Obama's "governing pathology" and Bush's "cheap politics"

A wonderful if frightening observation by Matt Welch-- backed up with a handful of interesting examples-- in Reason...

First, the principle-- with an application to Bush:

High-flying presidencies tend to reveal their base character in trivial moments. In March 2002, when the nation was still massively behind George W. Bush in the wake of the September 11 attacks, he gave the first obvious signal that his administration would play cheap politics even in a time of grave global uncertainty by slapping a temporary new tariff on imported steel. If the world’s fragile economy and the putatively bedrock principles of free trade could be sold out for a couple of percentage points in contested Rust Belt states....

Then, the Obama's governing principle...

Barack Obama’s revelatory moment may have come in his first week as president. On his first day of work, he signed an executive order prohibiting lobbyists from holding highranking administration jobs, thereby fulfilling a campaign promise to “close the revolving door” between K Street and government via “the most sweeping ethics reform in history.” Two days later, the president granted a “waiver” from the new rules to install Raytheon lobbyist William Lynn as the No. 2 man in the Pentagon.

As offenses go, the move was trivial. But as a signal of a governing pathology, it established a pattern that Obama has repeated serially since being sworn into office: reiterate a high-sounding promise from the campaign, undermine said promise with a concrete act of governance to the contrary, then claim with a straight face that the campaign promise has been and will continue to be fulfilled.

Followed by the examples...

So candidate Obama promised to usher in the “most transparent administration in history,” in part by making sure the American people were allowed to read each proposed non-emergency law for at least five days before the president signs it. Yet in his first month, President Obama signed three laws from the liberal wish list—the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), the Lily Ledbetter Fair Play Act, and the $787 billion “stimulus” package—in less than five days. Explained the White House: “We will be implementing this policy in full soon.…Currently we are working through implementation procedures.”

The SCHIP law, which was paid for in part by a cigarette tax hike of 61 cents a pack, also put the lie to a pledge Obama repeated after its passage in his first address before a joint session of Congress. “Let me be perfectly clear,” he said on February 24, with less than perfect clarity. “If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.”...

Spending? Candidate Obama promised “a net spending cut” in which “every dollar that I’ve proposed, I’ve proposed an additional cut so that it matches.”....

Once you identify the president’s tic of celebrating the very campaign promises that he breaks, you’ll see it everywhere...

The illusion will eventually give way, and voters will see more of who Obama is than who they wish him to be....