Heaven knows, mine accidents and cave-ins never happened before George W. Bush became president!
Red State is all over this latest attempt to Blame Everything On Bush.
It seems, at the very least, a tad counterintuitive to imply that the Sago explosion was Bush’s fault because he put the MSHA in the pocket of the coal miners, when Bush’s MSHA cited this particular mine over 200 times.
Don’t bother ‘em with facts, please, their on a roll.
Bizzyblog, meanwhile, has a rebuttal with graphs.
Overplaying and overextending. Again. My personal opinion is that the left and the press had reached their pinnacle of effectiveness with “Everything is Bush’s fault” back ’round the Katrina disaster. Expose an idea too much, and it begins to fall on deaf ears, as the GOP learned when they overdid when moving against Bill Clinton. The “blame Bush” meme is going to jump the shark, very soon. This absurdity might be the catalyst for the jump.
January 5th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
[...] UPDATE 4: More (will add to this as I find more) — Don Luskin, Anchoress, Second City Cop, and Ace. [...]
January 5th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Doctor: Mine survivor critical, but making progress
The 26-year-old sole survivor of the West Virginia coal mine explosion that killed 12 miners has med
January 5th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
I saw the live-press conference given by Governor Manchin, where the press went at him hammer-and-tongs.
Perhaps it was the fog of the moment, but the braying hounds of the press weren’t aware he was a Democrat, and therefore, a good guy.
I was wondering how long they would take to politicise this event, and well, here’s our answer.
Cheers,
Victoria
January 5th, 2006 at 8:17 pm
[...] I would like to remind the Anchoress that it is not “Bush’s MSHA” considering that the MSHA was started in 1978. So unless he was president in 1978 (and I know that I may have missed that term), I don’t believe he can take credit for their founding or work up till at least 2000. And we must remember Bush’s claims to run a hands off government, so can we really give him credit for anything after 2000? I guess so, since he is omnipresent. [...]
January 5th, 2006 at 11:35 pm
Coal was the lynchpin of Jimmie Carter’s “moral equivalent of war” energy independence plan, remember? “The US is the Saudi Arabia of coal?” How do you get a resource on-line quickly?
The present owner has been running the mine for about two months. But let’s not let facts get in the way….
January 6th, 2006 at 6:32 am
when Bush’s MSHA cited this particular mine over 200 times.
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Anchoress, I think both Red State and you should upgrade your intuition. What is “counterintuitive” is the notion that 200 warnings and no serious enforcement of them to stop the abuse has nothing to do with the disaster.
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This is the sort of thing that often leaves me scratching my head about you. If you acquire 200 parking tickets which you are allowed to ignore, and you end up blocking the path of an emergency vehicle with your illegally parked car, surely the intuitive response would be that lax parking enforcement [such as not towing illegally parked cars] had a great deal to do with this.
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Now intuition is intuition and facts are facts. Is GWB responsible personally for this disaster? Of course not. But, personally, he is responsible only for what goes on in the White House or Air Force One, and really not even all of that.
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Now that standard of “Presidential responsibility” is simply absurd. But that is the “meme” that is consistently trotted out on blogs like yours whenever anything his Administration does simply flat out fails.
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Of course, the Adminstration itself consistently asserts this, too. But Scott McClellan is paid to be absurd as part of his job.
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Further, when something his Administration does succeeds, it’s his baby and his alone, right? He only does the good stuff that happens beyond the White House and not the bad, right? It goes under your category, “Bush Good”, right?
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How can anyone take you seriously with arguments like this?
January 6th, 2006 at 6:41 am
Joe -
We’ve seen any number of tragic mine cave ins over the past few decades. Ask yourself this question: WAS ANY ONE OF THEM EVER BLAMED ON THE FREAKING PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?
The answer is no. Period.
January 6th, 2006 at 11:05 am
Coal mine safety has improved during W’s watch….Period. Bush Derangement Syndrome in action…
January 6th, 2006 at 7:16 pm
Anchoress, with this mine we have as clear a failure of the Government to seriously intervene where it had the authority, and the reason, to do so as such a failure can be.
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Is George Bush responsible for this? Not directly. Are is political enemies willing to make capital against him out of the failure? Of course.
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But this is not news in the exact sense that Dog Bites Man is not news. We’ve had an overcharged political atmosphere for 13 years now, and any potential wart or pimple on anyone in politics has a thousand magnifying lenses trained on it by someone or other.
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What I want to point at is the larger question of Just What Is The President Responsible For? When does the buck stop with him? I’ve seldom heard a sensible answer to what seems to me a very important question to ask about a leader.
January 6th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
What is the president responsible for? First and foremost, he’s responsible for keeping his defenses strong and his country safe from attack, and free. He’s supposed to keep the nations markets open and trading happy. Is he supposed to micromanage every report of every mine? I am one who doesn’t particularly think presidents should get credit or blame for good or bad economic news, (except as regards Jimmy Carter, because his own ineptitude directly affected the economy and the markets). But if they’re going to get credit for the economy, then the same props that went to Clinton should go to Bush for the good economic news. The unemployment rate is 4.9% today - we were told in 1996 that 5.6% is “full employment”, but under Bush it’s “because people have stopped looking for work,” an idea no one in the press would have thought to dream up in the 1990’s. Let’s be consistant, shall we?
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If a president ignores terrorism attacks and they continue, that should be noted. He he doesn’t ignore them, takes action and they stop, that should be noted, too. Use the words “blame” or “credit” if you must. If one president gives Iran fake nuclear blueprints and the other calls them part of an axis of evil, then you tell me whose been feckless and ineffective.
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Leadership is about knowing what you CAN do, and doing it - not about knowing what you can do and doing nothing. I forget, we’ve “known” about Iran for how long and what exactly was done by anyone prior to Bush? You say Iran, not Iraq should have been the focus. Perhaps you’re right, but I doubt you would have been any more understanding of a “Bush war” in Iran than you would of one in Iraq - the one that seemed BASED ON INTELLIGENCE THAT THE WHOLE FREAKING WORLD BELIEVED WAS TRUE, to be imperative and do-able…the doable is proving to be true and if you folks on the left let us finish it, it will change the middle east, and the world for the better. For that matter, how do we even know if the intel on Iran is right, anymore? It wasn’t for Iraq? How can you say “we should have done this and not that,” when at this point, ALL of the intel is questionable!
This president gets blamed for everything and credited with nothing, which should be delighful to you. Your problem seems to be with the fact that conservatives dare to object his being blamed for everying, or to defend the president against unprecedented bias and venom.
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My point was this: mines DID collapse under Clinton. At any time during his presidency can you point to a reporter learning about a mine collapse and IMMEDIATELY trying to figure out how Clinton could be blamed for it? The answer is no. Until Bush Derangement Syndrome set in, no one EVER thought a mine collapse warranted an investigation into policy SOLELY with an eye to laying the tragedy at the feet of the president. It is an EXTREME reaction.
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And you SHOULD be able to see that.
January 6th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
Well said.