Lee Fisher: it’s not my fault!

Lessons in courage from former job czar Lee Fisher. First, he seems to pretned his opponent in the primary doesn’t even exist and then he blames others for Ohio’s problems even as he was the official charged with changing things:

Fisher never mentioned Brunner by name, even though she was sitting 20 feet away from him. Instead he spoke mostly about the Republican candidate, Portman, calling the former Bush administration official “the architect of policies that dug the deepest economic ditch we have seen in our lifetimes.”

Portman and his Republican allies have fired back at Fisher repeatedly, pointing out that the state of Ohio lost 300,000 jobs in the nearly three years that Fisher was Strickland’s state development director.

“I’m well aware of the jobs that were lost,” Fisher said in a recent interview with the Enquirer. “They were lost because of the policies George Bush and Rob Portman created, giving incentives to companies to send jobs overseas and tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.

I will detail the economic illiteracy involved in arguing that the Bush trade and tax policies are responsible for the current economic climate in more detail in another post.

But just ask yourself honestly whether you really think “shipping jobs overseas” and “tax breaks” for wealthy Americans are behind Ohio’s unemployment rate and long term economic decline.

This is simply a thoughtless liberal talking point and a sop to unions. US Trade policy helped Ohio rather than hurt. And the shipping jobs overseas talking point is myth and bad economics.

But put that aside for the moment. Is Lee Fisher saying that having Strickland-Fisher in office has meant nothing?  When do state level leaders take responsibility for something? When does the blame Bush card run out?

Jennifer Brunner is tragically wrong about every issue I can think of but she is right about one thing. Lee Fisher hasn’t taken a tough stand in his life and he doesn’t appear to be starting anytime soon.