by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Last week the president\u00a0gave a speech on the deficit<\/a>\u00a0[1], rightly trying to convince Americans that it is now beyond unsustainable. Yet his theme was that the Republicans\u2019 attempts to reduce it were cold-hearted, endangering the most vulnerable among us, such as those with Down\u2019s Syndrome, while protecting the proverbial \u201crich\u201d from commensurate sacrifice. Let us, then, look at Obama, and the context of his speech, as a doctor might a patient.<\/p>\n Symptoms of the Illness<\/strong><\/p>\n a) Obama just introduced a $3.5 trillion dollar budget with a $1.6 annual deficit \u2014 both record numbers. (If worried about debt, why then run up more record debt, if not by design to ensure higher taxes and larger deficit-run government?)<\/p>\n b) Obama ignored so far all the recommendations of his own blue-chip debt committee. (Why appoint an honorific committee that is to be humiliated?)<\/p>\n c) Obama demonized his opponents in precisely the manner that he had earlier warned against, both in his calls for a new civility following the Giffords shooting, and in promising not to demagogue cuts to entitlements in cheap partisan fashion. (Does his entire audience suffer from amnesia?)<\/p>\n d) Obama wants now to raise taxes on the \u201crich,\u201d though right after the elections he had agreed that these hikes were a bad idea in such uncertain times. (An unwise idea in December is a needed one in April?)<\/p>\n e) Obama warns against shutting down the government in protest of unsustainable debt, though that is precisely what he voted for as a senator in 2006, when the deficit was about 1\/5 of what it is now. (A Senator Obama would have been a President Obama\u2019s worst nightmare?)<\/p>\n f) Obama said that neither he nor Warren Buffett needed another tax cut, although Buffett is the second richest man in America, who pays less a percentage of his income than most of those who make above the dreaded $250,000 \u2014 and Barack Obama is the country\u2019s most privileged American who pays for virtually none of his own expenses. (The average optometrist really earns like Buffett and has no expenses like Obama?)<\/p>\n g) Obama still talks about ObamaCare, but has given 1,000 exemptions from it, often to those interests who were most for it. (If he exempted the entire state of Maine, could he just do the same for the other 49 and call it a victory?)<\/p>\n Diagnosis of the Malady<\/strong><\/p>\n a) An erratic, unengaged president is bored with the work part of the job, enjoying far more the golf, attention, influence, and perks (despite not getting a \u201ccool\u201d phone system with a drop-down screen in the Oval Office), and so he simply sleepwalks through his speeches, oblivious to the contradictions he presents. (Who cares if his Libyan misadventure contradicts almost everything he said from 2002-10, since he was already on to Rio and praising Brazil for drilling off-shore in a manner we never would. Life is short, but the job cool.) OR<\/p>\n b) The president is cynical and says whatever he wishes without worry of consequences, because based on the past abyss between laurels and achievement (Harvard Law Review<\/em>, offer of Chicago Law School tenure, record in the Senate, Nobel Prize, etc.), he feels exempt from scrutiny and audit. Indeed, he expects that he can always \u201chope and change\u201d or \u201cmillions of green jobs\u201d his way out of any rare, nit-picking journalistic follow-up. (A journalist will always declare him a \u201cgod\u201d even if speech A nullifies speech B a day later). OR<\/p>\n c) The president says, like most, what he must to be elected and now reelected; Guantanamo, renditions, Iraq, tribunals, Predators, preventative detention, public campaign financing, revolving door politics, earmarks, lobbyists, etc. \u2014 these are all just \u201cconstructs\u201d without real absolute truth. They are bad or good, depending on the political calculus at any given time \u2014 a consideration that changes sometimes hourly. So Obama seems to have discovered that what he said to get elected, or even said two weeks ago, he need not say today again or tomorrow. Polls change, so do talking points. (He also knows that 50% of the citizenry\u00a0receive some sort of government money<\/a>\u00a0[2]; almost 50%\u00a0pay no income tax<\/a>\u00a0[3]; and in February more money was redistributed than collected by the Treasury. Therefore most Americans will stick by him whatever he says \u2014 as long as he keeps the money flowing.) OR<\/p>\n d) The president is Machiavellian and, amid his apparent confusion and misdirection, has actually quite adroitly moved the country far to the left since 2009. While his growing number of critics bemoan his inconsistency, disingenuousness, ill-preparedness, contradictions, and lack of persistence, Obama looks only to the fact that the nation in the last 30 months has come to look more like his vision than that of his opponents. (The Left may groan, but they grasp that Obama\u2019s youth, mixed ancestry, charisma, and untraditional candidacy are rare gifts\u00a0that can advance\u00a0<\/a>[4] a once unpopular agenda in a way a McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, or Kerry never could.)<\/p>\n Prognosis<\/strong><\/p>\n None of this symptomology is mutually exclusive, and, in fact, these indications are more likely complementary. Indeed, the president\u2019s speech is a good harbinger of the campaign to come. Contradictions mean nothing. Quite blatant reversals are irrelevant. For Obama to win, our patient simply counts on three therapies in 2012.<\/p>\n 1) All recessions at some point get a little better. The world is now in a so-so recovery. We have printed $5 trillion since Obama was inaugurated. For a short period, say until the end of 2012, such \u201cstimulus\u201d will have a stimulatory, inflationary effect. An upswing comes now; the perfect storm of stagflationary hyper-high-prices, chronic unemployment above 8%, and spiraling interest rates may not take full effect until after the election.<\/p>\n 2) The deficit is indeed unsustainable, and premise #1 is, in fact, endangered by it. So the Republicans will have to deal with it, and thus must bear the charge that they cut Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, while fighting for the Bush \u201ctax cuts.\u201d If the Republicans want to \u201cbalance the budgets on the backs of the poor,\u201d then Obama has no choice but to go to the barricades and stop that Dickensian ruthlessness. So propose a $1.6 deficit, ignore the debt commission, and let the Republicans play Scrooge to his Bob Cratchit.<\/p>\n 3) The electorate is not as it was when it finally sickened of Jimmy Carter in August 1980. Far more are on public assistance, unemployment, Social Security, food stamps, etc., or work for thousands of new state and federal bureaus. There are millions more illegal aliens that have become citizens since the late 1970s. And the voting rolls have expanded exponentially among \u201cnontraditional\u201d voters. Thus, the political calculus about which pundits and talking-heads debate is not always what half the electorate worries about. The national debt, the annual deficit, the problems with ObamaCare, the tax code \u2014 all that matters very little. The key question for millions of voters in 2012 will be simply who ensures that my check arrives unchanged or augmented, and who either stops or reduces it.<\/p>\n File Closed<\/strong><\/p>\n Patient Obama presents us with multifaceted, but now chronic and well-recognized symptoms. They reflect a variety of maladies that nevertheless form an identifiable syndrome. There is no real therapy to be recommended since the illness will have to run its course, with a prognosis that remains uncertain until it resolves one way or another in about two years \u2014 or in late 2012.<\/p>\n URLs in this post: \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Last week the president\u00a0gave a speech on the deficit\u00a0[1], rightly trying to convince Americans that it is now beyond unsustainable. Yet his theme was that the Republicans\u2019 attempts to reduce it were cold-hearted, endangering the most vulnerable among us, such as those with Down\u2019s Syndrome, while protecting the proverbial […]<\/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":[536,619],"tags":[12,42,77,726,257,243,88,40,244,440,560,1020,67,640],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-RK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":115,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/when-big-deficits-became-good\/","url_meta":{"origin":3332,"position":0},"title":"When Big Deficits Became Good","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services As a senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama said that he detested budget deficits. In 2006, when the aggregate national debt was almost $8 trillion less than today, he blasted George W. Bush's chronic borrowing and refused to vote for upping the debt\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":113,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dr-barack-and-mr-obama-on-the-debt-ceiling\/","url_meta":{"origin":3332,"position":1},"title":"Dr. Barack and Mr. Obama on the Debt Ceiling","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Barack Obama once had a lot of insightful things to say about the debt ceiling that transcended the usual political game of voting for debt-ceiling increases when your guy was president and against when he was not \u2014 and even some things that were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economy"","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/economy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6638,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-heed-thyself\/","url_meta":{"origin":3332,"position":2},"title":"Obama, Heed Thyself","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"He used to know some important things. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Republicans and Democrats are still name-calling in their arguments over the government shutdown, out-of-control federal spending, and the implementation of Obamacare. Yet if both sides would agree to just follow the earlier advice of President Obama,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/3544735027_8a0ac7b28a-201x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2488,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-the-president-in-recovery\/","url_meta":{"origin":3332,"position":3},"title":"Is the President in Recovery?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services President Obama does not care much about deficits \u2014 other than worrying that big debt might matter in his re-election campaign. 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\n[1] gave a speech on the deficit:http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748704116404576262871386063668.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion<\/a>
\n[2] receive some sort of government money:\u00a0http:\/\/hotair.com\/archives\/2011\/04\/18\/govt-handouts-exceed-taxes-as-percentage-of-average-household-income-for-first-time-since-1936<\/a>
\n[3] pay no income tax:http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2011\/04\/14\/pf\/taxes\/who_pays_income_taxes\/?cnn=yes<\/a>
\n[4] that can advance :\u00a0http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2010\/10\/04\/president-john-hussein-kerry<\/a><\/p>\n