WASHINGTON — Jimmy Carter is redeemed! The grinning dunce of
yesteryear, who grew into the anile doddering figure of today
lecturing the civilized on all manner of statecraft,
has been replaced by the saturnine gaunt prophet, Barack Obama. His
sorry performance these past four years he lays to the
administration of George W. Bush. The next four years will be a
replay of the last four years, and an even graver crisis will
confront us then with the domestic economy in a funk and foreign
potentates all laughing at us.
The Prophet Obama has demonstrated that you can preside over a
wobbly economy and be reelected. Apparently it is not “the economy,
stupid,” as James Carville told us. You can suffer a foreign policy
disaster (and in the midst of a campaign) and it will be ignored.
Jimmy could have been reelected in 1980 if it were not for the
miracle of Ronald Reagan. Had the Republicans nominated a perfectly
nice man, say a successful businessman who earned a fortune as
large as John F. Kennedy or Franklin D. Roosevelt inherited, Jimmy
would have won reelection and the economy would have continued to
founder in stagflation and he would have been sending helicopters
out into the desert to be destroyed; possibly he would be sending
the fleet to be destroyed.
Our President has offered us nothing during this election that
is different from the past four years. That is amazing. He sees
trillion-dollar debt for as far as the eye can see. The debt will
be 20 trillion dollars when he leaves office and still climbing.
Then it will be someone else’s problem. Yet President Obama will
not be inert. He will raise taxes and other costs on the rich. It
will not affect the deficits much. It will slow growth. Yet he will
be delivering on his message to the embittered in his coalition
that he has made the rich pay more, the rich that already pay 59
percent of the income tax. Withal he will institutionalize the
portion of the GDP that the federal government accounts for at some
25 percent. The norm prior to his arrival at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue had been closer to 18 percent. He is bringing the
efficiencies of the post office to mainstream American life.
Michael Barone, writing in the Washington Examiner,
says America is now “two countries, not on speaking terms.” He
writes, “One America tends to be traditionally religious,
personally charitable, appreciative of entrepreneurs and suspicious
of government. The other tends to be secular or only mildly
religious, less charitable on average, skeptical of business and
supportive of government as an instrument to advance liberal
causes.” This was an election that pitted these two cultures
against one another.
There is another element that I would factor into Barone’s
calculation. The second America is rampant with hypocrisy. Its
components have given me something to laugh at for years. For
instance, there are the delusional women (usually single) who
apparently see themselves as luscious targets of libidinous ecstasy
from the male of the species and occasionally from the female of
the species. They must have, as a matter of rights (thitherto
overlooked in the Bill of Rights), free contraception devices of
all kinds. It is a very serious matter. In fact, it is a matter of
national security. Then there are the cultural liberals. What
enthusiasm they are advancing today is a matter of no particular
blueprint or scheme of any kind. They are sometimes for freedom,
say, legalization of marijuana or, who knows, heroin. They are at
other times for government coercion, say, cap and trade, the sale
of pop in 32 oz. containers. They follow only one
unvarying value with regard to their ongoing projects, disturbing
their neighbors, disturbing the peace. In most criminal codes that
is a misdemeanor.
There are others in this coalition that Obama brought together
in this election. One is the union member, not the can-do kind of
American blue-collar worker but the congenitally angry covetous
type, at times the thug. Another is the college-age student. The
student is among my favorite seekers of more government. All of
them are going to be paying for Obama’s excesses for years to come
and living in an economy with slow growth. Frankly the older grayer
Americans have lived prosperous lives, but these stupid youths are
just setting out in life. They will pay the older citizens’ Social
Security and healthcare for years. It will not be very good
healthcare but it will be better healthcare than stupid youths will
eventually see.
That is unless in 2016 or preferably 2014 the conservative wave
that we saw at the Republican convention can come in and save the
economy. We have seen one of their kind on the campaign trail in
2012, Congressman Paul Ryan. Along with him will come Senator Kelly
Ayotte, senator-elect Ted Cruz, Congressman Sean Duffy, Governor
Nikki Haley, Governor Bobby Jindal, Governor Susana Martinez,
Senator Rand Paul, Senator Marco Rubio, Congressman Tim Scott, and
Governor Scott Walker. Doubtless, there are others. The talent of
the oncoming Republicans is inspiring. Against them I have read
that Joe Biden is in the running and Hillary Clinton. Apparently
there is not much competition from the Democrats. Already the
Republicans can count on 30 governorships. They have not lost a
sitting governorship in five years.
