for the past 60 years and look at the parties in charge.

OK, what am I missing? How were the Democrats innocent bystanders to all this?

Nobody has said they were innocent bystanders...but the economy was under Bush's watch for 8 years and he left Obama with a massive recession. I'm not sure this is really in dispute.

Generally speaking, in the media Presidents get to take credit for success and blame for failures regardless of the trends or systemic actions that actually drive them. Examples of this may be the tech boom, 9/11, lack of terrorism after 9/11, the 2009 recession etc...

I work in Sales and I'll tell you the best factor that determines the success or failure of a salesperson is the TIMING of when they take their job given the product and market needs.

Look at liberal policies of taxing, spending, borrowing, and saying "yes" to every demand ever made by a labor union. What has that gotten us?

I think you confuse the word "liberal" with "irresponsible". Borrowing beyond your means isn't a Liberal tendency, it's an irresponsible tendency that both parties too often suffer from.

I don't get it, I just don't get where guys like Spence are coming from...

I come from the pragmatic center where we try to balance ideology with observation.

-spence