Rewriting History

This morning, browsing a link from a link from a link, I found this article about how some Indiana Tea Party groups want to replace sitting Republican Senator Lugar with a more conservative candidate.

Among the motivations listed are that, and I quote, Lugar "Voted for Obama’s controversial Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which pumped billions of dollars into ailing banks and financial institutions during the 2008 financial crisis." The article as it stands now does not read that; it has been corrected. I cannot find a screencap and I did not save it when I originally found it. However-- the problem with the article as it read is apparent, yes?

President Obama was elected at the end of 2008; he took office at the beginning of 2009. How, therefore, could he have created a program that took effect in 2008? Am I the only one who vividly members that one of the presidential debates was nearly canceled so that the senators could go back to Washington and work on TARP? TARP was, in fact, signed into law by President Bush on October 9, 2008.

Googling "Bush TARP" turns up 7,530,000 hits, while Googling "Obama TARP" turns up 11,800,000 hits. Such Googling also turns up this article from the Pew Foundation, which indicates that more than half of Americans cannot correctly identify which president signed this widely-reviled bill into law. I've seen people blaming Obama for it before, but never so blatantly, and never in a published news piece.

Things like this are literally rewriting history. I'm glad the article was corrected, but appalled that, with TARP as such a hot-button issue three years later, less than half the country actually knows the president to whom it should be attributed.