David Leonhardt’s column in the NYT today went to great lengths to attempt to assess blame for the current budget deficits and those that are projected. I wanted to avoid commenting but given the amount of play it’sgetting, I feel obliged to at least offer a few links that put it into perspective.

Predictably, it lays most of the blame on Bush and given the liberal nature of the blogosphere has been received with scant effort to analyze what he proposed. For the liberal view I recommend Ezra Klein and the Economist Free Exchange.

Fortunately Megan McArdle took the time to analyze Leonhardt’s article and wrote a fairly lengthy post exposing the fallacious logic that underpin his arguments. The bottom line is that you can do just about anything you want with numbers if you cook the assumptions.

Actually, the real bottom line is that Leonhardt’s column is a waste of time. There are a lot more things to worry about and projects to tackle than concocting fanciful blame scenarios.