Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter: “Obama’s Historic Mission Has Been To Clean Up Bush’s Mess”

“Obama’s historic mission, unfortunately for him, has been to clean up Bush’s messes….Literally. So this [the BP spil] is the perfect metaphor for Obama’s presidency….That’s what Obama has had to do on Wall St., on the auto bailouts, on the bank bailouts, on Afghanistan, which turned out to be a much bigger mess than anybody anticipated and now on this. Part of his reaction has been to say privately ‘I haven’t been blaming Bush enough.’ You know, Reagan blamed Jimmy Carter for years, Roosevelt blamed Herbert Hoover for years.”