From war woes to Gulf disasters, Obama’s presidency mirrors Bush’s

A difficult war, runaway federal spending, a dilemma over illegal immigration and even the aftermath of an environmental disaster - President Obama’s 2010 is looking a lot like President George W. Bush’s 2006.

And in many of those cases, Mr. Obama is turning to similar solutions as his predecessor: a surge of troops overseen by the same commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus; a modified line-item veto proposal; and deployment of National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to soften opposition before a broad push for an immigration bill.

That the challenges are similar is not surprising. By definition, they are the unfinished business of the Bush administration, and in some cases had been languishing for decades longer. But for a man who ran on being the anti-Bush, Mr. Obama is realizing that breaking with a previous administration’s policies is easier said than done.

“Presidents have these received commitments that they can’t simply abandon. You may say in a campaign you’re going to depart from them really dramatically, but it’s hard to do that when you’re in office,” said Sidney M. Milkis, a presidential scholar at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. The office of the president, “even when it’s pulled into the vortex of partisanship, requires a consistent administration and an enduring commitment to certain policies.”

Dana Perino, who was press secretary at the end of the Bush administration, said she watched with amusement during the 2008 campaign as Mr. Obama made promises she knew he would be hard-pressed to keep.

“All the comparisons they’re getting to the previous administration they invited, because they ran on all of these issues, saying how much better they were going to approach them and how their execution was going to be superior,” Mrs. Perino said.

On foreign policy in particular, she said, the U.S. position doesn’t change that much from administration to administration - partly because major changes in rhetoric or action can upset the established diplomatic balance. Other decisions, meanwhile, are easy to criticize by the party out of power but are hard to change, such as closing the detention facility at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“I kept thinking they’re not going to be able to do all of those things they’re promising, and we tried to tell them not to make that promise on Gitmo,” she said.

Senior White House officials acknowledged the similarities in the two presidents’ to-do lists, but one said “the basic philosophies about government are still very different.”

The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also expressed confidence that Mr. Obama would succeed where Mr. Bush failed.

“We have a record of accomplishment,” the official said, checking off a list of Mr. Obama’s key legislative achievements, including the health care overhaul and a financial regulatory bill that could pass as soon as this month.

“We have a record of being able to take on hard things and get them done,” the official said.

Even when those actions aren’t always “politically popular or expedient,” another official added.

Still, Mr. Obama also finds himself taking care of unfinished business from the Bush administration, such as closing holes in the GOP's Medicare prescription drug benefit. In their new health care bill, Democrats and Mr. Obama went back and filled in the “doughnut hole” - a gap in prescription drug coverage in the Republican bill written in 2003.

Both presidents have found themselves tested by catastrophes in the Gulf of Mexico. For Mr. Bush, his response to Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans in 2005 and dominated much of the next year of his administration, came to define his tenure for many voters.

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