The Two Faces Of Barack Obama

A long, long time ago – way, way back in January 8, 2009 – Barack Obama said some things about the economy and its profound dependence on the government.  Obama said (at George Mason University):

It is true that we cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or long-term growth. But at this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe. Only government can break the cycle that is crippling our economy, where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs, which leads to even less spending, where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit.

But just a few days back Obama said:

In the end, the answer to our economic troubles rests less in my hands, or in the hands of our legislators, than it does with America’s workers and the businesses that employ them. They are the ones whose efforts and ideas will determine our economic destiny, just as they always have. For in the end, it’s businesses – large and small – that generate the jobs, provide the salaries, and serve as the foundation on which the American people’s lives and dreams depend. All we can do, those of us in Washington, is help create a favorable climate in which workers can prosper, businesses can thrive, and our economy can grow. And that is exactly what the recovery plan I’ve proposed is intended to do. Thank you.

The thing I think I hate most about Obama’s style is that he’ll talk out of both sides of his mouth, and then pretend he’s been consistent all along.  He can then say, “As I’ve been saying all along,” or, “Like I’ve said before,” and then say whatever he heck he wants to say that suits him at that moment with that audience.

And this is the thing that has consistently bugged me about Obama: he’s whatever he wants to present himself from one moment to the next.  Or, as Obama himself put it, “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”  In the passive-aggressive co-dependent way he explains it, it’s everyone’s fault but his own.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that he tells a Jewish audience that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,” and a Palestinian audience that, “Well, obviously, it’s going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations.”

Barack Obama is a self- confessed blank screen.  And I’ve “projected” a picture of a gigantic weasel on my view of him.

So here’s the question that every single American should deeply care about: does Obama believe that it is the government which creates and sustains economic growth, or does he believe that it is the private sector that produces economic growth and creates the jobs that come with it?  Is he FDR, or is he Ronald Reagan?

When Ronald Reagan took office from Jimmy Carter, inflation was at a meteoric 13.3% and the country was in the throes of a fierce recession.  There was a real question as to whether workers’ wages would keep up with the costs of living, which made people afraid to either spend or save.  And nobody knew how to control inflation – which had risen from 1.4% in 1960 to the aforementioned 13.3% in 1980 – causing a real erosion of confidence in the future.  Jimmy Carter answered a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering, “It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”

Reagan DID have a solution, and the result was the Reagan Revolution.

Unemployment had risen to 11%.  More businesses failed than at any time since World War II.  The picture of the economy was grim, indeed.

And then the Reagan policies – ridiculed by the very same liberal economic theorists whose policies created the inflation to begin with – began to work.  And the result – from such terrible beginnings – was the 2nd largest peacetime expansion in American history.  And now – to prove that there really is nothing new under the sun, liberal economic theorists are STILL ridiculing Reagan’s successful policy over twenty years after its success changed America.

In spite of Bush’s unprecedented 52 straight months of uninterrupted job growth that were bookended by two recessions – the one that Clinton left Bush, and the one that Bush is now leaving Obama – the economy is down in the dumps again.  Some argue it’s the worst since the Great Depression; others argue that the dot-com bubble of 2000-2002 (a lingering result of the Clinton recession) actually resulted in a worse market than we are seeing today.  But whether you want to use the phrase “worst ever,” or the phrase “really bad,” we can all agree that the current economy is really bad.

The question is, what do we do about it?  And another question – almost as important –  is which of Obama’s two faces should we believe?

I would submit to you that the “private sector” Obama face, the “Reagan face,” is a cartoon drawn on the back of his head to sway the particularly gullible.  But there’s little reason to believe that Obama is a Reagan (who famously said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem” in his first Inaugural Address).  In fact, there’s little reason to even believe that Obama is a 2nd term Clinton (who famously said, “The era of big government is over” in his 2nd Inaugural Adress).  Rather, I would argue that Obama believes that big government is back with a vengeance.

Ronald Reagan would have had a big problem with Obama’s “Only government can” approach to our economic problems.

In what I believe was a giant Freudian TRIP, Obama lectured Wall Street, saying, “There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses. Now’s not that time.”  Presumably Obama means that the time to get profits and bonuses is when bureaucrats like himself decide they should get them.  Which is the European model.  And of course, “now” is never the time.  Sing “Tomorrow” from the musical Annie with me (The profits come out… It’s only a day away!).

In a brief digression, I would argue that there are guys like John Thain who frankly deserve to have their financial testicles cut off.  But then there are the thousands of honest brokers and secretaries who worked 80 hours a week, and whose wages largely depend on bonuses, who should not be destroyed over the bad apples.  And I would also  point out that New York is losing $1 billion in tax revenues due to the reduced bonus money being paid out.

And Obama’s televised January 30 tantrum at Wall Street wasn’t like Reagan at all.

That leaves us with the FDR face.  The face of the Great Depression.

In his article, “Barack Obama and the FDR-Great Depression Myth,” Michael Fumento notes:

Even FDR Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau admitted the New Deal had failed. “We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work,” he declared in 1939. “We have never made good on our promises…I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started…And an enormous debt to boot!”

And the New Deal DID fail.  In fact, not only did it not help the economy, but it actually prolonged the Great Depression by 7 years.  The sad fact of the matter is that there are Great Myths about the Great Depression, as Thomas Sowell notes in his article.  FDR’s New Deal amounted to a costly and collosol failure with great PR.  Only World War II – which put unemployed men “to work” at the front even as it created demand for industrial production and innovation saved us.

While the rest of the world entered depressions, which lasted an average of about two to four years, the United States’ depression was the Great Depression because it just went on and on and on as FDR tried one massive government bureaucratic solution after another.  Death by bureaucracy is a painful, lingering death indeed.

Fumento argues, “The grotesque reality is that it wasn’t an American aristocrat who led us out of the Great Depression but a monstrous Austrian corporal.”  That is because our economy was being so disasterously managed due to continual government intrustion that this country was sunk into a cycle that it never would have been able to get out of on its own.

My question is, ‘Do we really want to be faced with the prospect of relying upon the global thermonuclear holocaust of a World War III to get us out of the next Great Depression as Obama’s bureaucratic solutions fail one after another?’

The euphemistically-named American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act will cost Taxpayers at least $1.2 Trillion with interest – and that’s if the current $819 billion plan doesn’t balloon even further.  Meanwhile, it isn’t going to get any cheaper under Obama.  “Potentially we’ve got trillion-dollar deficits for years to come, even with the economic recovery that we are working on,” Obama has said.  Michelle Malkin noted that the word “even” should be replaced with the word “because.”  She says, “Washington will saddle future generations with unprecedented debt because of the economic recovery interventions Obama is planning, not despite them.”  And she has therefore re-dubbed the bailout “the Generational Theft Act of 2009.”

Most of the spending won’t take place until more than a year from now, and half of it won’t occur until over two years from now.

Assuming enactment in mid-February, CBO estimates that the bill would increase outlays by $92 billion during the remaining several months of fiscal year 2009, by $225 billion in fiscal year 2010 (which begins on October 1), by $159 billion in 2011, and by a total of $604 billion over the 2009-2019 period.

And if it’s not bad enough that most of the money won’t start becoming available until the 2010 election season (coincidence?), a whopping chunk of the money isn’t even stimulative.

Furthermore, the Obama “economic recovery act” will allow illegal immigrants to collect the same checks as citizens.  You might like that, but I sure don’t.

The Cato Institute has a video presentation (accessed via HotAir) outlining past failures of government spending to “stimulate” the economy, and notes that the Bush administration both massively expanded government spending, and offered several “stimulus” packages – all to no avail.

From Hot Air:

If government spending stimulated national economies, as Obama proposes, then “North Korea would be Nirvana,” Mitchell [Dan Mitchell from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity] exclaims.  In fact, we don’t have to go to those extremes to see the end result of massive government spending and jacked-up taxation.  All we need to do is study Western Europe, which has stagnated for years on those policies, and Eastern Europe, which has thrived on low tax rates and better fiscal discipline.

Having a two-faced President is never good, but it’s particularly bad if he wears the worst possible face at the worst possible time.  I don’t have a crystal ball, but I don’t need one to predict that if Obama puts his FDR face on, this economy – as well as our ancestors – will be paying for his mistakes for years to come.

A couple more articles:

Investors Tell Obama What They Think Of His Presidency

Renowned Economic Forecaster Says US Headed For Total Collapse