Former President George W. Bush — it’s still surreal to say that — has been and will continue to be blamed for pretty much everything that went wrong in the past eight years. We have grown up during the Bush reign and don’t really know what else to do but blame whomever is in charge.

That’s what we will remember; he is the one we so quickly pointed the finger at. Whether or not his decision making was singularly responsible for every crisis our country has faced in recent years, we certainly deferred the burden of blame to him.

Similarly, it’s easy to take shots at President Michael Crow for every little flaw that ASU possesses, and it’s even easier in times like these. Criticizing Crow for allowing budget cuts, faculty downsizing and tuition increases may even be a little excessive. But before we jump the gun, I think we need to understand that there’s so much more going on than we realize. Although these consequences are not good, it’s very possible that they are the only immediate option.

The New York Times had an article last week declaring that colleges have lost 23 percent of endowments in the last five months. This kind of downfall can hardly be predicted. Cornell, Syracuse and Dartmouth were a few of the colleges mentioned that were dealing with their financial shortcomings in very similar ways that we are handling our own budget problems.

The budget crisis is not isolated; this is a national issue where many colleges are doing exactly what we are — making necessary cutbacks. Creative saving can only go so far. This deficit is too big to tackle with little tweaks of spending. Without these necessary cutbacks, we will lose the only good thing about the budget deficit: temporality.

Knowing this, the financial problems at ASU have to be traced back to even bigger issues — namely, the state budget crisis. If we are to play the blame game here, too, then we must look to none other than Janet Napolitano, who so gracefully transitioned into her position under President Barack Obama as the secretary of homeland security.

According to reports on KTAR’s Web site, State Treasurer Dean Martin said, “We wouldn’t have the problem we have today had we not, in the past two years, been spending substantially more than we made. You’ve got about two years of spending now, catching up with us in the third year. That’s why things are looking so dire for the state budget.”

Somehow, little to no blame has been attributed to Napolitano concerning Arizona’s fiscal nightmare. As our most recent former governor, she is the default suspect according to the sadly predictable blame game that we so dearly love to play.

I know that it’s the journalistic ideal to perform “accountability journalism,” but there may be too fine a line to differentiate between responsible accountability and impetuous blame sometimes. Regardless, if we’re going to play this game, then it should be played fairly.

So even if Napolitano wasn’t the instigator of our tragic budget fall, I will not hesitate to point the finger toward her, because that’s all I know how to do.

Reach Houston at hfriend1@asu.edu.