Barack Obama promised during this campaign for president that one of the hallmarks of his administration if (when?) he was elected would be a commitment to greater transparency. His campaign website even contained specific language to this effect:
Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.
He has of course broken this promise, along with numerous others. Yet, on some level he has made good on his promise to be transparent, if inadvertently.
Turns out the president is a much better campaigner than he is a poker player. Repeatedly, throughout his young administration, he has tipped his hand, making his true agenda quite transparent indeed to anyone willing to see through his impassioned spiel.
Thomas Sowell explores the disparity between the president’s words and deeds in his syndicated column today. Sowell notes, for example, that Obama “tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation’s medical care before the August recess — for a program that would not take effect until 2013!”
It doesn’t take a degree from Harvard Law School to see through this bit of political chicanery and recognize the motivation behind it. If health care reform was so critical to the health of the flagging economy, as Obama repeatedly claimed it was, then why not have the plan become effective as soon as possible? Why postpone the date when the legislation takes effect until 2013? Surely, the plan could be set up and funded in a shorter time frame than that.
Could it be more obvious that Obama timed the effective date to occur after the 2012 election? That way, if the plan turned out to be as much a dog as his stimulus package, the American electorate wouldn’t know it until after he was re-elected.
Speaking of his stimulus package, it provides another opportunity to see through the smokescreen Obama has attempted to construct. This legislation actually succeeded in being rushed through Congress, again with warnings of the dire consequences that were sure to ensue if the bill failed to pass. What else does the stimulus package have in common with the proposed health care legislation? The funds set aside for the program will drip, rather than pour, out over a prolonged period, by which time the economy will have most likely righted itself. In the meantime, the federal government has nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars of the taxpayers’ money to play with. And with money, of course, goes power.
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The real plan re Legislation: “The goal from this White House is to have as much nonspecific language passed by Congress in policy areas like health care and the environment and then use Sunstein’s office to put in place the regulatory language called for by Congress that gets us to where we want to be. It may very well be the most important job in this administration, given the lack of success we may have on Capitol Hill,” says a White House source.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
It is obvious that we have a gravely flawed political and economic system here in good the ole exceptional USA. Any political system that can produce BUSH,followed by Obama as the leaders of a great nation is a laughing stock. Our great Capitalism is being devoured by an army of Termites,and we,the voters/citizens,are in admiration of the gorging of the bottom feeders. We are in the land that the great 18th century satirists described,see Book 3 of Gulliver’s Travels,or Pope’s, Dunciad. You’ll be saying to youselves,This place seems so familiar,it’s a Deja Vu again.
September 8th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
@WestWright – That’s an interesting quote, but the only live links that an initial Google search turns up are to blogs that quote it. Apparently, it was originally published in THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR, but the page no longer exists in their archives.
It would be nice to nail down the source as closely as possible, and to get parallel/supporting quotes from mainstream sources.
September 8th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
@RCAR – in the American system, the state is NOT the country, but rather the sometimes cumbersome necessity best kept within much narrower limits. It’s a feature of despotism that the monarch or glorious leader and his army of supporters become indistinguishable from the nation itself – with everyone else effectively their chattel or instruments, to the extent they matter at all.
Bush and Obama are particular excrescences of a political class that has gotten way too big for its britches. The more important the state becomes in the life of the nation, the more we subject our lives to such men. I enjoy Sarah Palin, and I understand that we want heroes and that media culture tends to require a charismatic surface, but I’d just as soon that the next important president is some unlovely and un-beloved patriot who understands that reducing the super-state to a human scale and renewing the bases of a prosperous economy are more important than the cheers and adulation of the masses.
September 8th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
@CK MacLeod — Actually, Colin, it does exist. It’s here, on page 2, last words in the article.
September 8th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
CKM, There never has been an American System except,in the past,we were very good at Crisis Management, and always horrible at planning. There is no way back to”reducing the super-state to a human scale” unless it’s done Soviet Union style via a general collapse. Our bankruptcy ironically is,in one sense, the Conservative’s best friend;that ,likely,is going to reduce the size of the state,however,many Conservatives enjoy having a big State so we can get involved in the affairs of all the other nations,that side of “big state” behavior is going to be difficult to sustain like maintaining 600 some odd military Bases throughout the planet.
September 8th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
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