What a Difference a Year Makes

One year ago today President Obama, flush with the success of his Presidential campaign and basking in widespread public admiration, stated the following in his inauguration speech:

. . . We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

. . . [T]hose values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths.

I was impressed with his speech, and said so in these pages:

President Obama deserves our honest support and the benefit of the doubt, at least for now. Let us pray that what he spoke today were not empty words, but wisdom springing from true historical insight and real conviction. Let us hope that in pursuing "change we can believe in," his administration will respect individual freedom, the Constitution, bedrock social institutions, and our free enterprise system. If our new President strays in the future from the lofty vision embodied in his inaugural speech, by trying to exchange our liberties for economic security or our institutions for a "values-free" society pleasing to his far-left supporters, let us be there to remind him of what he said today.

A few people in Massachusetts must have read my post, or my mind, because they delivered a very forceful reminder yesterday in electing Republican Scott Brown to the United States Senate, filling the seat left vacant by the death of Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy. That awful sound you hear from the northeast is Sen. Kennedy's corpse spinning at warp speed in his grave.

It is truly a shame that President Obama has so quickly and dramatically squandered the promise inherent in the election of the first African-American President of the United States. I didn't vote for him because of his patent leftist views and associations, but I shared with many some confidence in his intelligence, presence, apparent thoughtfulness, and reputation for listening to all sides before acting. I thought he might actually help move the country away from partisan rancor and toward a greater civility; that he would act as a bridge between factions and viewpoints and seek the national reconciliation so many discerned in his election; and that he would steer a middle course in order to win the public's trust and the respect he would need to govern effectively.

Boy, was I wrong! And he didn't waste much time dispelling my fantasies. Right from the start of his administration, President Obama and his minions in Congress and the federal bureaucracy made generous use of the arrogant, intimidating, in-your-face tactics characteristic of the Chicago political machine from whence he came. In no respect was this more evident than in the area of "health care" or "health insurance" reform. Instead of commissioning a careful, bipartisan study and discussion of all the options available, the President had his henchmen- and -women in Congress slap together massive, impenetrably complex bills for introduction in the House and Senate--and then pressed for their quick passage without any meaningful analysis, debate, or a chance for lawmakers to even read what they were supposed to approve. When the American public objected to these tactics and confronted their representatives in town hall meetings, questioning the bills' content and cost, they were denounced as racists, Klansmen, Nazis, right-wing extremists, liars, and purveyors of "ignorance and hate." When commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage gave voice to public concerns, they found their names on "enemies lists" and were threatened with muffling through a revival of the "Fairness" Doctrine. When no Republicans in Congress could be made to support the bills and even Democratic members held out against the administration's pressure, the President's gang resorted to bribing the holdouts, cutting deals with special interests, and secret negotiations from which the opposition, the press, and the public were excluded. So much for bipartisanship, civility, and transparency.

But that was just one facet of this off-the-rails administration one year in. Alongside the President's contempt for the will of the majority of the people is his determination to infinitely expand government influence and control over the economy and all aspects of American life. Whining that he inherited from the Bush administration a staggering national debt, budget deficits, and corporate bailouts in the hundreds of billions of dollars, his solution has been to inflate all of these far beyond the obscene levels they had already reached under his predecessor. He now dictates to the biggest corporations, and they all--having taken massive federal bribes--bow to him and his minions. His enourmous "stimulus" packageshave produced no discernible job growth, but have effectively turned the states into federal lickspittles. He has nominated or appointed to powerful government positions people who have expressed deep admiration for communist mass murderers, can't decide what gender they are, or recommend sexually perverted reading materials to children. His idea of protecting national security and enhancing our image abroad is to kowtow--literally--to foreign despots, apologize for our leadership in the world and the way of life our forefathers bought with their blood, and afford admitted terrorists the full panoply of legal rights guaranteed in our court system. He even has the bush-league (no pun intended) arrogance to go to Copenhagen and accept a "peace prize" for which he was nominated less than two weeks after taking office, and to earn which he has done nothing since.

One of President Obama's favorite expressions--repeated ad nauseum in almost every interview and speech he gives--is "make no mistake." He obviously made the mistake of reading the electorate's frustration with the preceding administration as some kind of dramatic leftward shift in American values. Massachusetts voters alerted him to that mistake yesterday. Having had their initial trust in him dashed so quickly and forcefully, I don't think the American people will again make the kind of mistake they did last November.