When you have a majority Congressional party whose primary campaign message is "I support the President" you can't really say that absolves him from blame when they rubberstamp what he puts in front of them. They share the blame, but how does it exonerate Bush when they pass legislation Bush introduced (prior to Obama Presidents often introduced legislation on things other than corporate bailouts)? That doesn't let minority Dems off the hook for unanimous votes in favor of things like the IWR, but that objection is one more of principle than policy: Senate Dems voting against the IWR in 2002 wouldn't have stopped it and most would've been committing political suicide since the invasion was very popular with the public then; they just shouldn't have had the nerve to vote for it and then campaign against it in '04 (in Kerrys case it was particularly stupid. )