Bush, aides find voice on Obama policies

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By Jon Ward

It's not just former Vice President Dick Cheney.

As former President George W. Bush offered his first public - though veiled - criticisms of his successor's administration last week, a growing number of his senior aides and advisers are also speaking up to defend Mr. Bush's record and take on the Obama White House.

A few of them are marrying their insider's policy knowledge with modern technology to critique, in detail, President Obama's economic program.

The day Mr. Obama left for the Middle East earlier this month, former Bush official Tony Fratto launched a broadside against the White House claim that it had "created or saved" 150,000 jobs with economic-stimulus money.

"What causes the jaw to drop is not just the breathtaking deception of the claim, but the gullibility of the Washington press corps to continue reporting it," Mr. Fratto, an economist who served in the Treasury Department and the Bush White House press office, wrote on a blog run by CNBC, where he is now a paid contributor.

When Mr. Obama returned from his trip, the jobs "created or saved" claim was front and center. The White House message of the day - that the stimulus would "create or save" 600,000 more jobs in the next 100 days - ran into a public relations buzz saw.

Republican lawmakers and their message machines ridiculed the White House claim, pointing to Mr. Fratto and to other less-partisan economists. Economic adviser Jared Bernstein was peppered with questions at a White House briefing. Reporters noted that even the Bureau of Labor Statistics found the White House's assertion hard to verify.

"Tony was the first guy to really nail that, and that took on a life of its own," said Jim Rickards, a financial-security business executive with contacts inside the Washington political establishment.

Mr. Bush did not mention President Obama by name in a speech he gave Wednesday evening in Erie, Pa., but strongly defended counterterrorism and economic policies used by his administration that have been condemned and abandoned by Mr. Obama's team.

"I told you I'm not going to criticize my successor," he said at one point. "I'll just tell you that there are people [held at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba] that will kill American people at a drop of a hat, and I don't believe that - persuasion is going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind."