Saturday, January 10, 2009

A Few Notes on the Impending Coronation...

...from P.J. O'Rourke in the Weekly Standard:
In the language of politics there is only one translation for the phrase "hope and change," to wit, "big, fat government." Mr. Obama, if you're going to give us big, fat government, you need to be a big, fat politician. You need to be a Tip O'Neill, a Teddy Kennedy, a Richard Daley, a Bill Clinton at the very least. And you don't seem to be a big, fat anything--literally or otherwise. You seem to be .  .  . smart and organized. Like Jimmy Carter!

So we may speak without compunction of the failed Obama presidency. What a blessing that it's a failure. Things are bad enough the way they are. There's already a huge ongoing government intervention inthe economy.

Bringing the government in to run Wall Street is like saying, "Dad burned dinner, let's get the dog to cook." Now the government's going to take over the auto industry. I can predict the result--a light-weight, compact, sustainable vehicle using alternative energy. When I was a kid we called it a Schwinn. And next in line for political therapy is health care. Voting will cure what ails you. Go to the doctor when you've got cancer, and he'll say, "Don't worry. Everything will be fine. I'm going to treat your disease by going inside this small, curtained booth and putting an 'X' next to a very special name."

If we want this sort of thing and lots more of it, we'll need somebody better--that is to say worse--than Barack Obama. Is Obama the man who can make the wolf of partisan spoils dwell with the lamb of public interest, and the leopard of increased political power lie down with the kid of individual liberty; and the calf of personal responsibility and the young lion of social engineering and the fatling of free enterprise together; and a lawyer from Hyde Park will lead them? (And will Nancy Pelosi eat straw like Dennis Kucinich?)

No. Barack Obama doesn't have the outsized personality and flair for bunkum that is necessary to lead even America's sheep-like electorate into such ravenous company. Thank God.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Best part of it is that even though the descending economic crash has been building since FDR took us off the gold standard, Obummer, like hoover, will be held to blame. Democrats can't handle the economy when things are good, look at the carter fiasco. The way things are now even if he did have a sound economic policy, to many things are going south all at once.
tombogan03884

Anonymous said...

Actually, Bush will be held to blame, like Hoover was. FDR was the "savior" - and so will bho be portrayed by the press and the adoring school systems. Until papers actually fail and teachers get laid off maybe.

O'Rourke wrote:
"No. Barack Obama doesn't have the outsized personality and flair for bunkum that is necessary to lead even America's sheep-like electorate into such ravenous company. Thank God."

True, bho does not. But the people around him do - to a degree - and they will commit a huge amount of damage before they are ousted. People like Axelrod, Holder, Panetta and the other barely B-list people he has employed.

Anonymous said...

Too many conservatives are banking on BHO being Jimmy Carter redux.

Sorry, but BHO may well end up a successful prez who wins reelection handily just like Clinton.

Conservatives are still in denial about what really happened in the '08 election.

Anonymous said...

Countdown to doomsday.....