Herman

Cain

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May 12, 2008

Why Don’t I Blame George W. Bush? Because the Blame Game Has No Winners

A caller to my nightly radio show last week called to complain that I was not blaming President George W. Bush enough for the current gasoline crisis due to out-of-control oil prices on the world market.

He also attempted to chastise me for not blaming President Bush and the Republicans in Congress for allowing the national debt to grow to over $9.4 trillion dollars while they controlled both houses of Congress and the White House.

He also tried to make a case that America was heading in the “wrong direction” because of the policies of the Bush Administration.

He was obviously a new listener. This was acknowledged moments later by a regular listener in an e-mail, which I read on-air to the listeners for the benefit of the blame police.

After I acknowledged to him that the president can only sign legislation presented to him from Congress, and that the Democratic-controlled Congress had rebuked the president’s request to allow oil exploration in ANWR and the outer continental boundaries of our country, Mr. Blame Police had no comment.

When I pointed out to him that President Bush and the then-Republican-controlled Congress was indeed at fault for allowing the national debt to increase from the $5.5 trillion they inherited from former President Bill Clinton, he had no comment.

And when I asked him what we should do to be heading in the “right direction”, he was speechless.

Now that was priceless!

After this rather civilized dialogue of blame distribution, I asked the caller and the listening audience, “So what?”

There are no winners in the blame game. And the United States of America and its people are the biggest losers.

As a do-nothing Congress continues to deny oil exploration on U.S. soil, we lose. As Congress continues to approve spending beyond our nation’s means, we lose. As some ill-informed constituents of the public continue to blame all of our nation’s woes on the war in Iraq, we lose. 

And as the Democratic-controlled Congress’s promise of a “new direction” in 2006 is now perceived as a 2008 “wrong direction” by 81 percent of the public according to a New York Times/CBS poll, we still lose!

All we get are crumbs thrown to the public in the form of economic stimulus rebate checks, the promise of a summer federal gasoline tax holiday and the suggestion that we should stop adding oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

That last idea alone might reduce gasoline prices by a nickel a gallon, when we are in desperate need of solutions that will mitigate gasoline prices by dollars at a time.

Blame does not solve any problems. Corrective actions do.

Immediately remove restrictions on exploration in ANWR and the continental boundaries of our own country, eliminate the frivolous regulations prohibiting the building of new refineries in this country and stop penalizing the research and development of new energy sources.

The mere announcement of these initiatives would reduce the cost of oil and the subsequent price of gasoline by dollars and not just a few cents.

Even the centerpieces of both Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns have been all about blame. Blame Bush, blame the Republicans, blame the evil rich, blame the oil companies, blame the food companies, and anybody that has not drunk the liberal Democratic Kool-Aid.

People want solutions, not a losing nation and a nation of losers.

The blame game has no winners.

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