Barack Obama: America's Putin?
Filed under: US Elections
Economics guru Robert Samuelson launches a truly devastating attack on Barack Obama, winner of last night's election contests in Hawaii and Wisconsin, in the Washington Post. Samuelson writes: "If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems." He accuses him of proposing "standard goody-bag politics" even as he decries such tactics. Then he guts him like a fish on economic policy:
A favorite Obama line is that he will tell "the American people not just what they want to hear but what we need to know." Well, he hasn't so far. Consider the retiring baby boomers. A truth-telling Obama might say: "Spending for retirees -- mainly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- is already nearly half the federal budget. Unless we curb these rising costs, we will crush our children with higher taxes. Reflecting longer life expectancies, we should gradually raise the eligibility ages for these programs and trim benefits for wealthier retirees. Both Democrats and Republicans are to blame for inaction. Waiting longer will only worsen the problem." Instead, Obama pledges not to raise the retirement age and to "protect Social Security benefits for current and future beneficiaries." This isn't "change"; it's sanctification of the status quo. He would also exempt all retirees making less than $50,000 annually from income tax. By his math, that would provide average tax relief of $1,400 to 7 million retirees -- shifting more of the tax burden onto younger workers. Obama's main proposal for Social Security is to raise the payroll tax beyond the present $102,000 ceiling.
I can't help noticing the similarities between Obama and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Both, at the time of seeking power, were totally lacking in credentials. Both have relied upon the formation of creepy personality cults. And Obama, like Putin, has not been tested in the crucible of real criticism, as his fellow Democratic candidates have cravenly refused to engage him for fear of alienating the party's African-American voter base (though at least Obama did stand on the stage for debates while Putin didn't even have the courage to mount it a single time, and Obama faced TV spots which at least mentioned him in some way critically, while Putin never saw one such attack).
In all his rhetoric about telling America what it doesn't want to hear and doing what's "best" for the country, we hear the classic left-wing manifesto, which basically ends up meaning "if you want to save the people, you've got to kill them." In words, Obama is going to do what's "right" for us whether we want it or not, and if anybody gets in his way, well then . . . he'll handle them the way FDR handled the Supreme Court and the Japanese. After all, it's for our own good.
Obama's wife recently said that she hasn't been proud of America for one single second in her whole life, not until it started supporting her husband for president. So she was ashamed all through the Carter presidency, and through the Clinton years ("America's first black president"). She can't be proud of America, in other words, unless she gets what she wants.
That sounds eerily Putinian to me too.
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