Carter On Steroids
E. Thomas McClanahan, writing in The Kansas City Star:
What we’re seeing in Washington these days is beginning to look like Jimmy Carter II.
Carter, like Barack Obama, started out with the idea of stimulating the economy.
His plan was to give every taxpayer $50, then throw in a few billion for tax cuts and public works programs. Simple, right? Wrong: In Washington, this soon became very complicated. Within a month, the package grew from $20 billion to more than $31 billion – a significant amount in the 1970s.
Special-interest groups piled on. Unions, minorities, the sugar lobby, bankers, shoe manufacturers – all clamored for a piece of the pie, all wanted to know: “Where’s mine?”
In April of his first year in office, Carter finally threw up his hands and scrapped the whole idea. He had dithered for four months. He had nothing to show for the effort. By then he was fatally diminished, his authority substantially eroded.
With the Obama administration, a similar unraveling is well under way and gathering momentum. Voters are increasingly restive. The country is souring on Obama’s gargantuan policy ambitions. The sense is growing that he has grossly overplayed his hand.
I think it is still a bit soon to pronounce Obama’s hard-left agenda dead just yet. Pressure from voters on their elected officials needs to continue. (Actually, the pressure needs to increase still more.) Now is not the time to back off. The only way to stop this leftward march is to convince the Democrats that they face a devastating 2010 election if they continue on their course.
If the pressure keeps up, I fully expect Obama to look more and more like Carter – hopefully with the same results in 2012. But we have to keep after his horrible policies. This is no time to slacken the effort.
Obamantics | Gaius August 9, 2009
By Brett, August 9, 2009 @ 2:37 pm
I hope O’s opposition innovates with a variety of pressures–boredom will enervate the movement. The Democrats are using the recess and a refusal to face the constituents to sap their opponents of the all-important publicity.