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November 30, 2011

VDH: 'Obama 101'

Topics: Political News and commentaries

Victor Davis Hanson writes that few presidents have dashed so many illusions as Obama, and manages to perfectly sum up Barack Obama in a nutshell ... albeit a very big one.

Here are a few excerpts to pique your interest:

In the last three years, the president has taught us a great deal about America, the world, and himself.

Before Obama, many Americans still believed in massive deficit spending, whether as an article of fairness, a means to economic growth, or just a lazy fallback position to justify an out-of-control federal government. But after the failure of a nearly $800 billion "stimulus" program -- intended to keep unemployment under 8 percent -- no one believes any more that an already indebted government will foster economic growth by taking on another $4 trillion in debt. In other words, "stimulus" is mostly a dead concept. The president -- much as he advised a barnstorming President Bush in 2005 to cease pushing Social Security reform on a reluctant population -- should give it up and junk the new $500 billion program euphemistically designated as a "jobs bill." The U.S. government is already borrowing every three days what all of America spent on Black Friday.

Obama has also taught us that prominent government intervention into the private sector often makes things worse, and invites crony-capitalist corruption. Nearly three years into this administration, it is striking how seldom Barack Obama brags about Cash for Clunkers, the Chrysler and GM bailouts, or Solyndra. He either is quiet about them or sort of shrugs, as if to say, "Stuff happens." Even creative bookkeeping cannot mask the fact that the auto-company bailouts (begun, to be sure, by the Bush administration, but made worse under Obama) will prove a huge drain on the Treasury. No one even attempts any more to convince us that we will like Obamacare once we read the legislation, or that it will save us costs in the long run, or that it will cheer up businesses so that they will invest and hire. All that was dreamland, 2009, and this is reality, 2011, when we hear only "It could have been worse."

Obama has also taught us that a president's name, his father's religion, his ethnic background, loud denunciations of his predecessor, discomforting efforts to apologize, bow, and contextualize past American actions -- none of that does anything to lead to greater peace in the world or security for the United States. And by the same token, George Bush's drawl, Texas identification, and Christianity did not magically turn allies into neutrals and neutrals into enemies. ...

... We have learned from Obama that the messianic presidency is a myth. Obama's attempt to recreate Camelot has only reminded us that JFK's presidency -- tax cuts, Cold War saber-rattling, Vietnam intervention -- was never Camelot. We shall see no more Latinate presidential sloganeering ("Vero Possumus"), no more rainbow posters. Gone are the faux-Greek columns, the speeches about seas receding and the planet cooling -- now sources of embarrassment rather than nostalgia. Chancellor Merkel won't want another Victory Column address from someone who ducked out on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Obama himself will not lecture crowds any longer about the dangers of their fainting when he speaks; Michelle will cease all the nonsense about "deign[ing] to enter the messy thing called politics" and finally acquiring pride in the U.S. when it nominated her husband. ...

Take the time to read the whole thing. Hanson is spot-on in saying that few American presidents have dashed so many popular, deeply embedded illusions as has Barack Obama ... and for that, we owe him a strange sort of thanks.

On the other hand, there's seldom been a case of so many American voters allowing themselves to be so completely deluded by such a political con artist ... as when Americans elected Barack Obama into office in the first place.

Posted by Hyscience at November 30, 2011 10:50 AM

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• VDH: 'Obama 101' - Nov 30, 2011