Obama's Bush fires

President Obama even now talks about how terrible of an economy he inherited from President Bush (with nary a word about the influence of the Democrat controlled Congress). But he forgets to mention the wealth of positive effort he inherited when it comes to the War on Terror.

President Obama received a significant, albeit transitory bump in approval ratings with the killing of Osama bin Laden. Since the capture of his computer files, other primary targets are being taken out with not surprising regularity. The president is all too happy to go on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and talk about his success in Libya with the knowledge that that success, combined with the string of anti-terror accomplishments can only help him with his credentials on terror issues and perhaps the 2012 election to some degree.

But not a single mention of all the hard work of the team of his predecessor. No mention of the knowledge base cobbled together from the ground up by President Bush. No mention of the build up of leads that led to Bin Laden. Nada.

If not for those efforts for 7 years prior to his presidency, Bin Laden would still be on the loose today. There were no magic unicorns unleashed by Obama. The knowledge didn't start to accumulate on his Day (of the) One. Getting Bin Laden was a national effort not an Obama effort. I'm sure no one was happier to hear Bin Laden was dead than George Bush. That is selfless.

President Obama in contrast has been a portrait in selfish objectives. The hypocrisy is self evident: I inherited a bad economy. But I got Bin Laden. You can't have it both ways no matter how hard you try, you can't claim you inherited all bad and no good. Reality doesn't work that way. You inherited both. The good you managed to work with. The bad you managed to worsen significantly. That's not a ringing success. Not screwing up a success is far easier than turning around a bad situation.