Tweedledum or Tweedledumber

Already a clear favourite has emerged for my Friday Focus US Politics lesson. Andrew Sullivan is amongst my favourite commentators and he is on scintillating form in this week’s Sunday Times

On Bush and the economy he writes:

‘The president has never told Americans they cannot have it all; and, indeed, this trust-fund baby who never had to balance a personal budget led the way. In his term of office, he has added a staggering $32 trillion to the unfunded government liabilities future generations of Americans will have to bear. And he has borrowed and borrowed from the Chinese to ensure that the consequences of his fiscal madness will never come back to punish him.

But he failed in this, as in every other part of his disgraceful record. Just as his Iraq incompetence came back to haunt him, so his surreal economics has finally returned the favour. Watching the feckless Bush administration now is an almost perfect coda to the surreally anticonservative policies it has pursued from the beginning.’

And on the prospect of John McCain following Bush into the White House:

‘McCain sold his soul a long time ago; in the past few weeks he has been auctioning it on eBay. He deserves to lose. On the economy, though, Obama is not exactly demonstrating that he deserves to win either.’

Read the article in full here