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Human
Events
Obama
begins pivot to the economy
No. 19
By John Hayward
7/24/2013
It
was a nostalgic hour and seven
minutes in Illinois today, as President Barack Obama made his 19th
“pivot to
the economy” by recycling his old speeches and bromides into a long
stroll down
memory lane. Fortunately,
he was able to
wrap things up before the state government of Illinois went bankrupt. That would have been
awkward.
All
of Obama’s dusty old rhetorical
relics were on display. Praise
for the
World War II generation? Check. Endless discussion of the
Sainted Middle
Class? You betcha. Blaming his failures on
the “mess” he
inherited? Oh yes. Castigating corporate CEOs
for earning too
much money? Yes, he
was able to get that
off his chest, before departing for his latest taxpayer-financed luxury
vacation to Martha’s Vineyard. Taking
credit for the allegedly “recovery” that only he can detect? Done!
Scaremongering about default on
America’s sovereign debt? You
got it.
Calls for more infrastructure spending?
Checkity-check-check-check!
It
sounds like Obama and his
squadron of propagandists are going to lean really hard on that “New
York
insurance premiums will drop 50%” canard about ObamaCare. Note that they’re not
interested in talking
about any other state, because they’d look like fools.
The President also didn’t bother to
mention
that New York insurance premiums are sky-high because they’ve been
torturing
their individual insurance market with ObamaCare-style regulations for
the last
20 years.
Above
all else, there was Obama’s
boundless faith in government, his embrace of the collective. To this President,
independence is greed,
liberty is a luxury only the rich can afford, responsibility is cruel,
initiative
is anarchy, and nobody knows how to run a business better than he does. “Inequality” is the
ultimate evil, and only
Big Government’s round table of regulatory knights can slay it. “Washington” is a
combination of
special-interest avarice and blind apathy that Obama was shocked to
discover,
when he arrived there yesterday. If
we
want to survive, we must not do anything that would threaten the steady
growth
of government. And
if the government
doesn’t take action, we are “standing by and doing nothing in the face
of
immense change.” Only
the actions of the
mighty State and its epic leaders make a difference.
“Investment” is something the government
does, occasionally delegating the task to obedient
private entities, who are allowed to
retain a
modest amount of wealth as a reward for their loyal service.
We’ve
come a long way since I first
took office. As a
country, we’re older
and we’re wiser. And
as long as Congress
doesn’t manufacture another crisis – as long as we don’t shut down the
government just as the economy is getting traction, or risk a U.S.
default over
paying bills we’ve already racked up – we can probably muddle along
without
taking bold action. Our
economy will
grow, though slower than it should; new businesses will form, and
unemployment
will keep ticking down. Just
by virtue
of our size and our natural resources and the talent of our people,
America
will remain a world power, and the majority of us will figure out how
to get
by.
But
if that’s our choice – if we
just stand by and do nothing in the face of immense change – understand
that an
essential part of our character will be lost.
Our founding precept about wide-open
opportunity and each generation
doing better than the last will be a myth, not reality. The position of
the
middle class will erode further.
Inequality will continue to increase,
and money’s power will distort our
politics even more. Social
tensions will
rise, as various groups fight to hold on to what they have, and the
fundamental
optimism that has always propelled us forward will give way to cynicism
or
nostalgia.
That’s
not the vision I have for
this country. That’s
not the vision you
have for this country. That
is not the
America we know. That’s
not a vision we
should settle for, or pass on to our children.
I have now run my last campaign.
I do not intend to wait until the next
one before tackling the issues
that matter. I care
about one thing and
one thing only, and that’s how to use every minute of the 1,276 days
remaining
in my term to make this country work for working Americans again. Because I believe this is
where America needs
to go. I believe
this is where the
American people want to go. It
may seem
hard today, but if we are willing to take a few bold steps – if
Washington will
just shake off its complacency and set aside the kind of slash-and-burn
partisanship we’ve seen these past few years – our economy will be
stronger a
year from now. And
five years from
now. And ten years
from now. More
Americans will know the pride of that
first paycheck; the satisfaction of flipping the sign to “Open” on
their own
business; the joy of etching a child’s height into the door of their
brand new
home…
Read
the rest of the article at
Human Events
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