Barrel Strength

The foibles of the Obama administration make for a titillating read, but it is time to step back and look at the broader canvas.  This administration is working against a backdrop of a severe financial crisis that is widely reported as the worst since 1930s.  It is instructive to recall that that when the NASDAQ bubble popped, with market peaking in March 2000, it was widely compared to the 1929 crash with predictions of catastrophe ahead. For Obama to state that “I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office”, as if no other president had faced similar financially accentuating circumstances is a gross misrepresentation of facts.  It seems some are better qualified to address the issues or are willing to put a better effort into resolving them.

Obama administration has chosen to to ensure that this crisis is not “wasted”.  Earlier Rahm Emanuel said “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things.” Hillary Clinton said the same recently, “Never waste a good crisis … Don’t waste it when it can have a very positive impact on climate change and energy security.”  The mad rush to implement spending programs to affect this change can be better understood when one examines the future political timeline.

The stock market took a sharp downturn in Oct 2008 and Obama was elected in Nov 2008, i.e. very early in the crisis. In contrast, FDR was elected two years after the stock market crash, and thus at a different point in the economic cycle. When FDR was elected, the worst was behind him and he had the wind in his back. In case of Obama, the fate has given him the reins too early in the crisis and he is exacerbating the problem with poor, or in some case no, policy decisions.   This contrast can be seen most vividly in an earlier post.

When elections are held in 2010 the economy is likely to be much worse than it is now.  It is likely that the Democrats will lose a significant number of seats and subsequently will have insufficient votes to pass the desired legislation. Your correspondent believes that this will be an important theme during the upcoming election, just as was noted in a post in the middle of last year, that Republicans were likely to lose a substantial number of seats in the 2008 elections, because several GOP incumbents were retiring.

It is instructive to read how we are perceived by foreigners of the same or similar political traditions. Particularly it is instructive to see how large the actions of Human Rights Commissions in Alberta and Canada appear in the perspective of the United States, and how negatively their behaviour is perceived.