Obama's 'Balanced' Approach
by Thomas Sowell
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Barack Obama's
political genius is his ability to say things that will sound good
to people who have not followed the issues in any detail – regardless
of how obviously fraudulent what he says may be to those who have.
Shameless effrontery can be a huge political asset, especially if
uninformed voters outnumber those who are informed.
President Obama's
big pitch in his Monday night televised talk was that what is needed
to deal with the national debt crisis is a "balanced" approach –
not just spending cuts but revenue increases as well.
What could
sound more reasonable – especially to those who have not been following
what Obama has actually been doing and not doing? This is the same
Barack Obama who, earlier this year, called for a "clean" increase
in the national debt ceiling.
In this context,
the soothing word "clean" referred to an increase in the national
debt ceiling without any provisos. That is, no spending cuts at
all. In other words, a blank check to keep spending. How balanced
is that?
Another word
that sounds good to people who don't stop and think is "fair." President
Obama says that he only wants the wealthiest Americans to pay their
"fair share." But he says zilch about just what that fair share
is, or even how to determine it.
Is the "fair
share" of the top 10 percent of income-earners 20 percent of all
taxes? 40 percent? 60 percent? Those who talk about paying a "fair
share" of taxes don't want to be pinned down.
This is another
blank check that Obama wants. "Fair share" in plain English means
"more," regardless of how large a share of all income taxes is already
being paid by a fraction of the population, while nearly half pay
no income taxes at all.
What President
Obama says may not make any sense if you stop and think about it
– which he of course assumes that most people will not do. But that
does not mean that he is a confused man. He is crystal clear in
what he is doing, however confusing his words may be to others.
At the heart
of the political games being played in Washington is taking credit
and putting blame on the other guy. That is the game that Obama
played flawlessly in his speech.
It began by
referring to the increased government spending that had been going
on for a decade – in other words, before Barack Obama reached the
White House. It is true that President George W. Bush had a record
amount of deficit spending. But what is also true is that President
Obama's deficit spending has broken Bush's record.
While Obama
seldom misses an opportunity to blame his problems on the situation
he inherited from President Bush, he says nothing about all the
hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus money he inherited from
the Bush administration. Incidentally, this "stimulus" money did
not do any more stimulating under George W. Bush than under Barack
H. Obama.
Nevertheless,
Obama is an accomplished master at playing the blame game. Having
gotten all the political credit for the money he has showered on
his favorites from coast to coast, he now seeks to share the blame
for the resulting financial crisis with Republicans, by maneuvering
them into a position where they have to help solve the debt crisis
that Obama created.
He
has done this in great part by simply speaking of spending cuts
mostly in the abstract, leaving it to the Republicans to be specific,
and thus have them face the wrath from the constituencies who support
the programs they want to cut.
However one
might criticize President Obama's policies in terms of their effect
on the American economy, those policies can turn out to be very
successful in the terms that matter most to him – namely, his own
re-election.
A Washington
Post-ABC poll shows that while 52 percent of the public disapprove
of Obama's handling of the economy, 65 percent disapprove of the
Republicans' handling of it.
The Republicans
lost control of Congress in the 2006 elections. Whether the Republicans'
ideas are good, bad or indifferent, they have not been able to pass
economic legislation – or any other kind of legislation – for more
than four long years.
Yet Obama is
still ahead in the blame game.
July
28, 2011
Thomas
Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other
Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators
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