Andrew Sullivan offers...

...this reality check (my emphasis):

There is some bizarre notion among the punditocracy that the Obama administration cannot and should not blame Bush and the GOP for the awful recession, looming tax rises and entitlement cuts, endless wars, tainted moral standing, crumbling infrastructure and massive debt that Obama inherited. I think this is foolish. Because it means this president not only has to take responsibility for his own policies, but for the legacy that has made his job close to impossible.

This is a recession caused by a collapse in a too-lightly regulated financial sector and a huge housing bubble sustained by the last administration. We have a debt fueled overwhelmingly by unaffordable tax cuts, two disastrous unfunded wars, and a new Medicare entitlement that was never paid for. None of this was Obama's doing. None of it. He came into the White House facing the worst legacy since Carter bequeathed the Oval Office to Reagan. And the great difficulty of moving out of this wasteland of unemployment is due, in part, to the extreme fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush-Cheney GOP.