A Very Important Question about Debt

Barry Ritholtz asks a very important question about the accumulated debt of the US:

Here is a quick look at total debt as accumulated by each US President.

Click to Enlarge
Its kinda funny — how come so few people (especially those on the right) were all that upset about the massive surge in debt under Bush? Is it that they only recently kinda figured out the significance of debt — or are they are merely hypocrites when it comes to this sort of thing?

Whatever your political or economic views are, it is not up to me to tell you what to believe. However, you need to be intellectually consistent and not merely grab whatever ideological bullet point that suits your purposes at the moment. If you do so, you best be prepared to be charged with being intellectually dishonest, and to be categorized as called a political hack. Or worse.

I think the answer is pretty obvious. The political right is hypocritical. Their only goal is to get power. They are willing to destroy the economy to obtain power. When in power they have no principles other than to line their own pockets and use money to buy votes. For over thirty years they have claimed to need to be elected to effect a social agenda that favours the concerns of fundamentalist Christians, but once in power they never seem able to ban abortion, shoot the gays, or force everybody to attend church on Sunday. They are only effective in giving tax cut after tax cut to the ultra-rich. Odd isn't it?