The First Month Of Hope

In just the first month of his presidency, Barack Obama has already succeeded in drawing a multitude of comparisons to former president Jimmy Carter. From a superb run up campaign based on a theme of hope and change, his administration seems to have abandoned hope for the sake of accelerated change. A more accurate description of his philosophy would be crisis intervention rather than hope because his rhetoric has been anything but optimistic.

To listen to Obama's secretary of state in Seoul, South Korea over the weekend, nothing is going right. De-emphasizing the issue of human rights in China, to the dismay of activist groups, Hillary Clinton had this to say (emphasis mine):

"But our pressing on those issues can't interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis."

Obama has used the word "crisis" ad nauseam as well, something that leading economists have been uneasy about in recent weeks, warning that the dour mood created in Americans is only exacerbating the problem. Perhaps that is by design, as the administration seems to have switched from hope to fear to achieve its lofty goals.

During the campaign, I wrote about Obama's philosophy of wealth redistribution, something that is coming to fruition right before our very eyes. The massive stimulus plan recently signed by Obama is blatantly redistributive as is his plan to intervene in the mortgage - dare I say - crisis. As bad as it was that the stimulus was being accomplished through borrowing, the Washington Post is reporting today that Obama is nearing completion of his first budget. In it, his plan is to pay for much of the stimulus and mortgage bailouts by raising taxes on the "wealthy" and corporations. That's right, in a deep recession, the administration plans to raise taxes.

In what some lugubriously refer to as a sinking ship, Obama's apparent solution is to poke holes in the hull. Combine that with an allied congress bailing water into the ship, and we have a real problem. Perhaps there is hope, though, after all. The American people have two years to witness the spectacle of doom, which should provide more than enough evidence that democratic control of the whole enchilada was not a wise choice.

Since 60% of the so-called stimulus money won't be spent until after January, 2011, Rep. Louie Gohmert is calling on the people to elect republicans to congress in 201o. He pledges that under republican control, congress can stop the spending at somewhere around $300 billion.

I am hopeful that republicans will have a rather easy time retaking both houses of congress in 2010, just in time to derail this administrative...crisis.

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