When you boil down the Obama message for a second term agenda, which is awfully thin gruel after all, it really is nothing more than, “this is the best living standard Americans should feel entitled to, and we should all just be thankful that the government allows us to have what they have allowed over the last four years. It is our fault for having the temerity to set the bar as high as we do. We have all gotten too soft by the spoiling effects of the wealth created by a free market economy, and we have no right to take so much from others around the globe who are so poor, only as a result of our opulence.”
I had coffee this morning with a business associate and friend. As we wrapped things up, our conversation ventured onto the topic of Presidential Politics. He seemed truly puzzled with my insistence that Mitt Romney will win on November 6th. I was truly puzzled with his insistence that the race is indeed over, and that Barack Obama will be taking the oath of office once again come January 20th. Clearly, one of us is missing something that the other sees. The question is, who lives in the bubble, and who is participating in reality.
The problem as I see it, as was driven home to me by this article on HotAir.com, is that much of what Americans in general are paying attention to, is considered completely without perspective. Many times when I write my musings, I will add the phrase, consider these facts against a particular backdrop. This is not bad advice, for any endeavor in which critical thinking should be involved. The problem for Barack Obama is not that two dozen embassies were sacked in September of this year. The problem for Barack Obama is that two dozen embassies were sacked in September of this year due exclusively to his foreign policy directives. The problem for Barack Obama is not that the labor force participation is at its lowest rate since 1932. The problem is that the labor force participation is at its lowest rate since 1932 due exclusively to his disastrous domestic agenda. The problem for Barack Obama is not that he has had trouble getting his message out to a public that largely saw him as some sort of messianic figure. The problem for Barack Obama is that the aforementioned public understands the implications of his messaging, having been inflicted with it for the past four years.
Part of the problem with the liberal take on economics is that we do not in fact live in that vaunted vacuum with which they surround themselves. Adam Smith’s invisible hand has been tried before George W. Bush became President, and it has had near miraculous results. Those results span several centuries, and really have been the only economic system that has seen the lot of the ordinary person improve to the point where those hated class divisions have not only blurred, but almost disappeared. The ideals of Socialism have been tried by several societies during its little over 100 years of existence, and have not succeeded anywhere. In every instance, the divisions between classes have grown more stark, and have become impossible to cross. Americans, in as much as they usually wish to participate in their lives pretty much keeping to themselves, and are not usually motivated to engage in politics, are also able to recognize that their living standards have gotten decidedly worse during the last four years. They are not all that thrilled when the people in charge of America’s business are going around telling everyone to just accept that loss of living standard as the new normal. For those of us who live outside of the vacuum, remembering back to our living standards during the days of Reagan is not such a tall task, or a yesteryear so long ago that it escapes the conscious memory.
During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama let slip the following quote, “Americans can not drive the cars they want, heat their homes to the temperatures they want, eat what they want, and just expect the rest of the wold to allow them to do that, that’s not leadership.” That quote did not receive wide distribution in 2008, and so Barack Obama did not pay the electoral price for it. Barack Obama’s problem in 2012 is that while he was smart enough to not say that this time, his policies have said it loud and clear, and American’s living in that reality, outside of the leftist vacuum, have received the message irrespective of the main stream media’s refusal to cover it.
While life in the vacuum can be comfortable for those who choose to exist there, it has its dangers. One of those dangers is that the people living there tend to believe in things which have no basis in reality. So, when Barack Obama tells himself that Mitt Romney is evil incarnate and not capable of relating to people who do not eat with golden utensils, he has no idea that when Americans get to know Mitt Romney, they’ll see something else entirely. When he tells himself that our private sector economy is coming along just swimmingly, and that people are O.K. with the idea that they should just give up vacations to the beach for ever, so as to not steal resources from the rest of the world, he has no idea that this is in fact not what Americans want.
It has been a long and painful four years, and quite frankly, Americans have never tolerated this level of incompetence all that well. Looking into my crystal ball this morning, I had the race so far at 257 to 201 in favor of Mitt Romney, with New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Nevada remaining as toss ups. With Romney needing only 13 of those elusive electoral votes out of what’s left, I feel much better. Outside of the vacuum, Americans in general have had enough of Barack Obama and his class warfare snake oil shtick. I wish him great success on the lecture circuit, building houses for photo ops.
