President
Obama has been reborn as a populist. At a major speech this week in Kansas,
Mr. Obama outlined the themes of his 2012 re-election campaign. He is a champion of the middle class, which he claims is under siege. Their enemies are big business, corporations and the rich.
He chose Osawatomie as the site of his address. It was there in 1910 that President Theodore Roosevelt unveiled his New Nationalism.
Mr. Obama directly linked himself to Teddy Roosevelt. In his view, like Roosevelt, he is battling entrenched special interests. Like Roosevelt, he is calling for shared sacrifice on behalf of social justice. And like Roosevelt, he is a populist reformer who seeks to rein in corporate plutocracy.
There is only one problem with the
White House’s narrative: It’s completely false.
Mr. Obama is not a defender of the middle class but has been its mortal enemy. His policies have impoverished working- and middle-class Americans.
His massive stimulus failed to restore economic recovery. It dispensed hundreds of billions to cronies and political constituencies - public-sector unions, government bureaucracies and the green lobby. His trillion-dollar deficits and skyrocketing debt have mortgaged the future of our children. Our $15 trillion national debt threatens to bankrupt the country, ensuring years of austerity, painful budget cuts and crippling taxes. Obamacare suffocates businesses, stifles job creation and adds another unsustainable entitlement. It is creeping socialized medicine, which is wrecking the world’s finest health care system.
In addition, his administration’s anti-business regulations - discouraging offshore oil drilling, sanctioning
Boeing for building a big plant in South Carolina, onerous labor and environmental mandates - and virulent class warfare have undermined economic growth. His cynical decision to delay the
Keystone XL pipeline has cost more than 20,000 jobs. The private sector - the engine of prosperity and upward mobility - has been savaged by bureaucratic sadism. If
Mr. Obama truly cared for working Americans, he would end his experiment in European-style socialism.
Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, rightly said that debauching the currency was one of “the surest means to destroy capitalism.” Nothing destroys middle-class savings and consumer purchasing power better than inflation. It is the silent thief.
Mr. Obama’s spending-and-borrowing orgy has led to the massive printing of money. The
Federal Reserve, under his direct encouragement, has systematically reduced the value of the dollar. The result is growing inflation and the steady erosion of America’s standard of living. For
Mr. Obama to claim he is a populist - a tribune of the 99 percent against the hated 1 percent - is akin to Madonna declaring she is the defender of chastity.
Moreover, Roosevelt was a real opponent of industrial capitalism’s excesses. He was a trust-buster, breaking up numerous monopolies. He brought the powerful railroad conglomerates to heel. He was a genuine populist.
Mr. Obama, however, demonizes corporations and millionaires and billionaires, attacking them rhetorically in order to galvanize his liberal base. Yet he is in bed with them politically. He has bailed out Wall Street, the big banks, major insurance companies and the financial sector. In fact, the Dodd-Frank law enshrines the pernicious principle of “too big to fail” - guaranteeing that the federal government will prop up major banks and financial institutions with taxpayer funds.
Mr. Obama’s crony corporatism is embodied in two words:
Timothy Geithner. The treasury secretary has protected his former friends at Goldman Sachs as well as perpetuate bailouts. Contrary to myth, some of
Mr. Obama’s biggest supporters and fundraisers come from Wall Street. He attacks them in speeches, but he loves taking their money.
He is a classic liberal hypocrite.
