From The WSJ: University of Chicago law professor and former Obama colleague Richard Epstein in an interview with Reason TV:
Reason: The economy has lost 3.3 million jobs, consumer confidence is half its historical average, and unemployment is 9 percent. To what extent is Obama responsible for this?
Richard Epstein: He's not largely or exclusively responsible, but he's certainly added another nail into the coffin. The early George Bush—I think he got a little bit better through his term—and Obama have a lot in common. Bush wanted a pint-sized stimulus program that failed and Obama wanted a giant-sized stimulus program that failed. Neither of them is a strong believer in laissez-faire principles. The difference between them, which is why Obama is the more dangerous man ultimately, is he has very little by way of a skill set to understand the complex problems he wants to address, but he has this unbounded confidence in himself.
Reason: So he's the perfect Chicago faculty member.
Epstein: He was actually a bad Chicago faculty member in this sense: He was an adjunct, and we always hoped he'd participate in the general intellectual discourse, but he was always so busy with collateral adventures that he essentially kept to himself. The problem when you keep to yourself is you don't get to hear strong ideas articulated by people who disagree with you. So he passed through Chicago without absorbing much of the internal culture.
The comparison to GWB doesn't make much sense to me. At least, compared to the "early" GWB. It wasn't until Bush's final year that he said he would have to violate free market principles in order to save the free market. Sure, he was a big spender all along, but there is really no comparison to Obama. At least Epstein comes to the right conclusion.
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