I agree with much of what you said but in reality Bush was powerless to push through changes with the FMs because he never controlled Congress. The people and in particular the MSM, who knew better but chose to ignore Democratic obstructionism, often blamed the Republican Congress but there never was one because having a 55 to 45 majority in Senate never gave control. You need 60 votes to stop a filibuster and invoke cloture. The reason he could not pick off a few Democratic votes was that reform struck the very core of the Democratic parties base, the minorities who benefited from the regulatory largess. That is why many Democrats are demanding "Protection"  of  defaulting homeowners as part of any deal because minorities make up almost half of the defaults. Any losses the public i.e. taxpayers suffers will just be another form of income redistribution which is a tenet of the Dems beliefs which they will not voice. Hopefully enough Democrats will see the recklessness of their behavior but I doubt it because getting re-elected is more important to almost every politician than the good of the country. 

In Just Four Years, Obama Has Received More Money From Lehman Brothers Than Any Other Member Of Congress In The Past Two Decades (Since 1989) Except Sen. Hillary Clinton. (Lindsay Renick Mayer, "Brothers Grim: Is Lehman Next?" Center For Responsive Politics' "Capital Eye" Blog, www.opensecrets.org, 9/12/08)

Top Executives At Lehman Brothers Are Obama Bundlers:

Ted Janulis, Head Of Mortgage Capital At Lehman Brothers Until His Retirement In September 2008, Is A Bundler For Obama's Presidential Campaign Committed To Raising $50,000 To $100,000. (Obama For America Website, www.barackobama.com, Accessed 5/19/08)

John Rhea, A Managing Director And Co-Head Of Global Consumer And Retail Investment Banking For Lehman Brothers, Is A Bundler For Obama's Presidential Campaign Committed To Raising $50,000 To $100,000. (Obama For America Website, www.barackobama.com, Accessed 5/15/08)

"[N]adja Fidelia, Who Is Also A Managing Director At Lehman Brothers, Has Raised At Least $50,000 For Mr. Obama..." (Timothy Williams, "Obama Takes His Campaign to Harlem," New York Times, 11/30/07)

Fomer Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson Remains A Bundler For Obama's Presidential Campaign And Has Committed To Raising $100,000 To $200,000. (Obama For America Website, www.barackobama.com, Accessed 5/19/08)

Former Commerce Secretary William Daley Serves As An Obama Advisor For Economic Policy. "At his stop in New Mexico, Obama sought to keep the focus almost exclusively on the economy, appearing with a panel of experts that included William Daley, brother of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and a former U.S. commerce secretary." (John McCormick and Jill Zuckman, "Rivals Spend Day As Frequent Fliers," Chicago Tribune, 2/2/08)

Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson Recruited Former Sec. Daley As A Lobbyist For Fannie Mae. "Fannie's government relations operations dramatically expanded in the mid-1990s, when then-CEO Johnson recruited Washington A-listers Robert Zoellick, who served in the Reagan and Bush administrations; Lawrence M. Small, former secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; and William M. Daley, commerce secretary in the Clinton administration." (Lisa Lerer, "Fannie, Freddie Spent $200M To Buy Influence," The Politico, 7/16/08)

From 2002 Through 2005, Daley Was A Registered Lobbyist For Fannie Mae. (U.S. Senate Office Of Public Records Website, soprweb.senate.gov, Accessed 7/27/08)

Before Heading Fannie Mae, Johnson Was A Registered Foreign Agent For Lehman Brothers:

In The 1980s, Johnson Worked For Shearson Lehman Brothers. "In the early 1980s Johnson had already started his own Washington consulting company, Public Strategies, with his Carter administration colleague Richard Holbrooke. And now he followed Holbrooke to Wall Street as an investment banker at Shearson Lehman Brothers." (Lloyd Grove, "The Big Chair," The Washington Post, 3/27/98)

      The rewrite, as City Journal noted back in 2000, "made getting a satisfactory CRA rating harder." Banks were given strict new numerical quotas and measures for the level of "diversity" in their loan portfolios. Getting a good CRA rating was key for a bank that wanted to expand or merge with another.

      Loans started being made on the basis of race, and often little else.

      "Bank examiners would use federal home-loan data, broken down by neighborhood, income group and race, to rate banks on performance," wrote Howard Husock, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute.

      But those rules weren't enough.

      Clinton got the Department of Housing and Urban Development to double-team the issue. That would later prove disastrous.

      Clinton's HUD secretary, Andrew Cuomo, "made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis," the liberal Village Voice noted. Among those decisions were changes that let Fannie and Freddie get into subprime loan markets in a big way.

      Other rule changes gave Fannie and Freddie extraordinary leverage, allowing them to hold just 2.5% of capital to back their investments, vs. 10% for banks.

      Since they could borrow at lower rates than banks due to implicit government guarantees for their debt, the government-sponsored enterprises boomed."