To the editor:

On July 20, I was privileged to be a protester at the visit President Obama paid to Fort Myers. Four or five dozen of us were there to protest the policies, actions, and results that this man has produced in the last three and a half years. We were positioned on the west side of Monroe, across the street from the entrance to the Harbor-side Convention Center. My perception was that five or six hundred people entered that venue, but the media reported there were a thousand or more. Whatever the number, to me it is incredulous that there are that many who hate their Country so much that they can continue to support this man who so obviously is trying to ruin the exceptional nation that our founders created for us. Major elements of that exceptionalism are liberty and free enterprise which provide the private sector the tools it needs to grow our economy. The only explanations I can find for those who still support him are that they’re not paying attention to what is happening, they’ve been drinking the “Kool Aid,” they’re stupid, or they’re guilty of treason. I kept looking across the street to see if I could spot any “Kool Aid” dispensers, but saw none.

The rhetoric that our current economic malaise is “Bush’s fault” is just a load of crap. Be reminded that Democrats won majorities in both houses of congress in 2007 when Barney Frank and Chris Dodd took charge of the banking and finance committees of the House and Senate. They were the ones who were the real reason for the housing burn out that triggered our huge economic downturn. Not that the Republicans are blameless; they had their chance to correct this from 2001 to 2007 and did not. To have pressured banks to make loans to people who had no chance of being able to repay them and then to castigate those banks for doing so is almost unbelievable.

When George W. Bush was inaugurated in 2001, his administration faced a recession too. His policies, in spite of the adverse effect of 9/11 brought the country out of it rapidly. Was it as bad as the recession faced in 2009 after two years of Democratic majority in both houses of Congress? Maybe not, but that recovery was swift. Obama, on the other hand, has had 42 months in which all he has done is to implement any and all policies anyone could think of to stifle the private sector, the engine that creates jobs and thus invigorates the economy. Thus he has exacerbated our economic downturn rather than correcting it.

Pete Brandt

Cape Coral