Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Column: Obama playing the anti-Bush
By Christopher Agutos
Daily Trojan, USC
March 04, 2009

OK, we get it. Time and time again, we’ve heard how formidable the tasks that lie before President Obama are, and — trust us — never once did we think it was going to be easy. After all, isn’t that why they’re called challenges?

But in all honesty, with eight years of Bush’s screw-ups and mistakes to learn from, Obama has made it pretty clear that his early to-do list is drenched in post-Bush recovery. Already 44 days into the job, Obama has managed to reverse a handful of the former president’s policies and adopt more “popular” solutions, hence his astounding 80 percent approval rating.

If this fix-it man can’t do it, no one can. Right?

The steps toward the eradication of the Bush Era were virtually immediate. Just two days after he was sworn in, Obama signed an order to close the U.S. prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay — a prison that Bush had instituted during his administration.

In the following weeks, he signed an executive order that would unconventionally distance the White House from the evangelical playground in which Bush had left it, creating an office that would provide relief to faith-based organizations “no matter their religious or political beliefs.”

He’s already cracked down on big business, announcing a major pay cap on CEOs at companies that receive federal bailout money, and threatened to “call out” any incompliance. In stark contrast to Bush’s obsession with foreign oil, Obama has written a few presidential memoranda directing automakers to adopt more environmentally conscious practices and produce better, fuel-efficient cars.

And now the big one: On Friday, the president announced his plans to withdraw American combat troops from Iraq by September 2010. This move is applauded by millions who ultimately still blame Bush for not only the loss of thousands of American lives but also the nation’s unnecessary role in an aimless war overseas.

It is as if Bush had chronicled his experiences, accomplishments and discords and drafted a handbook on the model of what not to do while in office — probably titled something along the lines of “The President’s Guide To (Not) Leading the Free World” — and Obama seems to be eagerly eating it up line by line.

Now, not even the little things can get past Obama. This week he overrode another Bush rule, this one involving the cute lil’ polar bears and other endangered wildlife. Toward the end of his presidential term, Bush ruled that land developers and construction projects did not have to seek approval from scientific experts before beginning work. Obviously, an explosion of land development led to the destruction of crucial habitats, particularly for endangered species.

Obama’s ruling would reinstate the step for federal agencies to consult expert biologists before building. By upholding the original authority of the Endangered Species Act — an action Bush aimed to restrict, Obama is painting himself as an advocate for animal rights, all the while recasting his predecessor as the bad guy. Environmentalists were ecstatic with Obama’s declaration, and perhaps animal-loving PETA is sending him a fruit basket right now.

While these changes, such as benefits to endangered species, are being warmly received by their respective constituencies, they are not exactly projects Obama has decided to address, but has instead been forced to, given the current status of the presidential office.

Still, investing so much in patching the holes in our country is Obama’s best bet. While Republicans unreasonably gripe about the fact that in six short weeks Obama has yet to fix an eight-year mess that Bush helped create, doing-over what’s been done and getting America out of the negative is the most pressing first priority.

Let’s just hope that before Obama’s term ends, the nation will be back on its feet and Obama will still be ready for an agenda of policy-making all his own.

But for now, he’s on target: Don’t do what Bush did, and people will like you.

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