"The Uh-Ohs": A Decade of Conservative Failure
Friday 08 January 2010
by: Terrance Heath | The Campaign for America's Future

(Photo: Dave77459; Edited: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)
"Stuff happens."
— Donald Rumsfeld on the looting of Iraq following the U.S. invasion.
Forget about "the Aughts." Never mind "the Naughts." The decade just passed — and which promises to leave a lingering, bitter aftertaste — deserves a far better, more descriptive name. So for what it's worth, I hereby dub the past ten years "The Uh-Ohs: A Decade of Conservative Failure."
It's as good as any of the others I've heard. Perhaps better. Here's why.
Because despite the wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld, "stuff" doesn't just happen. Despite what Joel Achenbach seems to think, the debacle of the last ten years didn't just happen. And, yes, plenty of people did see it coming. Their warnings were ignored. What followed, then, didn't "just happen," but was the consequence of conscious choice. And, despite what Matt Yglesias seems to think, it is important to discuss and determine the causes of the various messes we find ourselves in. (Even if we find along the way the fingerprints of some Democrats Who Should Have Known Better™.)
There were plenty of messes. And, like the clean-up crew after a wild, drunken party, we're still uncovering messes, some of which we can smell before we actually see them.
It was a decade during which conservatives controlled both Congress and the While House, and could thus enact much of their agenda. Thus, it was a decade of "uh-ohs"
Uh-oh is an ubiquitous interjection or expression of dismay in the English language, usually said in anticipation of something bad about to happen, with the sly admittance of guilt that one may have caused something bad to happen, or perceiving that something bad has already happened.
From the economy to energy to security, the "Uh-Ohs" abounded.
Uh-Oh! Conservatives turned a budget surplus we had then into the deficit we have now. It's true. Even the Wall Street Journal had to acknowledge that the perhaps the biggest legacy of the Bush years is the huge deficit.
In other words, the deficit didn't just happen, and it didn't have to happen. It was the predicted outcome of conservative policy decisions.
Basically:
- Bush and congressional conservatives came into office with a $236 billion surplus projected to last years into the future. They turned it into a $412 billion deficit, in just four years.
- Bush used the existing surplus (and the $5.6 trillion surplus projected over the next ten years) as justification for huge tax cuts for the wealthy.
- Even as the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan spiraled skyward, Bush refused to pay the costs of waging two wars with tax increases or other budgetary offsets.
- As a result, the government ran a deficit, and paid for some of its biggest expenditures with borrowed money.
- Ever "reality-based," in 2007 the Bush administration predicted a $61 billion surplus by 2012, but presented a 2008 budget that added $251 billion to the deficit.
Uh-Oh! Conservatives shrunk the economy. Despite what Glenn Beck and the rest of the conservative noise machine say, what happened to the economy didn't just happen in the past year. And it didn't just happen. It was the predictable outcome of conservative politics and policies during their decade of "uh-ohs."
- Bush and congressional conservatives who supported him, presided over the weakest economy in decades. The number of jobs increased by only about 2% during the Bush years, and the gross domestic product grew at just a 2.1% annual rate.
- It was the worst decade for the stock market, which was down 26% from where it started in 2000.
Uh-oh! It was the worst decade for jobs. Some 7 million jobs were lost (perhaps permanently), 14.5 million were left unemployed, and 6 million out-of-work adults became discouraged and stopped looking for works and are thus not even counted among the unemployed.
- Manufacturing fell to its lowest level in 26 years.
- By the end of the decade, the jobless rate reached a 26-year-high.
- There were 6.5 job seekers per job opening, by the end of the decade.
- "One in five Americans are unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work."
- Bush finished his term with the worst track record ever on jobs since the government began keeping records in 1939.
- In fact, there's been zero net job creation since December 1999.
- The 10% unemployment rate isn't expected to change in 2010, and probably won't return to pre-recession levels of less than 5% in the next six years.
This is just a beginning; a brief foray into a decade that was — but certainly didn't have to be — filled with more items like those above. Such a decade, after all, deserves far more than one blog post.
Besides, we haven't yet covered Iraq, Katrina, economic inequality, e. coli... With ten years of conservative failure to cover, there are definitely more "Uh-Ohs" to come.
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Comments
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Don't forget: Uh-Oh! We
Sun, 01/10/2010 - 11:39 — hark (not verified)Don't forget:
Uh-Oh! We didn't learn a thing from it.
The right wing prescription for prosperity remains the same: more tax cuts for the rich, more deregulation, and for God sakes keep the government out of our lives.
and,
Uh-Oh! Obama is a supply sider.
Forget "The Uh-Ohs: A Decade
Sun, 01/10/2010 - 12:42 — Highstreet (not verified)Forget "The Uh-Ohs: A Decade of Conservative Failure"; it's accurate but awkward. Call it "The Bush Years", everyone will understand.
A lot of these issues were
Sun, 01/10/2010 - 12:52 — Anonymous (not verified)A lot of these issues were set off by Clinton. He put into effect a lot of the free-trade ideology that permanently destroyed american jobs and put into effect deregulation that have created a huge financial mess. Certainly conservatives haven't done much of anything useful in the last decade, but if we are going to learn from mistakes then we need to be honest about things.
Don't blame Clinton for
Sun, 01/10/2010 - 14:20 — Don (not verified)Don't blame Clinton for deregulation. Thank Phil Gramm for the "Enron loophole" which was attached to an appropriations bill in 2000 that he knew Clinton had to sign. See http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-01-15/news/phil-gramm-s-enron-favor/
Conservative movements may
Sun, 01/10/2010 - 14:23 — Anonymous (not verified)Conservative movements may help a society stabilize after a crisis but such movements are unable to avert crisis continuously without building institutional capacity to deal with root causes of instability. Hence, failed militaristic/god-centered movements all over history, leading to flood of blood with rolling heads of the elites. Our system was build to avert crisis and bring responsible governments to right the wrongs of excessive greed. Unfortunately, our financial elite and special interests seems to have become even greedier as wealth becomes concentrated in fewer hands. If elected officials are not real leaders representing the interests of all social groups (labor and management), flood of blood will come a lot sooner. I pray NOT!
Yes, but Clinton did those
Sun, 01/10/2010 - 14:27 — Anonymous (not verified)Yes, but Clinton did those things under pressure from the right. He was a sell-out. Do you really think, Anonymous 17:52, that the Republicans wouldn't have spouted and put into effect the same free-trade ideology?
Things radical conservatives
Sun, 01/10/2010 - 14:43 — BillB in St.Pete (not verified)Things radical conservatives have succeeded at in the last 10 years are tied to organizing and manipulating the public. They include subverting and buying up our media, framing and dominating the national conversation over one specious topic after another with the help of that bought and paid for media, and (now it's obvious) stealing several key national, state and local elections with their paperless voting machines... latest revelations about Prop 8 are a good example of this.
None of these things have to do with running the government honestly or properly. They're just running the people. At that they have excelled and liberals, progressives, Democrats have sucked at recognizing and counter it.
And through it all the Democrats in charge have fumble
I've been wondering
Sun, 01/10/2010 - 17:54 — Anonymous (not verified)I've been wondering recently, when is the last time conservatives have been right? About anything? I truly cannot remember.
Conservatives have been
Sun, 01/10/2010 - 19:27 — Don (not verified)Conservatives have been wrong side of 99% of the major issues for the last 200 years: slavery, women's vote, interracial and gay marriage, social security, desegregation, Medicare, civil rights, deregulation, free trade.... and the list goes on. Then the liberals get into office and get blamed because they can't immediately fix all the mess.
Uh Ohs Yet to Come:
Sun, 01/10/2010 - 20:51 — MickiInDenver (not verified)Uh Ohs Yet to Come: Education reform (privatizing of our urban schools thanks to Race to the Top--and the Dems are LEADING this); Destruction of unions and lowered wages for all but the few due to the economic defaulting; No defined benefit pension plans for public employees (or anyone else); National subsidizing of health insurance companies; A largely privatized armed forces; Increased privatizing of state colleges and universities. At least the Republicans have become consistently reprehensible--they don't even pretend to care about the long-term or the greatest good. The Dems seem to think we still believe that they are working for anything honorable.
HighStreet has nailed it -
Mon, 01/11/2010 - 05:48 — gehan (not verified)HighStreet has nailed it - "The Bush Years" has a nice ring to it and really says it all - and the neos will squirm when they hear it - after all, he was their fearless leader.
False Left/Right Paradigm
Mon, 01/11/2010 - 12:24 — Can you do simple math? (not verified)False Left/Right Paradigm continues to blanket these pages while we sink further into debt. Take your pick - debt from military adventures or debt from social spending - it doesn't matter, debt is the goal and we are the target. Both parties - and both 'conservatives' and 'progressives' serve the two sides of the same debt coin. Both parties are in the service of the Federal Reserve Bank - who doesn't care how we overspend, just that we borrow the money from them. Now, the interest only on that debt consumes most of the money collected as income tax in this country. The stupid fantasy that cranking up the taxes on the rich will somehow make this mammoth debt disappear shows total ignorance - we have to go after the Banksters - and this will not come from Washington without a great deal of pressure from us - it is up to US.
I just finished reading
Mon, 01/11/2010 - 17:57 — Anonymous (not verified)I just finished reading “The Death of Conservatism” by Sam Tanenhaus. It gives some background about the origin of conservatism. And also give some insight into its problems. What we have witnessed in the last decade is not conservatism, but pure and simple hatred. The so called conservatives hate the people; they want workers totally unprotected, no health, no education, and no protection for the people and the most vulnerable. They are against abortion, gays and the government institutions. Tanenhaus mentions “the Right has been….stained with –narrow-mindedness, provincialism, anti-intellectualism, cold-heartedness, bigotry” (Page 27). The main outcome of being against the people cannot other than unemployment, poverty, foreclosures, lack of access to health services, lack of adequate level of education and more. So Conservatives delivered what they preached.
The Uh-Ohs is okay, but what
Mon, 01/11/2010 - 23:38 — GBrooks (not verified)The Uh-Ohs is okay, but what they really were, were the
aught-naughts, as in "we aught naughta done that.."
"The decade we didn't see
Thu, 02/11/2010 - 00:09 — Iamspartacus (not verified)"The decade we didn't see coming" -- because they all expected the world to end on the stroke of midnight, Dec. 31, 1999, when the Rapture would commence. This is what comes of putting superstitious idiots in charge of anything more complex than a vegetable garden.
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