"You break it, you own it"

Almost everyone’s been to one of those stores with very expensive items; the stores that only sell things made of glass or those stores that sell old, fragile antiques. I know I have. When I was young, I went into one of those stores with my parents and my younger, hyperactive sister. As we entered, the shopkeeper warned us: “If you break it, you buy it.”

President Obama is using a similar ideology when it comes to addressing the economy. In this article from Time by Jon Meacham, Obama is using the “Pottery Barn Rule” to put the blame on President Bush and Republicans for ruining the economy.

Something that caught my attention in this article was the fact that most Americans agree with the fact that George W. Bush is responsible for the current state of the economy. I would have thought that since there has been a lot of criticism regarding President Obama’s work with the economy, that Americans would blame him for the economy’s current state.

The author’s intended audience was voters and those who are interested in politics. He is credible because, according to his profile on Time, he is the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, runs a website devoted to current affairs, was an editor for Newsweek, and is an editor-at-large for a PBS station.

Using ethos, Meacham argues that "Americans don't care as much about the past as they do the present and the future" and that the people want a "President that fixes things, not a President that whines about the task at hand". I disagree with the latter of these statements because the economy was at a low when President Bush left office. A copious amount of money was spent on things such as the Iraq War over the course of 8 years. President Obama has been in office for less than 4 years. It is impossible to reverse 8 years worth of damage in less than 4 years. As for the first statement, I also disagree because the past paves the way for the present and the future. Without a past, there is no future. If Americans do not care about the past, that means the do not care about the Constitution that gave American citizens their rights or the wars that have been fought to ensure freedom, which is obviously not true. 

Meacham later proves that he is wrong by providing data from a Gallup poll that shows that Americans blame Bush more than Obama for the economy’s weakness.  He also says something that I totally agree with: we are going to be hearing a lot about Mitt Romney talking about Barack Obama and Barack Obama talking about the “Pottery Barn Rule” until November.