Apologies in advance for breaking the 11th Commandment (Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican) but honesty demands that we compare Barack Obama to Warren G. Harding. We warned before the election that we were electing a Harding, meaning a machine politician with zero ideas, zero experience, and tremendous potential for problems. We got something worse.
Harding, who incidentally figured out very soon that he was unfit mentally for the presidency, actually worked with a Republican Congress to craft economic policies that ended a post World War I recession. How did this happen? The GOP had stepped in to force him to select competent men for his Cabinet. He got statesmen and individuals who had found success in the private sector in the most important positions instead of political hacks. They did well despite him. In the end he was undone by some of his old machine buddies, but he died before the scandal could break.
Obama has blundered through his first month of the presidency. The stock market gains of the Bush era are gone. While Mexico dissolves, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton goes to our former enemies to beg for hard currency to finance the Democratic Porkulus package. The United States has lost the respect that Bush worked so carefully to build for eight years. We send $900 million to the Palestinians to rebuild Gaza while Keyser STILL waits for $9 million to rebuild its water treatment facility. The kindest commentators call Obama's transition "amateur hour" while the most critical describe a "deer in the headlights look." Meanwhile the president tells us we have everything in the world to fear and hopes to goodness something happens before he loses his friendly Congress in 2010.
The only positive of the last four weeks is that Americans have lost their faith that the federal government can solve all problems. Democratic leadership has undone the myth they have tried to cultivate since the 1930s. Every day, people are understanding what conservatives have taught all along. The federal government is not the answer, but it generally is the problem. Every move Obama and his administration makes solidifies that conviction. It is time for the states and the people to step forward and take the initiative. The federal government has failed. Let us get back to state sovereignty and individual initiative.
Let's rephrase that olf campaign question from 1984. Are you better off than you were four weeks ago?
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