Richard Milhous Bush

A friend of mine recently compared Shrub to Lyndon Johnson, the president who put the term "guns and butter" in the economic dictionary. And superficially, at least, he had a point.

There's the Texas angle, of course -- although unlike Shrub, LBJ was actually born in the Lone Star State. There's also the lies (Gulf of Tonkin, WMD), the abuses of power (COINTELPRO, Wilsongate), and the cronyism (Bobby Baker, Dick Cheney.)

Even the paymasters are the same: Brown & Root greased the skids for LBJ, and now Halliburton, Brown & Root's corporate parent, is doing the same for the Rove machine.

But when it comes to economic policy -- which is what my friend and I were discussing -- I actually think LBJ stands up pretty well by comparison to the current wrecking crew. In his absolute devotion to political expediency, and his contempt for the long-term consequences of his actions, Bush reminds me much more of Richard Nixon, the president who helped put "stagflation" in the economic dictionary.

Explaining the similarity between the Man from Midland and the Werewolf from Whittier requires a quick review of some crucial years in modern American economic history.
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