RUSH: Jon Meacham, the guy who left Newsweek and he’s now an op-ed contributor of the New York Times. Who woulda thought that possible? Anyway, he’s got a piece here: ‘No Deficit of Courage.’ Now, this piece is amazing. This is very interesting. Stick with me on this. ‘IS it, in fact, 1994-95 all over again? The atmospherics are certainly familiar. We have a Democratic president who appears to be tacking to the center to work with Republicans after being battered in the midterms. Jilted liberals, meanwhile, are left wondering how they could have been so blind about the man they had fallen for so hard. The Clinton comparison has been much in the air after President Obama’s deal to extend the George W. Bush-era tax cuts. But a more apt analogy for the present lies in 1990, not in 1994, and with George Herbert Walker Bush, not with William Jefferson Clinton.
‘It was in 1990 that Mr. Bush broke one of the most celebrated promises in modern American politics — ‘Read my lips: no new taxes,’ as he put it in 1988 — in order to control federal spending. In the same way that Mr. Obama struck his deal to secure lower tax rates for the middle-class and win an extension of unemployment benefits, Mr. Bush gave on tax rates to get ‘pay as you go’ rules — meaning that no further spending could be approved without compensating budget cuts or revenue increases. It was the beginning of the fiscal discipline that helped create the budget surpluses of the 1990s.’ Now, I have been alive every year since this, and for every year since this happened, every bit of credit for a booming economy in the nineties went to Slick Willie. Now, all of a sudden, pulling out all the stops to help their little manchild over the hump get the credit, they have to go back, and for the first time in history credit George H.W. Bush?
Mr. Meacham in the tank for the Democrats whether he’s writing at Newsweek or the New York Times, giving Bush 41 credit for the nineties? Since when have these guys ever given credit to anybody but Clinton for that economy? And if the truth be known it wasn’t even Clinton. It was Newt Gingrich and the Republican House of 1994 who deserve the credit. But the point is suddenly that when it’s convenient for our manchild president to get credit for something that he’s had nothing to do with, go back and cite Bush 41. Mr. Meacham continues: ‘While Mr. Obama’s immediate concern is stimulus and Mr. Bush’s was deficit-reduction, both gave way on issues critical to the true believers within their parties. For Mr. Bush, it was political death. He had never been fully trusted by a Reaganite Republican base. Like Mr. Obama — who is unhappy with his ‘sanctimonious’ left wing — Mr. Bush was no ideologue.’
Oh, so now Obama is not an ideologue. You see how this works, folks? You see how this is all being tied together? So now all of a sudden Obama in the course of 24 hours, says, ‘You know what, you don’t do this tax deal, we’re gonna have a double-dip recession,’ which he doesn’t believe, and now he’s not an ideologue. Mr. Meacham, Obama is an ideologue, a committed Marxist ideologue. His ideology was just beaten on Election Day. It was just trounced. That’s what’s happened here. Obama wrote in his diary early in his term, ‘I’m not going to be held up by campaign rhetoric. If the facts change, I hope I’m smart enough to change, too.’
‘Mr. Bush privately said that he had no intention of being ‘off in some ideological corner falling on my sword and keeping the country from moving forward.” That’s because Bush 41 never really understood supply-side economics. He was elected by people who did though and then he was beaten four years later when it was obvious he didn’t. That’s true. ‘He knew that doing what he believed was in the country’s best interest could cost him his job in 1992.’
I should say could cost him his job. He might have known that. But, Mr. Meacham, that was 20 years ago and have you or anybody else in the Drive-By Media ever written that what Bush 41 did was in the country’s best interests? Did you ever say that in 1992? Have you ever credited Bush 41 for anything? No. No. All that credit went to Clinton, except now, when they have to draw some — They don’t want to draw an analogy to Clinton, just don’t, so they gotta go to Bush 41.
Mr. Meacham writes: ‘But in real time, aware of the consequences, he made the best of the world as he found it. After his election loss to Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bush wrote to Nicholas Brady, his Treasury secretary, that the budget deal would have helped him if the economy had strongly recovered. ‘It didn’t,’ Mr. Bush added, ‘and I was the ‘read my lips’ liar — over and over and over again. I heard it — it killed us.” So Meacham says, ‘If you play out the 1990 analogy, Mr. Obama, like Mr. Bush, may be a one-term president. Mr. Clinton won re-election because of his political gifts and the improving economy and because he was fortunate in his Congressional foes. Mr. Bush did not have these advantages.’ Want me to translate this for you? Clinton’s congressional foes were right, Gingrich and the boys, and that’s what made the economy boom. Bush 41’s congressional foes were wrong, Tom Foley, and that’s what hurt the economy. And let’s not forget about Ross Perot in here in terms of the presidential race in 1992. So the analogy falls apart, but man, it’s amazing that they’re trying to make it.
‘It is too soon to tell what will confront Mr. Obama. If his bill, with its middle-class tax benefits, stimulates the economy –‘ see, there aren’t any new middle-class tax benefits except a one-year, 2% reduction in the payroll tax. That’s it. One year! See, now they’re calling this a stimulus. ‘If his bill, with its middle-class tax benefits, stimulates the economy, then his compromise on a liberal article of faith may one day rank with Mr. Bush’s courage under conservative fire.’ So here you have Drive-By stenographer Jon Meacham suddenly in love with Bush 41. What do you bet he’s working on a book? What do you bet he’s working on a book? Oh, looky here, at the end: ‘Jon Meacham, the author, most recently, of ‘American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House,’ is at work on a biography of George H. W. Bush.’ He is writing a book on George H. W. Bush! I had not read all the way to the end. Snerdley, I’m telling you, I said, ‘Maybe he’s writing a book.’ I was reading this for the first time as I read it to you. I’d read the headline and the first paragraph as part of show prep, and I put it somewhere in the stack, and I’m reading this, and I’m reading this, and suddenly in love with Bush 41 — he is, he’s at work on a biography of George H. W. Bush. He just got access. Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho.
Well, let’s go to the audio sound bites. Man, folks, not to pat myself on the back, I’m telling you this to guide you in the future and to reassure you. I know these people. I know how they think. I know what they’re gonna do before they know they’re gonna do it. I know what they do before they do it. I know these people. Now I’m being told that the Bush family is said to be cooperating with Meacham for his biography. So he needs to keep ’em happy. He-he-he-he-he-he-he. Bush 41, I’ll bet the whole family is tickled pink. All of a sudden finally George H. W. Bush is getting credit for something, and look who’s doing it, mainstream media. ‘See, Mr. Limbaugh, it just confirms our instincts, be nice to these people, and eventually –‘ I guarantee you. Man. I really did not know while reading this that he was writing a book on H. W. Bush. I saw that at the end of this piece in the slug line. Whew. Man, it’s fun. It’s fun being right like this.