The case against reelection

By Charles Krauthammer,
Published: August 9
The Washington Post

There are two ways to run against Barack Obama: stewardship or ideology. You can run against his record or you can run against his ideas.

The stewardship case is pretty straightforward: the worst recovery in U.S. history, 42 consecutive months of 8-plus percent unemployment, declining economic growth — all achieved at a price of an additional $5 trillion of accumulated debt.

The ideological case is also simple. Just play in toto (and therefore in context) Obama’s Roanoke riff telling small-business owners: “You didn’t build that.” Real credit for your success belongs not to you — you think you did well because of your smarts and sweat? he asked mockingly — but to government that built the infrastructure without which you would have nothing.

Play it. Then ask: Is that the governing philosophy you want for this nation?

Mitt Romney’s preferred argument, however, is stewardship. Are you better off today than you were $5 trillion ago? Look at the wreckage around you. This presidency is a failure. I’m a successful businessman. I know how to fix things. Elect me, etc. etc.

Easy peasy, but highly risky. If you run against Obama’s performance in contrast to your own competence, you stake your case on persona. Is that how you want to compete against an opponent who is not just more likable and immeasurably cooler but spending millions to paint you as an unfeeling, out-of-touch, job-killing, private-equity plutocrat?

The ideological case, on the other hand, is not just appealing to a center-right country with twice as many conservatives as liberals, it is also explanatory. It underpins the stewardship argument. Obama’s ideology — and the program that followed — explains the failure of these four years.

What program? Obama laid it out boldly in a series of major addresses during the first months of his presidency. The roots of the nation’s crisis, he declared, were systemic. Fundamental change was required. He had come to deliver it. Hence his signature legislation:

First, the $831 billion stimulus that was going to “reinvest” in America and bring unemployment below 6 percent. We know about the unemployment. And the investment? Obama loves to cite great federal projects such as the Hoover Dam and the interstate highway system. Fine. Name one thing of any note created by Obama’s Niagara of borrowed money. A modernized electric grid? Ports dredged to receive the larger ships soon to traverse a widened Panama Canal? Nothing of the sort. Solyndra, anyone?

Second, radical reform of health care that would reduce its ruinously accelerating cost: “Put simply,” he said, “our health-care problem is our deficit problem” — a financial hemorrhage drowning us in debt.

Except that Obamacare adds to spending. The Congressional Budget Office reports that Obamacare will incur $1.68 trillion of new expenditures in its first decade. To say nothing of the price of the uncertainty introduced by an impossibly complex remaking of one-sixth of the economy — discouraging hiring and expansion as trillions of investable private-sector dollars remain sidelined.

The third part of Obama’s promised transformation was energy. His cap-and-trade federal takeover was rejected by his own Democratic Senate. So the war on fossil fuels has been conducted unilaterally by bureaucratic fiat. Regulations that will kill coal. A no-brainer pipeline (Keystone) rejected lest Canadian oil sands be burned. (China will burn them instead.) A drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico that a federal judge severely criticized as illegal.

That was the program — now so unpopular that Obama barely mentions it. Obamacare got exactly two lines in this year’s State of the Union address. Seen any ads touting the stimulus? The drilling moratorium? Keystone?

Ideas matter. The 2010 election, the most ideological since 1980, saw the voters resoundingly reject a Democratic Party that was relentlessly expanding the power, spending, scope and reach of government.

It’s worse now. Those who have struggled to create a family business, a corner restaurant, a medical practice won’t take kindly to being told that their success is a result of government-built roads and bridges.

In 1988, Michael Dukakis famously said, “This election is not about ideology; it’s about competence.” He lost. If Republicans want to win, Obama’s deeply revealing, teleprompter-free you-didn’t-build-that confession of faith needs to be hung around his neck until Election Day. The third consecutive summer-of-recovery-that-never-came is attributable not just to Obama being in over his head but, even more important, to what’s in his head: a government-centered vision of the economy and society, and the policies that flow from it.

Four years of that and this is what you get.

Make the case and you win the White House.

You didn't write that post, someone else made it happen.

Naw, I made it happen. I cut and pasted it.
I am.

Picking Ryan as a running mate just made the ideological case to be made ten times harder.

Fish on...

Todd

If you're a dumshit that stands on the corner with signs like "No Government Takeover of Healthcare, but keep your hands off my Medicare!" (bad spelling omitted so you can actually read it), think Palin is a strong candidate (for anything), or that Obama is a Nigerian, Kenyan, Muslim, and/or Socialist, then you'll like the Ryan ideology.

If you have an IQ over 67 or aren't a kneejerk RWWJ, then you'd pick anything else.

Fish on...

Todd

And...you guys are the same fools that applauded picking that "other maverick" Sarah Palin four years ago.

Your track record on automatically supporting the VP pick because, not surprisingly, the same reason you support Romney (the "R" after their name) is poor...just as poor this year as four years ago.

"Here we are, it's 3rd down and 17, ball on the 47 yard line, 2:45 to go in the game. The Republicans call time out, and send Paul Ryan into the game.

Here they come to the line, the ball is snapped, and Romney drops back to pass...and Paul Ryan is signing an autograph for the mascot.

Romney is sacked, the Republicans punt, and the Democrats just take it easy and run the clock out."

Game over.

Fish on...

Todd

Wrong.

If Obama convinces people that his policies will create more jobs than Ryan's budget offerings or Romney's tax cut policies will, then Obama will win.

History has proven repeatedly that cutting taxes does not create jobs on its own, so Romney's "plan" (which isn't actually any sort of "plan" at all) is a no-go before it even starts.

The people of the country have roundly criticized Ryan's budget plans (unless you only watch FauxNews or the like, who tell you how everyone loves it, in contradiction to every actual source), so I'm not sure why the Republicans think adding Ryan will help, since they're not adding Ryan, they're adding the Ryan budget as the actual running mate, the only thing anyone knows about Paul Ryan, the reason anyone has ever heard of Paul Ryan, and the only thing Paul Ryan has ever done.

Fish on...

Todd

And just like the Republicans failed to offer anything of substance or quality last time, they're offering it up again...and that's why Obama will win.

Just as in poker, a pair of threes beats an ace high every time.

Fish on...

Todd

Obama could sit on his hands and just watch Ryan and Romney fail, he doesn't have to even do anything at all.

In a race where an incumbent Democrat is likely the weakest candidate fielded by the Democrats in decades...the Republican hopeful lineup looks like the Three Stooges Times Three...and then they go ahead and choose one of the Head Stooges to be their guy.

Their guy has no economic plan, no jobs plan, and no experience, and goes abroad and shows that he can be just as stupid and offensive to those in other countries as he can to the common man here.

Since he's got dick to offer, but is still running against the weakest Democratic hopeful for decades, all is not lost...he's automatically going to get 45% of the electorate, the ones who only vote for Republicans. To get over the hump he only needs a handful of percentage points.

Since he needs to get them from the center...the moderates and independents who don't automatically vote for either party...all he has to do is choose a moderate, or an independent, or someone non-controversial.

So, of course...he picks Paul Ryan.

What, is he trying to prove to the right wing jackoffs that he's "severely conservative" still? Uhh, Mitt...you already have the nomination, this is where you get to stop pretending to be a right wing fruitcake and start to act like a human being again.

What a ridiculous pick.

Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

In a time and place where it ought to be abundantly obvious that tying the Republican cart to the TeaBagger horse was a massive mistake, and one that ought to be rectified in order to save their asylum from the inmates, Romney has gone right ahead and made copies of the keys and told the inmates to hand them out to their friends.

And, in true partisan jackassery, you guys are actually saying out loud that you like this move.

I hope for your sakes that you are just being partisan jackasses and actually believe differently than you are stating...because if you're not, then you are truly fuckin crazy, and get the party that you deserve...and the President you deserve, which will be President Obama, again.

Fish on...

Todd

and what did you say in 04?


Fishy

and in 08 did you say "Wow" look at the massive deficit, with two unfunded wars, a pharmaceutical program unfunded and oh yeah, Tax breaks for everybody cause we're not in debt enough already!!!!!


Fishy

Just like his predecessor that you helped into office.


Fishy

Big deal they let him play cause his Daddy was ex prez and you proclaim he was a businessman? He bankrupted every business he was in until he got involved with the Texas Rangers cause his name was Bush, but they didn't let him make any decisions...Nice try!


Fishy

What Jobs? Shall we drop some more nets in Puget sound? Name a president who got re-elected with U3 over 8 percent. Since Roosevelt....

Which of his programs created more jobs. The money going to Solyndra and other bankrupt projects or the money that went overseas for electric cars and windmill blades?

http://dailybail.com/home/ge-dumps-offshore-wind-power-plans-after-collecting-125-mill.html

http://washingtonexaminer.com/wh-and-dnc...article/2501888

16 trillion in debt No one is going to pass another stimulus package like that. The Keynesian bank is now broke.

oh ya, its Romneys campaign. Romney can do anything he wants to Ryans plan. Ryans plan was to put the money into a trust fund to keep it solvent. Medicare is ALREADY going broke. Romney told him, its too complicated, just deal with it later. Go find the video.

the refreshing truth.......

The Outstanding Public Debt as of 16 Aug 2012 at 12:07:08 AM GMT is:

$15,923,709,144,022

The estimated population of the United States is 313,325,332
so each citizen's share of this debt is $50,821.65.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$3.88 billion per day since September 28, 2007!

The only sane vote this year? "None of the above."

Works for the government, should work for you.

Wow, just Wow!

Who lays your clothes out in the morning for you?




Fishy

Unlike you Hanky I have a life beyond disagreeing with everyone on the InterWebz and going through every Right Wing Nutjob rag looking for things to copy and paste.

I'll probably be gone for the rest of the weekend fishing,crabbing, BBQing and the normal things people do everyday outside of the fantasy world of InterWebz argue-fest but start the clock now for my response to your redundant and every present miasma retort!




Fishy