Welcome to 1973…….

Now if only I could be 16 again

In 1973, the Vietnam war came to an end for the US, the Arabs started one in the Middle East, and the stock market lost half its value and the world went into a world wide recession. Oil prices doubled. I also got my first job, working at the Car Wash.

Maybe I might need that as a resume bullet soon.

If you believe the Economist, we are heading that way again.

I already lived through 1973. With the exception of “closing the deal” at a Drive In in Peters Township-in a 1971 Ford Galaxy no less-there is nothing really to go back there for.

For those of you who can’t remember 1973-I’ll give you one hint: Double daylight saving time. Which meant in the winter, you showed up at school and it was still quite dark.

Like Lexington-I’m quite willing to lay the blame at this man’s feet:

As my Mom always used to remind me, you make bad choices and the consequences almost always come home to roost. Wise woman-too bad her son was so stubborn. However for George W. Bush, the chickens are coming home. You want a war with Iraq bad-you get it bad. You want to cut taxes for all your rich friends-and not cut spending-and it eventually falls apart. ” The Decider is probably only really upset it did not happen on the next President’s watch. For a man who believes history will vindicate him, he might want to study up some more on Hoover. History was kind to him right?

PLENTY of people can be blamed for the calamity on Capitol Hill on September 29th. Two-hundred and twenty-eight congressmen decided they were ready to risk another Great Depression. Nancy Pelosi made an idiotic speech damning the Republicans. Sheriff McCain claimed that he was going to ride into town to sort out the mess—and promptly fell off his horse. But there is no doubt where the lion’s share of the blame belongs: with George Bush. The dismal handling of the financial crisis over the past fortnight is not only a comment on Mr Bush’s personal shortcomings as a leader. It is a comment on the failure of his leadership style over the past eight years.

The convenient excuse for Mr Bush’s performance is that he is at the fag-end of his presidency. Public attention has shifted to the presidential candidates, and the members of the House face the electorate in a month. But this rings hollow: there is nothing about the political cycle that dictates that an outgoing president should have an approval rating of 27% and an army of enemies on Capitol Hill. Bill Clinton ended his two terms with ratings of close to 70%.

The crisis underlined Mr Bush’s two biggest personal weaknesses—his leaden tongue and his indecisiveness. He failed to explain in simple language that a crisis on Wall Street also means a crisis on Main Street. The self-styled decider was also singularly lacking in decisiveness. He handed responsibility for the bail-out to a technocrat, his treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, but then failed to provide him with the necessary political backup. He started lobbying legislators only days before the vote. He failed to travel to Capitol Hill to make a personal appeal to Congress. Worse still, he wasted political capital on a farcical photo-op meeting in the White House with the presidential candidates. Mr Clinton would have done things a lot better.

That last sentence has got to hurt.

I accept the logic though, that “Mr Bush also paid the price for the defining cause of his presidency, the invasion of Iraq, an initiative which destroyed the bipartisan unity created by September 11th, 2001. The most stinging complaint against the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 was that it bore an uneasy resemblance to the Iraq War Resolution of 2002.”

The war was a bad mortgage, that this particular tenant should never have been allowed to take. While the crash of Wall Street has many fathers, it certainly did not help to have spending take off on Defense-with its attendant deficits. With nothing really to show for it-5 years later.

There maybe some real good come for this though in the long run-if the US can no longer afford “war without end-amen”, it might lead to a retrenchment of sorts. Please read those last two words again: “of sorts”. I’m not talking about isolationism or abrogating existing security commitments. I am pointing out the fact that the multi-polar world is on us. And the end of American exceptionalism might actually allow the US to really live up to its dream and become a “shining city on a hill”.

By paying attention to its own people and fixing up our own country.

Instead of spending billions on a country that won’t fix itself-and in the end will go its own way. No matter how much we claim it won’t.

It certainly could not hurt.