This is a good example of bright people doing stupid things. Why a really intelligent fellow like Daniel Hannan ever supposed that Barack Obama from Chicago Illinois (and Columbia University) would be anything other then a radical Socialist is puzzling. Obama despises the U.K. and all other Western nations and democracies so his betrayals of India, the UK, Israel, Colombia. South Korea, Poland, Honduras, and the Czech Republic should not be shocking. Barack Obama did not deceive anyone – too many of those who foolishly voted for him deceived themselves. By the way Mr. Hannan – Obama is not committed to school choice – where did you ever get that idea from?
hat tip – Hot Air
by Daniel Hannan
In three and a half years of blogging, this has been my single most unpopular post. There’s little point, I know, in reminding readers that my support for Barack Obama was qualified; that I simultaneously endorsed GOP Congressional candidates; that I never saw Obama as a messiah and, indeed, was repelled by the millenarian fervour of his supporters. Nor is there much purpose in rehearsing John McCain’s shortcomings. The fact remains that I backed the Democrat.
I was wrong. Not that Obama is without his good points, obviously. His commitment to school choice is unfeigned. His foreign policy has been a jolly sight cheaper than McCain’s would have been. The election of a mixed-race president who opposed the Iraq war has made the USA slightly more popular.
None of these advantages, however, can make up for the single most important fact of Obama’s presidency, namely that the federal government is 30 per cent larger than it was two years ago
This is not entirely Obama’s fault, of course. The credit crunch occurred during the dying days of the Bush administration, and it was the 43rd president who began the baleful policy of bail-outs and pork-barrel stimulus packages. But it was Obama who massively extended that policy against united Republican opposition. It was he who chose, in defiance of public opinion, to establish a state-run healthcare system. It was he who presumed to tell private sector employees what they could earn, he who adopted the asinine cap-and-trade rules, and he who re-federalised social security, thereby reversing the single most beneficial reform of the Clinton years.
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Not that we should feel singled out. The Obama administration has scorned America’s other established friends. It has betrayed Poland and the Czech Republic, whose Atlanticist governments had agreed to accept the American missile defence system at immense political cost, only to find the project cancelled. It has alienated Israel and India. It has even managed to fall out with Canada over its “Buy American” rules and its decision to drill in disputed Arctic waters. Never has there been a worse time to be a US ally.
No one denies that Obama was dealt a rotten economic hand; but he has played it ineptly. His policies are serving to make his country poorer, less free and less respected. And that is a problem for all of us.
Read the rest: I admit it: I was wrong to have supported Barack Obama
Tags: Conservative, Daniel Hannan
