What Bush Left Out

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, September 25, 2008

In a rare prime-time speech last night, President Bush tried to terrify the American public into supporting his administration's proposed $700 billion Wall Street bailout. Given that some sort of compromise proposal was apparently already being worked out with congressional leaders, that might have been overkill.

But Bush clearly underperformed in addressing two things about the financial crisis. He didn't acknowledge any responsibility for what happened under his watch. And even more significantly, he didn't do nearly enough to assuage anger that the fat-cat Wall Street masters who profited so obscenely from driving the mortgage market into a frenzy are now going to be bailed out with taxpayer dollars, even as ordinary people continue to suffer.

The Innocent Bystander

Terence Hunt writes for the Associated Press: "How did it happen, America's grave financial crisis? President Bush offered a bunch of explanations but held Washington completely blameless, painting a picture of a government standing innocently on the sidelines as the economy went off the rails.

"Somehow, under Bush's scenario, the country wound up at the precipice of 'a long and painful recession' at a time when, apparently, the Congress, the White House, the regulators and the Fed were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing. Now that the economy has tanked, Bush says the federal government is responding with 'decisive action.'

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