Huffington Magazine Issue 3-4 | Page 26

Voices and health care reform, for example, could easily have been woven together into a tapestry that explained how Obama planned to first save the nation from Bush’s recession and then prepare it for a glorious renaissance through a balance of short-term stimulus (roads and bridges) and long-term debt reduction (Medicare reform). As Drew Westen pointed out early and often, the Obama administration went out of its way to not blame its predecessor for the recession until the midterms when it was too late. Though 68 percent of Americans still blame George Bush, 52 percent blame the current president for our rut. Obama and surrogates should have started shouting, “unpaid wars,” and “unpaid tax cuts to the wealthy” from the day after inauguration and never shut up. The administration’s messaging problems are \