I Agree with President Bush

Regular readers know I’ve been looking at a lot of series (from economic growth to paying down debt to murder and abortion), and that Republican Presidents seem to underperform relative to their Democratic counterparts. Over the months that I’ve been putting up this data, the excuses for this discrepancy that appear in comments have changed. The current excuse is: there isn’t anything the President can do to affect any of these things, so giving a President credit or blame for these things doesn’t make sense.

Ah, but here I side with our illustrious President. Here’s a little something from Mr. Bush’s A Blueprint for New Beginnings – the plan the President submitted on February 28, 2001 for how he would run the government:

Government must be results-oriented—guided not by process, but by performance. There comes a time when programs must be judged by how well they achieve their purpose. Where we find success, we should reward it, and make it the standard. Government action that fails in its purpose must be reformed or ended.

That phrase, “results-oriented”, appears more than once in his blueprint. And its a good one. And the President was right. Government must be results-oriented. Results are what matter. What works should be rewarded. Failures should be reformed, or ended. As Mr. Bush knew full well, the excuses simply don’t cut it.