John Cusack: Obama Worse Than Bush

Actor John Cusack has slammed President Obama’s policies as being as bad or worse than those implemented under George W. Bush.

Cusack is currently promoting Love & Mercy, a Beach Boys biopic in which he portrays Brian Wilson, one of the iconic band’s co-founders and its creative leader.

Cusack’s comments about Obama aren’t the first time he has gone against of the grain of politically liberal Hollywood (which vocally and financially supports the incumbent president as well as most other Democrats). Last year in a Guardian interview, he compared the Hollywood culture to a “whorehouse” that uses and abuses young actors. He also presides over an active Twitter feed upon which he opines on various political issues.

When informed by a Daily Beast reporter about Bush’s approval ratings now supposedly exceeding that of Obama according to a new CNN poll, Cusack, 48, offered this response.

“Well, Obama has certainly extended and hardened the cement on a lot of Bush’s post-9/11 Terror Inc. policies, so he’s very similar to Bush in every way that way. His domestic policy is a bit different, but when you talk about drones, the American Empire, the NSA, civil liberties, attacks on journalism and whistleblowers, he’s as bad or worse than Bush. He hasn’t started as many wars, but he’s extended the ones we had, and I don’t even think Dick Cheney or Richard Nixon would say the president has the right to unilaterally decide whom he can kill around the world. On Tuesdays, the president can just decide whom he wants to kill, and you know, since 9/11 there are magic words like ‘terror,’ and if you use magic words, you can justify any power grab you want.”

John Cusack is not the only prominent figure from the left side of the political spectrum who has strongly denounced the overseas drone war or civil liberties restrictions during the Obama administration.

Former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader has previously called for the impeachment of President Obama for bombing Libya (which has subsequently devolved into a terrorist enclave) without a declaration of war from Congress. He has also insisted that, with regard to the drone attacks in particular, Obama should be held accountable for war crimes and that he is “more aggressive, more illegal worldwide” than George W. Bush. Noam Chomsky, the influential MIT linguistics professor, author, and prominent progressive, has also vehemently criticized the Obama administration’s civil liberties record, particularly in the context of deploying lethal drones overseas. Cornel West, the Princeton University professor and civil rights activist, has deemed Nixon, Bush, and Obama war criminals for “immoral” overseas drone bombings.

Do you think John Cusack’s analysis of the Obama administration versus its predecessor is valid?

[Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images Entertainment]