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| Home Front: Politix |
| The Great Non Sequitur |
| 2009-03-07 |
| by Charles Krauthammer Forget the pork. Forget the waste. Forget the 8,570 earmarks in a bill supported by a president who poses as the scourge of earmarks. Forget the "2 trillion dollars in savings" that "we have already identified," $1.6 trillion of which President Obama's budget director later admits is the "savings" of not continuing the surge in Iraq until 2019 -- 11 years after George Bush ended it, and eight years after even Bush would have had us out of Iraq completely. Forget all of this. This is run-of-the-mill budget trickery. True, Obama's tricks come festooned with strings of zeros tacked onto the end. But that's a matter of scale, not principle. All presidents do that. But few undertake the kind of brazen deception at the heart of Obama's radically transformative economic plan, a rhetorical sleight of hand so smoothly offered that few noticed. The logic of Obama's address to Congress went like this: "Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools. The "day of reckoning" has arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal. Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people. At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the banking industry. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan's Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful home buyers. The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-ass MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe. And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing-in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis. What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before." Things. Now we know what they are. The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions -- the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic -- for enacting his "Big Bang" agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society. Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy -- worthy and weighty as they may be -- are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #8 For now, there are enough idjits who still think he farts rainbows and shits gold to get his favorite failed policies in place. at Ace Of Spades HQ, the stock phrase is "bringing unicorns, that shit skittles" LOL |
| Posted by: Frank G 2009-03-07 18:06 |
| #7 True 1st hand: One of my Drs. goes gaga at the mere mention of Prez O'bambi; just this week she melted down like a vanilla ice cream cone in the sun at the mere mention of his name. She is smart as hell which makes the whole O'bambi worship phenom disgusting. |
| Posted by: Red Dawg 2009-03-07 13:12 |
| #6 <<<< inappropriate limitation fixed |
| Posted by: Clegum Ghibelline2050 2009-03-07 12:20 |
| #5 Socilization - it's the only way. Resistance is futile. |
| Posted by: Bobby at the Kids Place in Texas 2009-03-07 09:59 |
| #4 Verlaine, I don't believe that the current occupant in the Oval Office sees all of the economic turmoil as a problem to be solved. He sees it more as a very fortunately timed (for him) distraction. Wasn't it one of Clinton's retreads (can't remember if it was Begala, could have been Emmanuel or Carville) who said that "you can't waste a good crisis"? The economy is on life support? Well...toss money at it, blame Reid/Pelosi if it doesn't "recover", and cram through his favorite pet causes before anyone notices. He hasn't a clue how to pay for it all, and could care less about the total bill. The important thing is that his narcissism is temporarily sated. (It's never completely sated, it's always going to be a gaping hole no matter how much adoration he gets.) For now, there are enough idjits who still think he farts rainbows and shits gold to get his favorite failed policies in place. Some members of the media are starting to figure out they had been had, but they are still acting like toddlers entranced by something shiny. If he waits a year or so, he might lose the wobblier members of his fan club. That's why he needs to get this stuff done NOW. |
| Posted by: Cornsilk Blondie 2009-03-07 08:28 |
| #3 As nobody had a gun to my head, of course I completely ignored Bambi's joint session barf-fest. My jaw hit the floor when I read CK's column here. How illiterate, face-smackingly illogical, and idiotic can things become? Health care, education, and energy? (and that leaves aside the Bambi's ilk is clueless as to what the issues/solutions are in those various areas) That he can make such a preposterous speech - and that even CK gives it the courtesy of calling it clever rhetoric - momentarily shocks me until I return to my months-long torpor of almost literally not believing what I'm seeing and hearing. |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2009-03-07 03:24 |
| #2 First they took the schools. Then courts and bureaucracy. Now the White House. Your house is next. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2009-03-07 01:36 |
| #1 <<<< intellectually dishonest to the core. >>> Nailed it. |
| Posted by: Omoter Speaking for Boskone7794 2009-03-07 00:15 |