According to Charles R. Kesler Obama's prime goal is to build an enduring Democratic majority that will impose a more socialized democracy upon America. In the course of achieving it, Obama has made unprecedented intrusions into the free market. Coupled with his wild "stimulus" spending, this will very likely hamstring the American economy for years to come. A struggling economy, however, is the least of our worries.
'What Obama hopes for is a similar breakthrough for the forces of liberalism in this generation.
An enduring Democratic majority is not out of the question. The wild scramble to stop the economic and financial downturn may well leave America with a politically controlled economy that would corrupt the relationship between citizens and the federal government – sapping entrepreneurship and encouraging new forms of dependence on the state, as in much of Europe. That would be consistent with the more socialized democracy that liberalism has been striving for ever since the Progressive Era.
Obama likes to emphasize that America is more like the world than we realize, and must become still more like it if the US is to remain the world's leader. Despite his summoning oratory, his sense of American exceptionalism thus is far less lofty, far more constrained, than Reagan's or FDR's. The greatest stumbling block to Obama's ambition is likely to be the inability of this exceptional president to persuade Americans to follow him into so unexceptional a future.'
I would take issue with Mr. Kesler's characterization of our crisis as a "wild scramble to stop the economic and financial downturn." There is certainly a wild scramble but the objective is not to stop the downturn. The downturn itself serves Obama's purpose. It provides cover for much more government intrusion for the ostensible purpose of creating social justice. The real danger we face will come if he continues to be successful legitimizing the destruction of personal and economic freedoms which are the source of American power.
As with the GM bailout, which is less a bailout of GM than of the United Auto Workers, the Obama administration will continue to make the best of this crisis. A continuing downturn provides opportunity to spend massively on the Democrats' favored constituencies. According to Kevin Hassett, it's not just failing firms like GM and Chrysler that Obama plans to rescue. He plans to rescue the successful ones as well.
'I’ve finally figured out the Obama economic strategy. President Barack Obama and his team have been having so much fun wielding dictatorial power while rescuing “failed” firms, that they have developed a scheme to gain the same power over every business. The plan is to enact policies that are so anticompetitive that every firm needs a bailout.
Once that happens, their new pay czar Kenneth Feinberg can set the wage for everybody and Rahm Emanuel can stack the boards of all of our companies with his political cronies.'
Economics 101 students already understand that the policies Obama advocates won't revive the economy. Why would he do that? What will assuredly be a bust for the economy will be a boon for the Democrats who yearn for more complete control. The tea parties are grass roots protests that hope to prevent that from happening, hope to preserve our liberty.
Charles R. Kesler is a senior fellow at The Claremont Institute, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, and a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.
Kevin Hassett is director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a Bloomberg News columnist, and an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election.
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