Will Obama finally take responsibility?

Peter Nicholas:

In the span of a single week -- from the day Arlen Specter turned Democratic to the moment Congress passed the White House's budget blueprint and on through the opening of a spot on the Supreme Court -- President Obama crossed a fateful line: From now on, it's his country.

Every president inherits a tangle of problems from his predecessor. War and recession, natural disaster and foreign crises. And for some undefined interval, new presidents argue that they should not be accountable for the troubles that arose on another's watch.

But inevitably, responsibility shifts. And for Obama, that time came last week, bringing both greater opportunities and greater risks.

On the economy, Obama won approval Wednesday of a $3.5-trillion budget plan that aims to help pull the country out of the worst recession in decades. It also smooths the way for one of the president's signature domestic priorities -- overhauling the nation's healthcare system.

At the same time, the budget projects a whopping $1.2-trillion deficit in 2010, undercutting Obama's ability to bemoan Bush-era red ink.

"It is now absolutely his economy," said Paul Light, a New York University professor who specializes in presidential transitions. "I don't think that the public will continue to believe that this was all George W. Bush's doing. And every day that goes by, it becomes more Obama's than Bush's."

Ever since his inauguration, Obama has nurtured the idea that responsibility for grim economic conditions rested with former President Bush. As recently as Wednesday, Obama sought that political cover when it was announced that the economy had shrunk by 6.1% in the first quarter of the year.

Speaking at a town hall meeting near St. Louis, he said: "Now, we've got a lot of work to do, because on our first day in office we found challenges of unprecedented size and scope."

But the events of the last week made Bush seem less relevant, presidential experts and political strategists said. As Obama's imprint on the economy grows, so does his ownership of the issue.

That ownership became almost literal as Obama moved more deeply into the banking and auto industry crises.

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While reasonable people would make Obama responsible, I think he may spend his entire term and after it is over still blaming all the problems of his administration on President Bush. It is in the nature of the Democrat party to not take responsibility for anything that is not working and to take credit for all that goes right. Obama is in that mold. But as he seeks to blame Republicans and President Bush, he needs to look at that laboratory of liberalism in California as discussed in the post below. It is an abject failure and it followed the very policies that Obama is implementing now.