Win Election, Fail, Repeat

[[L E G A C I E S]] * This Associated Press report is a couple of days old, but since yesterday was a national holiday (Memorial Day) in the United States, I think I can be excuse for failing to highlight the story earlier. As journalist Tom Raum reminds us, George W. Bush has tried consciously and repeatedly “to avoid repeating the mistakes of his father,” former President George H.W. Bush. However, after six years in the Oval,

[Dubya] now finds himself in the same hole despite trumping his dad by winning a second term.

He is roughly at the same place in the polls where the elder Bush was at the low point of his presidency, with only about three of every 10 Americans registering approval. Like his father before him, this president faces a rebellion among conservatives, an uncertain economic outlook and the prospect of Republican losses in November.

Meanwhile, Think Progress finds Bush fils following in his dad’s expensively soled footsteps in another way: by raising taxes, even after saying that he would not. “In 1999,” the Web site explains, “[George W. Bush] said he would ‘oppose and veto any increase in individual or corporate marginal income tax rates or individual or corporate income tax hikes.’ But by signing the recently passed tax cut bill, he raised marginal income tax rates for Americans living abroad. (The bill also cut taxes for the wealthy and worsened long-term deficits.)” The New York Times has the complete story here.

What’s more, that tax legislation Bush signed “tripled tax rates for teenagers with college savings funds,” according to Think Progress.