by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n We can have a rational debate on any one item on President Obama\u2019s vast progressive agenda, arguing whether adjectives like \u201cstatist\u201d or \u201csocialist\u201d fairly describe his legislative intent. But connect all the dots and lines of the past year, and an unambiguous image starts to materialize.<\/p>\n New Programs<\/strong><\/p>\n The problem is not individual legislation, whether passed or proposed, involving the gamut of issues: healthcare, bailouts, stimuli, education loans, amnesty, cap and trade. Rather, the rub is these acts in the aggregate.<\/p>\n The president promises a state fix for healthcare; then student loans; and next energy. There are to be subsidies, credits, and always new entitlements for every problem, all requiring hordes of fresh technocrats and Civil Service employees. Like a perpetual teenager, who wants and buys but never produces, the president is focused on the acquisitive and consumptive urges, never on the productive \u2014 as in how all his magnanimous largesse is to be paid for by someone else.<\/p>\n That Medicare and Social Security are near insolvency, or soon will be; that the Postal Service and Amtrak are running in the red; that a day at the DMV, county-hospital emergency room, or zoning department doesn\u2019t inspire confidence in the matrix of unionized government workers and large unaccountable bureaucracies \u2014 all this is lost on the Obama administration.<\/p>\n Utility means nothing. So long as the next proposed program enlarges a dependent constituency and is financed by the \u201crich\u201d through higher taxes and more debt, it is, de facto, necessary and good. Equality of result is to be achieved both by giving more to some and by taking even more from others.<\/p>\n Taxes<\/strong><\/p>\n The same pattern emerges when it comes to taxes. Most Americans could live with Obama\u2019s plan to return to the Clinton tax rates of about 40 percent on the top brackets. But that promise is never made in a vacuum. Instead, there is an additional, almost breezy pledge to lift caps on income subject to Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes \u2014 15.3 percent in some cases \u2014 on top of the income-tax increase.<\/p>\n At other times, an idea like a\u00a0new healthcare surcharge is tossed about \u2014 on top of the previous proposals for payroll- and income-tax increases. That new bite likewise, in isolation, perhaps is not too scary. But Obama is planning these 1-2-3 increases at a time when most of the states are already upping their own income-tax rates \u2014 in some cases to over 10 percent.<\/p>\n Once again, Obama never honestly connects the dots and comes clean with the American people about the net effect: On vast swaths of upper income, new state and federal taxes \u2014 aside from any rises in sales, property, capital-gains, or inheritance taxes \u2014 could confiscate an aggregate of 65 to 70 percent.<\/p>\n These proposals thus raise the question: Exactly what sort of total tax bite does the president think is fair for those making more than $200,000 or $250,000? Can the citizen be allowed to retain 45, 40, 35, or 30 percent of his income? And if, with combined governments starting to take 60 to 70 percent of income through the various tax increases, we still have record annual budget deficits, how much higher should these high taxes go to prevent national insolvency? Eighty percent? Ninety? One hundred?<\/p>\n Perhaps we could have a rate of 110 percent: Those who make $250,000 might pay a redemptive $275,000 to the government on the theory that in the Bush era they \u201cmade out like bandits.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLet Me Be Perfectly Clear\u2026\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Then there is Obama\u2019s chronic dissimulation. Most Americans were indifferent rather than outraged when Obama became the first presidential candidate to renounce public campaign financing in the general election \u2014 despite both earlier promises that he would not, and later crocodile tears over the Supreme Court\u2019s rollback of some public-financing rules.<\/p>\n Perhaps most Americans also were only mildly irked that Obama demagogued the Bush anti-terror protocols during the campaign, only to continue unchanged precisely those practices that he had most fiercely railed against \u2014 tribunals, renditions, Predators, the continuing presence in Iraq.<\/p>\n And perhaps most Americans did not believe Obama when he promised to close Guantanamo within a year and to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York \u2014 and they were right. These too were isolated Obama untruths.<\/p>\n Then some of us were troubled that Obama had once decried passage of healthcare reform by mere 51 percent majorities \u2014 only to do precisely that last weekend. Candidate Obama likewise damned the use of executive orders to countermand legislative action \u2014 and then did just that on matters of abortion and Obamacare. Chalk it up to the Chicago style of the ends justifying any means necessary.<\/p>\n So was anyone surprised that the healthcare bill did not sit on the president\u2019s desk for five days before the signing, as he once bragged would be the new administration\u2019s policy, for reasons of transparency? And wasn\u2019t that reminiscent of his continued, but reneged on, pledges to air all the healthcare debates on C-SPAN?<\/p>\n I could go on and on, but again the pattern is clear. Each time Obama prevaricates, we grant him an exemption because of his lofty rhetoric about bipartisanship and his soothing words about unity. Only later do we notice that in retrospect each untruth is part of a pattern of dissimulation within just a single year of governance. Obama has proven so far that in fact one can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time.<\/p>\n Abroad<\/strong><\/p>\n In foreign policy, Americans were okay with one bow to the Saudi king \u2014 until they saw a deeper bow to the Japanese emperor. One so-so apology was then followed by many more embarrassing\u00a0meae culpae<\/em>. His reaching out to Ch\u00e1vez was only one link in a chain that included Cuba, Libya, Syria, and Iran. We thought his serial gratuitous rudeness to Britain in matters of protocol was an aberration \u2014 until it proved to be the norm with the Czech Republic, Israel, Honduras, Poland, and the Dalai Lama. Smackdowns by Russia might have seemed singular, until China followed in suit.<\/p>\n One perhaps can forgive erstwhile Obama adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski\u2019s stupid hypothetical speculation about shooting down Israeli planes over Iraq. And maybe the nominations of Charles Freeman and Samantha Power \u2014 not known as friends to Israel \u2014 were of no importance. Some raised an eyebrow, too, over Obama\u2019s past close affinities with the anti-Semitic Reverend Jeremiah Wright and anti-Israelis like Bill Ayers and Rashid Khalidi. But finally, the most recent outreach to the terrorist regimes in Damascus and Tehran, when juxtaposed with the hysterics over a few apartment buildings in Jerusalem, has cemented the notion that Obama really has radical ideas about altering the traditional American support for the Jewish state.<\/p>\n In other words, again, connect these seemingly isolated dots and a picture emerges of a new radical foreign policy of \u201cneutralism.\u201d Traditional allies are ignored, and old enemies are courted \u2014 until both are on the same moral and political plane. The one constant is that a socialist anti-Western philosophy abroad (which blames the West for a nation\u2019s own self-inflicted misery) wins sympathy with the Obama administration, while capitalist Western culture is seen as mostly pass\u00e9.<\/p>\n In any isolated circumstance, we are willing to give the president of the United States a pass on a particular disturbing decision. But after 14 months of them, the Obama particulars add up to a remaking of America that is now clear and consistent: Grow government; redistribute income; establish permanent political constituencies of dependents; increase entitlements; hike taxes; demonize \u201cthem\u201d while deifying their supposed victims; seek global neutrality abroad; and always play fast and loose with the truth.<\/p>\n What do we end up with?<\/p>\n You might call it: Chicago does socialism.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Connect the dots of Obama’s first year–an ugly picture emerges. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online We can have a rational debate on any one item on President Obama\u2019s vast progressive agenda, arguing whether adjectives like \u201cstatist\u201d or \u201csocialist\u201d fairly describe his legislative intent. But connect all the dots and lines of the past […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[608],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-sf","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1846,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/mr-president-words-matter\/","url_meta":{"origin":1751,"position":0},"title":"Mr. President, Words Matter","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 7, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama, the rhetorician, learns people take a man at his word. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online What is Barack Obama\u2019s real problem? Too many people here and abroad took him at his word, and he now seems quite angry at that. For two years Obama serially damned the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2010"","block_context":{"text":"February 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/february-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1888,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-the-great-and-growing-backlash\/","url_meta":{"origin":1751,"position":1},"title":"Why the Great and Growing Backlash?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"What Scott Brown's election portends for the Obama Agenda by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Dream up a gargantuan backlash against Barack Obama\u2019s left-wing gospel, and you still could not invent the notion of a relatively unknown, conservative Scott Brown knocking off an Obama-endorsed, liberal, female attorney in liberal\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2010"","block_context":{"text":"January 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/january-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1877,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-populist-president\/","url_meta":{"origin":1751,"position":2},"title":"Our Populist President?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Obama and Populism I could believe President Obama\u2019s postmortem take that the same populist sentiment that propelled Scott Brown to office also earlier sent him to the White House \u2014 if we saw fresh liberal Democrats winning seats in places like Alabama against entrenched\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2010"","block_context":{"text":"January 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/january-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2270,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/desperately-seeking-a-healthcare-bill\/","url_meta":{"origin":1751,"position":3},"title":"Desperately Seeking a Healthcare Bill","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Speeding Over the Cliff It is quite amazing to watch Obama invoke God, call a joint session of Congress, go tit-for-tat with the town-hall movement, and reprogram daily the presidential message over the healthcare initiative \u2014 all in the midst of a recession. The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2009"","block_context":{"text":"September 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/september-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2290,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-address-to-congress-didnt-quite-do-it\/","url_meta":{"origin":1751,"position":4},"title":"Obama’s Address to Congress Didn’t Quite Do It","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Obama\u2019s problem with warning Americans about bickering, partisan politics, lying, and misrepresentation Wednesday night is that his green advisor Van Jones just left after it was disclosed that he called Republicans \u201ca\u2013holes\u201d, whites polluters\/more prone to mass murder in schools, and charged the former\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2009"","block_context":{"text":"September 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/september-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2129,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/where-has-the-thrill-gone\/","url_meta":{"origin":1751,"position":5},"title":"Where Has the Thrill Gone?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 24, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Harder They Fall? Who appointed over 40 ambassadors on the sole basis of campaign contributions, or has as many lobbyists in government as did any President in memory? And who releases touchy news \u2014 whether increased unemployment or trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2009"","block_context":{"text":"November 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/november-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1751"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1752,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1751\/revisions\/1752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}