Washington Saw This Coming

An army of asses led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by an ass.  George Washington

Edward Morrissey at This Week, asks “Has Obama Quit Already?” The thesis of his column is that the president has essentially given up on governing.

Morrissey posits that Obama really isn’t interested in finding a way out of the debt crisis. He is far more interested in finding a way into the White House for four more years.

Obama’s last two speeches rehash the same tired ideas and ploys: tax hikes for the rich, more spending, and an attempt to divide the nation into warring economic groups.

That may play well with the union knuckle draggers who mobbed the Wisconsin statehouse and tried to shut down the Port of Longview in Washington state, but the appeal is limited. Most Americans are not angry with the rich. They just want a decent shot at joining them.

The president apparently pays scant attention to history. If he did he would know it’s all been tried before with similarly lousy results. As Amity Shlaes wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal regarding FDR’s attempt to spend the country out of recession:

“Notwithstanding the billions of dollars spent and the thousands of regulations enacted, the economy did not get back to its 1929 level in Roosevelt’s first two terms.” She pointed out that ten years into the depression, “total hours worked by the American labor force was a full 20% below the 1929 level” and unemployment “averaged well into the double digits…” Shlaes cites scholar Robert Higgs who has shown that “Roosevelt’s aggressive anti-business policies caused companies to hunker down rather than start hiring.”

Shlaes also notes that the Wagner Act of 1935, having given unprecedented clout to labor, ”drove up labor costs, spooking employers and discouraging them from hiring.”

Think Card Check and the administration’s efforts to drive Boeing out of South Carolina.

This president is a rhetorician with nothing to say.  But that hasn’t stopped him from saying it. A wiser man would know that so much familiarity breeds contempt.

If You Love Me ...

We are now seeing the thrashing about of a desperate man. Never mind his feigned disdain for the rich. Power and all that goes with it is addictive. The president loves his tax-funded private jet, pricey vacations and the adoration of the diehard faithful. The sheer narcissism of prefacing his appeal for getting his latest stimulus bill passed with “if you love me,” takes one’s breath away. It is easy to imagine a South American dictator saying such a thing, but the cult of personality doesn’t play well in America, at least not for long.

Desperation explains Obama’s anguish over Fox News and Talk Radio. He has never coped well with dissent and now that dissent threatens to go viral.

Desperation also explains his refusal to chasten union leader Jimmy Hoffa. Jr. who rallied the bullyboys by telling them to go after the Tea Party “SOBs.” All Obama’s appeals for civility apparently are now forgotten.

Truth to tell, Obama dares not alienate the thugs.  When members of the Democratic Congress try to distance themselves from Obama’s failed presidency in hopes of holding on to their own jobs, the thugs may be all there are.

However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.  George Washington