First off, he's not a child. He's young, granted, but not so young that he doesn't recognize his limitations. He's also shrewed, and so he'll make sure to surround himself with the best people he can muster; he can't afford to look bad. His inner circle, you can bet, will be very strong and immanently qualified.
Second, chances are he's going to run in 2012 and he's made an awful lot of moderate promises. He has the "gift," the "Jedi mind trick" as Mary Catherine Ham calls it (mmm...ham...): whenever evidence is presented regarding prior statements, prior acquaintances, prior voting records, he merely states that it is "untrue" and, largely, people believe it. If someone produced evidence that he's from a Martian colony about one hundred miles from the Olympus Mons base camp and green, slimy tentacles spurted from beneath his off-white shirt, he'd simply retort: "No, there's no truth to that whatsoever...by the way, McCain has voted with Bush over 90 percent of the time! Now does anyone know where I can find some tungsten?" Through that, he has seemed to cast his more extreme views aside and convinced a majority of the public as to his, well, sanity. With that, coming across as of sound, reasonable mind, feeling people's pain and understanding their plight (i.e. trying to appease at least 50% of the population) he cannot afford to take a strong ultra-left stance on just about anything. Something may get by, and he may even use his "Jedi mind trick" to get away with one or two, but he really can't to much more than that if he wants to have a prayer in 2012. And the one or two that he could get away with cannot be shoot-the-moon, big-ticket items, either. Sneak in strict government oversight of health insurance? sure; re-enact the Revenue Act of 1932? asinine, but possible; repeal the second amendment and force the general populace into communal apartments? not likely.
On top of that, the rest of his party want their chances, too, in 2012 as well as the midterm elections in 2010. If he were to go too crazy I'm pretty sure that enough Democrats would reach across the aisle and, at a minimum, support a censure resolution to temper him just enough to get through a couple more election cycles. Same, really, applies for 2014 if he were re-elected. That leaves two years where he could go crazy, which is scarcely enough time for anything serious to happen. And pretty sure the Party is going to want their cake in 2016, too, so I'm not too worried.
That's not to say that some really drastic changes may not be in the works. It is very plausible that he could try to levy some Hoover-style tax increases, and if he's studied even a tiny bit of Great Depression history, he knows that is a catastrophic mistake. Even so, his wealth distribution is likely a bit more remarkable than Hoover's Revenue Act. In 1932 the tax rate was raised across the table on an ascending scale. Obama's basically puts the burden only on a fraction of the population...unfortunately, it's the portion that largely drives the economy. But, and I'm no real economist here (I can add, and I can figure out a lot of variables if I have at least a modicum of information), I sense his plan turning out more FDR-style than anything: whatever legislation he and a democratic congress pass won't solve the problem, but it won't make it a whole lot worse, either. So there will likely be some shake-up, but in the end nothing much worse than where we are now; things seem to be stabilizing, though there may be fluctuations (either or both directions) for awhile, but nothing too drastic, at least not in the greater scheme of things. Plus his wealth distribution "benefits" the vast majority of Americans, at least on the surface: the electorate, at large, will be pacified.
Then again, I could be horribly, horribly wrong; it has happened before.Still, I'm not too worried. We, as a nation, have elected socialists in the past and we're still here today to reflect upon it.
Which is another glorious factor to consider. Think, for a moment, about all the propaganda out there, all the signs that exist what tell us that this man may, possibly, try to rule this nation in a Lenin-fashioned elitist style. Some friends went to a local Obama rally and returned with Che-style t-shirts (quite frightening, actually) in olive drab with Obama appearing as Che...well, you get the idea; I can't, for the life of me, find a copy on a Google image search! Anyway, from those shirts to the Soviet-style signs...well, nothing exists in a vacuum, and someone, somewhere (Obama, a campaigner, someone) felt inclined to include those as campaign materiel. It is quite possible that there is a distinct and vapid (at least for me) shock about to take place, and there is evidence to support that theory. If so, in the face of such evidence, then the United States is about to grasp that pendulum and swing wildly, and all within the guise of the established system. In the time that we've been a nation some countries have moved from Monarchy to occupied territory to autonomous, democratic nation, to fascism, to socialism, often with horrible hinge factors at each turn. In this country it has happened before, and it could be happening again; but only twice has blood been seriously spilt; once over an eight year span in order to gain our independence, and again 78 years later in what would become a "doozey" of a brawl. We have not been a country where every generation has been touched by open revolt! And, if some pundit's predictions come to pass in the next 24 hours, we won't here, either.
So take me for what I am...a young(ish) guy, possibly trying to calm himself down with stories of..."hope."
1 comments:
I'm going to paraphrase something I found somewhere else - unfortunately, I don't remember where, otherwise I would credit it:
"Half of the country is going to vote for McCain because they hope he'll do what he says he'll do. The other half is going to vote for Obama because they hope he won't do what he says he'll do."
Lucky for us that campaign promises are meant to be broken, eh?
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