It seems that President Obama’s “Blame Bush” tactic worked again in 2012.

Sadie Montanus is a student at Florida State University who interned for Congressman Vern Buchanan and is a Republican Party volunteer. She offers her critique on the vote of her college compatriots in Sarasota Today, and is very upset that they were duped by such an obvious ploy.

I find complete irony though in the fact that the President won my demographic by appealing to ignorance. The reason we are in college is to become smarter, so shouldn’t we be the hardest population to infiltrate? It amazes me how astoundingly often students played the “blame-Bush-because-the-economy-is-terrible” card. This response has the ability to irk an economics major more than an empty bank account. Why students are still claiming this after 4 years of the Obama administration and economic analysis is mind-boggling. As subjects in academia, we should be smarter than this!

But since my colleagues have brought it up, here is my response to “it’s Bush’s fault:” What about the financial innovation, CDO’s, and mortgage-backed securities that drove the economy into recession? Did Bush invent those? He seemingly was the loan officer that approved the subprime mortgages that forced homes into foreclosure later, too. And when the housing bubble burst, Bush must have pricked it himself! I heard that he invented the business cycle even. Of course I am being facetious, but how else does one explain “Bush did it” theory around these events in the fiscal and monetary world?

All it takes is a simple supply and demand chart to illustrate these events, but the media does not seem to want anyone to know these are natural economic events because excuses work and are winning elections. The victims of this lack of transparency? College students! Our piggy banks were not lost in the bubble burst, so anyone can tell us anything about the economy and we are naïve enough to believe it. It is a brilliantly mischievous trick that is winning campaigns.

I’m tired of the blame Bush strategy. It has been all too convenient to “forget” that Barack Obama had been in office for 4 years and has passed fiscal policy that does not agree with basic economic principals. I wish I were a liberal eligible to run for election right now, because the “when in doubt, blame Bush (and therefore Republicans)” strategy is an easy and accepted theory to turn to. I’m calling on our current politicians to expel the myths.

We cannot afford to have someone in office that won on a façade promoted by the media. Conservatives, we’ve had a month to sulk and reflect; it’s time to get back up on our feet and get ready for battle. Fellow college students, lets break the status quo in 2016. The next election will be here before we know it.